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+{"text":" \nThe Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant\n\nThe Runes of the Earth\n\nFatal Revenant\n\nAgainst All Things Ending\n\nThe Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever\n\nLord Foul's Bane\n\nThe Illearth War\n\nThe Power That Preserves\n\nThe Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant\n\nThe Wounded Land\n\nThe One Tree\n\nWhite Gold Wielder\n\nG. P. PUTNAM'S SONS\n\n_Publishers Since 1838_\n\nPublished by the Penguin Group\n\nPenguin Group (USA) LLC\n\n375 Hudson Street\n\nNew York, New York 10014\n\nUSA \u2022 Canada \u2022 UK \u2022 Ireland \u2022 Australia \u2022 New Zealand \u2022 India \u2022 South Africa \u2022 China\n\npenguin.com\n\nA Penguin Random House Company\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2013 by Stephen R. Donaldson\n\nPenguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nDonaldson, Stephen R.\n\nThe last dark \/ Stephen R. Donaldson.\n\np. cm.\u2014(The last chronicles of Thomas Covenant ; Book four)\n\nISBN 978-1-101-63643-5\n\n1. Covenant, Thomas (Fictitious character)\u2014Fiction. I. Title.\n\nPS3554.O469L37 2013 2013016784\n\n813'.54\u2014dc23\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.\nto Jennifer Dunstan,\n\nwho stood with me the whole time\n\nand to John Eccker,\n\nwho has put in more effort, and has been of more help, than I could ever have expected\n\nand to Robyn H. Butler:\n\n\"And they lived happily ever after.\"\n\n# Contents\n\nAlso in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant\n\nTitle Page\n\nCopyright\n\nDedication\n\nMap\n\n What Has Gone Before\n\nPart One \"to bear what must be borne\"\n\n 1. _Betimes Some Wonder_\n\n 2. Nightfall\n\n 3. _Not Dead to Life and Use_\n\n 4. \"Try to Believe\"\n\n 5. Coming\n\n 6. Promises Old and New\n\n 7. Taking the Risk\n\n 8. The Right Materials\n\n 9. An Impoverished Temple\n\n 10. _But While I Can_\n\n 11. Back from the Brink\n\n 12. After Too Long\n\nPart Two \"the abyss and the peak\"\n\n 1. _A Tale Which Will Remain_\n\n 2. Toward Confrontation\n\n 3. Summoned to Oppose\n\n 4. Reluctances\n\n 5. \"No Prospect of Return\"\n\n 6. The Aid of the Feroce\n\n 7. At Last\n\n 8. Shamed Choices\n\n 9. Parting Company\n\n 10. All Lost Women\n\n 11. _Of My Deeper Purpose_\n\n 12. _You Are Mine_\n\n Epilogue: \"The soul in which the flower grows\"\n\n Glossary\n\n# What Has Gone Before\n\n\"The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever\"\n\nAs a young man\u2014a novelist, happily married, with an infant son, Roger\u2014Thomas Covenant is stricken with leprosy. In a leprosarium, where the last two fingers of his right hand are amputated, he learns that leprosy is incurable. As it progresses, it produces numbness, often killing its victims by leaving them unaware of infections. Medications arrest its progress; but Covenant is taught that his only hope of survival lies in protecting himself obsessively from any form of damage.\n\nHorrified by his illness, he returns to his home on Haven Farm. But other blows to his emotional stability follow. His wife, Joan, abandons and divorces him to protect their son. Fearing the mysterious nature of his illness, the people around him cast him in the traditional role of the leper: a pariah, outcast and unclean. In addition, he becomes impotent\u2014and unable to write. Grimly he struggles to go on living; but as his despair mounts, he has episodes of prolonged unconsciousness, during which he seems to visit a magical realm known only as \"the Land.\"\n\nIn the Land, physical and emotional health are tangible forces, made palpable by an energy called Earthpower. Because vitality and beauty are concrete qualities, as plain to the senses as size and color, the well-being of the physical world has become the guiding precept of the Land's people. When Covenant first encounters them, in _Lord Foul's Bane_ , they greet him as the reincarnation of an ancient hero, Berek Halfhand, because he, too, has lost half of his hand. Also Covenant possesses a white gold ring\u2014his wedding band\u2014which they know to be a mighty talisman, able to wield \"the wild magic that destroys peace.\"\n\nShortly after he first appears in the Land, Covenant's leprosy and impotence disappear, cured by Earthpower; and this, he knows, is impossible. Indeed, the mere idea that he possesses some form of magical power threatens the stubborn disciplines on which his survival depends. Therefore he chooses to interpret the Land as a dream or hallucination. He responds to his new health with Unbelief: the dogged assertion that the Land is not real.\n\nBecause of his Unbelief, his initial reactions to the people and wonders of the Land are at best dismissive, at worst cruel. At one point, urged by sensations which he can neither accept nor control, and certain that his experiences are illusory, he rapes Lena, a young girl who has befriended him. However, her people decline to punish or reject him for his actions. As Berek Halfhand reborn, he is beyond judgment. And there is an ancient prophecy concerning the white gold wielder: \"With the one word of truth or treachery, \/ he will save or damn the Earth.\" Covenant's new companions know that they cannot make his choices for him. They can only hope that he will eventually follow Berek's example by saving the Land.\n\nAt first, such forbearance achieves little, although Covenant is moved by both the ineffable beauties of this world and the kindness of its people. During his travels, however\u2014first with Lena's mother, Atiaran, then with the Seareach Giant Saltheart Foamfollower, and finally with the Lords of Revelstone\u2014he learns enough of the Land's history to understand what is at stake.\n\nThe Land has an ancient enemy, Lord Foul the Despiser, who dreams of destroying the Arch of Time\u2014and with it not only the Land but the entire Earth\u2014in order to escape what he perceives to be a prison. Against this evil stands the Council of Lords, men and women who have dedicated their lives to nurturing the health of the Land, and to opposing Despite.\n\nUnfortunately these Lords possess only a small fraction of their predecessors' power. The Staff of Law, Berek's primary instrument of Earthpower, has been hidden from them. And the lore of Law and Earthpower seems inherently inadequate to defeat Lord Foul. Wild magic rather than Law is the crux of Time. Without it, the Arch cannot be destroyed; but neither can it be defended.\n\nHence both the Lords and the Despiser seek Thomas Covenant's allegiance. The Lords attempt to win his aid with courage and compassion: the Despiser, through manipulation. And in this contest Covenant's Unbelief appears to ally him with the Despiser.\n\nNevertheless Covenant cannot deny his reaction to the Land's apparent transcendence. And as he is granted more and more friendship by its people, he remembers his violence toward Lena with dismay. Thus he faces an insoluble conundrum: the Land cannot be real, yet it feels entirely real. His heart responds to its loveliness\u2014and that response has the potential to kill him by undermining his necessary caution and hopelessness.\n\nTrapped within this contradiction, he attempts to escape through a series of unspoken bargains. In _Lord Foul's Bane_ , he lends the Lords his passive support, hoping that this will enable him to avoid the possibilities\u2014the responsibilities\u2014of his white gold ring. And at first his hopes are realized. The Lords find the lost Staff of Law; their immediate enemy, one of Lord Foul's servants, is defeated; and Covenant is released from the Land.\n\nBack in his real world, however, he discovers that he has in fact gained nothing. Indeed, his plight has worsened. His experience of friendship and magic has weakened his ability to endure his outcast loneliness. When he is translated to the Land a second time, in _The Illearth War_ , he knows that he must devise a new bargain.\n\nDuring his absence, the Land's plight has worsened as well. Decades have passed there; and in that time Lord Foul has acquired the Illearth Stone, a bane of staggering power. With it, the Despiser has created an army that now marches against the Lords: a force which the Staff of Law cannot adequately oppose. The Lords need the strength of wild magic.\n\nOther developments also exacerbate Covenant's dilemma. The Council is now led by High Lord Elena, his daughter by his rape of Lena. With her, he begins to experience the real consequences of his crime: unlike the rest of the Council, he can see that she is not completely sane. In addition, the army of the Lords is led by a man named Hile Troy, who appears to come from Covenant's own world. Troy's presence radically erodes Covenant's self-protective Unbelief.\n\nNow more than ever Covenant needs to resolve his conundrum. Again he posits a private bargain. He will give the Lords his active support. Specifically, he will join Elena on a quest to discover the source of EarthBlood, the most concentrated form of Earthpower. But he will continue to deny that his ring has any magic. He will accept no responsibility for the Land's fate.\n\nThis time, however, the results of his bargain are disastrous. Using the Illearth Stone, Lord Foul slaughters the Giants of Seareach. Hile Troy is only able to defeat the Despiser's army by giving his soul to Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep. And Covenant's help enables Elena to find the EarthBlood, which she uses to violate the Law of Death. She resurrects Kevin Landwaster, a long-dead High Lord, believing that he will have more power against Lord Foul than anyone living. But she is terribly wrong; and in the resulting catastrophe, both she and the Staff of Law are lost.\n\nCovenant returns to his real world knowing that his attempts to resolve his dilemma have served the Despiser.\n\nNearly broken by his failures, he visits the Land again in _The Power That Preserves_ , where he discovers the full cost of his actions. Dead, his daughter now serves Lord Foul, using the Staff of Law to wreak havoc. Her mother, Lena, has lost her mind. And the Lords are besieged by an army too powerful to be defeated.\n\nCovenant still has no solution to his conundrum: only wild magic can save the Land, yet he cannot afford to accept it. However, sickened at heart by Lena's madness, and by the imminent ruin of the Land, he resolves to confront the Despiser himself. He has no hope of victory, but he would rather sacrifice himself for the sake of an unreal yet magical place than preserve his outcast life in his real world.\n\nBefore he can reach the Despiser, however, he must first face dead Elena and the Staff of Law. Although he cannot oppose her, she defeats herself: her attack on him draws a fierce response from his ring\u2014a response which also destroys the Staff.\n\nAccompanied only by his old friend, the Giant Saltheart Foamfollower, Covenant finally confronts Lord Foul and the Illearth Stone. Facing the Despiser's savagery and malice, he at last finds the solution to his conundrum, \"the eye of the paradox\": the point of balance between accepting that the Land is real and insisting that it is not. On that basis, he uses the dire might of the Illearth Stone to trigger wild magic from his ring. With that power, he shatters both the Stone and Lord Foul's home, thereby ending the threat of the Despiser's evil.\n\nWhen he returns to his own world, he learns that his new-found balance benefits him there as well. He knows now that the reality or unreality of the Land is less important than his love for it; and this insight gives him the strength to face his life as a pariah without fear or bitterness.\n\n\"The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant\"\n\nFor ten years after the events of _The Power That Preserves_ , Covenant lives alone on Haven Farm, writing novels. He is still an outcast, but he has one friend, Dr. Julius Berenford. Then, however, two damaged women enter his life.\n\nHis ex-wife, Joan, returns to him, violently insane. Leaving Roger with her parents, she has spent years in a commune which has dedicated itself to Despite, and which has chosen Covenant to be its victim. Hoping to spare anyone else the hazards of involvement, Covenant attempts to care for Joan alone.\n\nWhen Covenant refuses aid, Dr. Berenford enlists Linden Avery, a young physician whom he has recently hired. Like Joan, she has been badly hurt, although in entirely different ways. As a young girl, she was locked in a room with her father while he committed suicide. And as a teenager, she killed her mother, an act of euthanasia to which she felt compelled by her mother's self-pity. Loathing death, Linden has become a doctor in a haunted attempt to erase her past.\n\nAt Dr. Berenford's urging, Linden intrudes on Covenant and Joan. When members of Joan's commune seek to sacrifice Covenant, Linden tries to intervene, but she is struck down. As a result, she accompanies him when he is returned to the Land.\n\nDuring Covenant's absence, several thousand years have passed, and the Despiser has regained his power. As before, he plots to use Covenant's wild magic in order to break the Arch of Time. In _The Wounded Land_ , however, Covenant and Linden learn that Lord Foul has altered his methods. Instead of relying on armies and warfare to goad Covenant, he has devised an attack on the natural Law which gives the Land its beauty and health.\n\nThe overt form of this attack is the Sunbane, a malefic corona around the sun which produces fertility, rain, drought, and pestilence in mad succession. So great is the Sunbane's destructiveness that it now dominates all life in the Land. And its virulence also serves to mask Lord Foul's deeper stratagems.\n\nHe has spent centuries corrupting the Council of Lords. That group now rules over the Land as the Clave; and it is led by a Raver, one of the Despiser's most vicious servants. The Clave extracts blood from the people of the Land to feed the Banefire, an enormous blaze which increases the Sunbane.\n\nHowever, the hidden purpose of the Clave and the Banefire is to inspire from Covenant an excessive exertion of wild magic. And toward that end, another Raver afflicts Covenant with a venom intended to cripple his self-control. When the venom has done its work, he will be unable to defend the Land without destroying the Arch.\n\nAs for Linden Avery, Lord Foul intends to use her loathing of death against her. She alone is gifted or cursed with the health-sense which once enabled the people of the Land to perceive physical and emotional health directly. For that reason, she is uniquely vulnerable to the malevolence of the Sunbane, as well as to the malice of the Ravers. Such evils threaten her to the core.\n\nAlthough her health-sense accentuates her potential as a healer, it also gives her the capacity to possess other people; to reach so deeply into them that she can control their actions. By this means, Lord Foul intends to cripple her morally: he seeks to make of her a woman who will possess Covenant, misuse his power. Thus she will give the Despiser what he wants even if Covenant does not.\n\nAnd should those ploys fail, Lord Foul has prepared other gambits.\n\nHorrified in their separate ways by what has been done to the Land, Covenant and Linden wish to confront the Clave; but on their own, they cannot survive the complex perils of the Sunbane. Fortunately they gain the companionship of two villagers, Sunder and Hollian, who help Covenant and Linden avoid ruin.\n\nBut Linden, Sunder, and Hollian are separated from Covenant near a region known as Andelain, captured by the Clave while he enters Andelain alone. It was once the most beautiful and Earthpowerful place in the Land; and he now discovers that it alone remains intact, defended from the Sunbane by the last Forestal, Caer-Caveral, who was once Hile Troy. There Covenant encounters his Dead, the spectres of his long-gone friends. They offer him advice and guidance for the struggle ahead. And they give him a gift: a strange ebony creature named Vain, an artificial being created for a hidden purpose by ur-viles, former servants of the Despiser.\n\nThereafter Covenant hastens toward Revelstone to rescue his friends. When he encounters the Clave, he learns the cruelest secret of the Sunbane: it was made possible by his destruction of the Staff of Law thousands of years ago. Desperate to undo the harm which he has unwittingly caused, he risks wild magic in order to free Linden, Sunder, and Hollian, as well as a number of _Haruchai_ , powerful warriors who at one time served the Lords.\n\nWith his friends, Vain, and a small group of _Haruchai_ , Covenant then sets out to locate the One Tree, the wood from which Berek originally fashioned the Staff of Law. Covenant hopes to devise a new Staff to oppose the Clave and the Sunbane.\n\nTraveling eastward, the companions encounter a party of Giants, seafaring beings from the homeland of the lost Giants of Seareach. One of them, Cable Seadreamer, has had a vision of a terrible threat to the Earth, and the Giants have sent out a Search to discover the danger.\n\nConvinced that this threat is the Sunbane, Covenant persuades the Search to help him find the One Tree; and in _The One Tree_ , Covenant, Linden, Vain, and several _Haruchai_ set sail aboard the Giantship Starfare's Gem, leaving Sunder and Hollian to rally the people of the Land against the Clave.\n\nThe quest for the One Tree takes Covenant and Linden first to the land of the _Elohim_ , cryptic beings of pure Earthpower who appear to understand and perhaps control the destiny of the Earth. The _Elohim_ agree to reveal the location of the One Tree; but first they paralyze Covenant's mind, purportedly to protect the Earth from his growing power. Led now by Linden, the Search sails for the Isle of the One Tree.\n\nUnexpectedly, however, they are joined by Findail, an _Elohim_ who has been Appointed to guard against the consequences of the quest's actions.\n\nLinden is unable to free Covenant's mind without possessing him, which she fears to do, knowing that she may unleash his power. When she and her companions are imprisoned in _Bhrathairealm_ , however, she takes the risk of entering Covenant, much to Findail's dismay. Covenant then fights and masters a Sandgorgon, a fierce monster of the Great Desert. The creature's rampage through _Bhrathairealm_ allows Covenant, Linden, and their companions to escape.\n\nAt last, Starfare's Gem reaches the Isle of the One Tree, where one of the _Haruchai_ , Brinn, becomes the Tree's Guardian. But when the companions approach their goal, they learn that they have been misled by the Despiser. Covenant's attempt to obtain wood for a new Staff of Law begins to rouse the Worm of the World's End. Once awakened, the Worm will accomplish Lord Foul's release from Time.\n\nAt the cost of his life, Seadreamer makes Linden aware of the true danger. She then forestalls Covenant. Nevertheless the Worm's restlessness forces the Search to flee as the Isle sinks into the sea, taking the One Tree beyond reach.\n\nDefeated, the Search returns to the Land in _White Gold Wielder_. Covenant now believes that he must confront the Clave directly, quench the Banefire, and then battle the Despiser; and Linden is determined to aid him, in part because she loves him, and in part because she fears his unchecked wild magic.\n\nRejoined by Sunder, Hollian, and several _Haruchai_ , Covenant, Linden, and a few Giants eventually reach Revelstone, where they challenge the Clave. After a fierce struggle, the companions corner the Raver commanding the Clave. There Seadreamer's brother, Grimmand Honninscrave\u2014with the help of a Sandgorgon\u2014sacrifices his life in order to \"rend\" the Raver. As a result, the Sandgorgon gains scraps of the Raver's sentience. Then Covenant flings himself into the Banefire, using its dark theurgy to transform the venom in his veins. When he is done, the Sunbane remains, but its evil no longer grows.\n\nAfterward, Covenant and Linden, Sunder and Hollian, Vain and Findail, and two Giants turn toward Mount Thunder, where the Despiser now resides. Along the way, Hollian dies. But in Andelain, Caer-Caveral expends his own life to resurrect her by violating the Law of Life.\n\nGradually Linden realizes that Covenant does not mean to fight Lord Foul. That contest, Covenant believes, will unleash enough force to destroy Time. Afraid that he will surrender his ring, Linden prepares herself to possess him, although she now understands that possession is a great evil.\n\nYet when she and Covenant finally face Lord Foul, she is possessed herself by a Raver; and her efforts to win free leave her unwilling to interfere with Covenant. As she has feared, he does surrender his ring. But when the Despiser turns wild magic against Covenant, slaying his body, the altered venom is burned out of Covenant's spirit, and he becomes a being of pure wild magic, able to sustain the Arch despite Lord Foul's fury. As a result, the Despiser effectively defeats himself; and Covenant's ring falls to Linden.\n\nMeanwhile, she has come to understand Vain's purpose\u2014and Findail's Appointed role. Vain is pure structure: Findail, pure fluidity. Using Covenant's ring, Linden melds the two beings into a new Staff of Law. Then she reaches out with the restored power of Law to erase the Sunbane and begin the healing of the Land.\n\nWhen she is done, Linden returns to her own world, where she finds that Covenant is indeed dead. Yet she now holds his wedding ring. And when Dr. Berenford comes looking for her, she discovers that her time with Covenant and her own victories have transformed her. She is now able to face her old life in an entirely new way.\n\n\"The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant\"\n\nIn Book One, _The Runes of the Earth_ , ten years have passed for Linden Avery; and in that time, her life has changed. She has adopted a son, Jeremiah, now fifteen, who was horribly damaged by the Despiser, losing half of his right hand. He displays a peculiar genius: he is able to build astonishing structures out of such toys as Tinkertoys and Legos. But in every other way, he is entirely unreactive, trapped in dissociation. Nonetheless Linden is devoted to him, giving him all of her frustrated love for Thomas Covenant and the Land.\n\nIn addition, she has become the Chief Medical Officer of a psychiatric hospital, where Covenant's ex-wife, Joan, is now a patient. For a time, Joan's condition resembles a vegetative catatonia. But then she starts to punish herself, punching her temple incessantly in an apparent effort to bring about her own death. Only the restoration of her white gold wedding band calms her, although it does not altogether prevent her violence.\n\nAs the story begins, Roger Covenant has reached twenty-one, and has come to claim custody of his mother: a claim which Linden denies. To this setback, Roger responds by taking his mother at gunpoint. And while Linden deals with the aftermath of that attack, Roger captures Jeremiah as well.\n\nSeparately, Linden and the police locate Roger, Joan, and Jeremiah. But when Linden confronts Roger, Joan is killed by lightning, and Roger opens fire on the police. In the ensuing fusillade, Linden, Roger, and Jeremiah are cut down; and Linden finds herself in the Land again, where she is informed that Lord Foul now has her son.\n\nAs before, several thousand years have passed in the Land, and everything that Linden knew has changed. The Land has been healed, restored to its former loveliness and potency. Now, however, it is ruled by Masters, _Haruchai_ dedicated to the suppression of all magical knowledge and power. And their task is simplified by an eerie smog called Kevin's Dirt, which blocks health-sense.\n\nYet the Land faces threats which the Masters cannot defeat. _Caesures_ \u2014disruptions of time\u2014wreak havoc, appearing randomly as Joan releases blasts of wild magic. In addition, an _Elohim_ has visited the Land, warning of dangers which include various monsters\u2014and an unnamed _halfhand_. And the new Staff of Law has been lost.\n\nDesperate to locate and rescue Jeremiah, Linden soon acquires companions, both willing and reluctant: Anele, an ancient, Earthpowerful, and blind madman who claims that he is \"the hope of the Land,\" and whose insanity varies with the surfaces\u2014stone, dirt, grass\u2014on which he stands; Liand, a na\u00efve young villager; Stave, a Master who distrusts Linden and wishes to imprison Anele; a group of ur-viles, artificial creatures that formerly served Lord Foul; and a band of Ramen, the human servants of the Ranyhyn, the Land's time-wise horses. Linden also meets Esmer, the tormented descendant of Kastenessen, a deranged _Elohim_.\n\nFrom Esmer, Linden learns the nature of the _caesures_. She is told that the ur-viles intend to protect her from betrayal by Esmer himself. And she finds that Anele knows where the Staff of Law was lost thousands of years ago.\n\nBecause she has no power except Covenant's ring, which she is only able to use with great difficulty\u2014because she has no idea where Lord Foul has taken Jeremiah\u2014and because she fears that she will not be able to search for him against the opposition of the Masters\u2014Linden risks entering a _caesure_. Accompanied by Anele, Liand, Stave, the ur-viles, and three Ramen\u2014the Manethrall Mahrtiir and his two Cords, Bhapa and Pahni\u2014Linden rides into the temporal chaos of Joan's power.\n\nThanks to the theurgy of the ur-viles, and to the guidance of the Ranyhyn, she and her companions emerge more than three thousand years in their past, where they find that the Staff has been hidden and protected by a group of Waynhim, relatives of the ur-viles. When she reclaims the Staff, however, Esmer brings a horde of Demondim out of the Land's deep past to assail her. The Demondim are monstrous beings, the makers of the ur-viles and Waynhim, and their power now threatens the existence of the Arch of Time.\n\nTo protect the Arch while she and her companions escape, Linden uses Covenant's ring to create a _caesure_ of her own. That disruption of time carries her company and the Demondim to her natural present. To her surprise, however, her _caesure_ deposits them before the gates of Revelstone, the seat of the Masters. While the Masters fight a doomed battle against the Demondim, she and her companions enter the ambiguous sanctuary of Lord's Keep.\n\nIn Revelstone, Linden meets Handir, the Voice of the Masters: their leader. And she encounters the Humbled, Galt, Branl, and Clyme: three _Haruchai_ who have been maimed to resemble Thomas Covenant in his honor. Cared for by a mysterious woman named the Mahdoubt, Linden tries to imagine how she can persuade the Masters to aid her search for Jeremiah. When she confronts them, however, all of her arguments are turned aside. Only Stave elects to stand with her: an act of defiance for which he is punished and spurned by his kinsmen.\n\nThe confrontation ends abruptly when news comes that riders are approaching Revelstone. From the battlements, Linden sees four Masters racing to reach Lord's Keep ahead of the Demondim. With them are Thomas Covenant and Jeremiah. And Jeremiah has emerged enthusiastically from his dissociation.\n\nIn _Fatal Revenant_ , the arrival of Covenant and Jeremiah brings turmoil. They are obviously real and powerful, yet they give no satisfactory account of their presence. And they refuse to let Linden touch them\u2014or to use the Staff of Law. Instead they insist on being sequestered until they are ready to talk to her.\n\nMeanwhile the Demondim mass at the gates, apparently preparing to destroy Revelstone; but they do not attack.\n\nShaken, Linden retreats to the plateau above Lord's Keep to await Covenant's summons. There she calls for Esmer, hoping that he will answer her questions. When he manifests himself, however, he surprises her by bringing more creatures out of the Land's distant past: a band of ur-viles and a smaller number of Waynhim, joined together to serve her. Cryptically he informs her that the creatures have prepared \"manacles.\" And he reveals that the Demondim are now working in concert with Kastenessen. But he avoids Linden's other questions. Instead he tells her that she \"must be the first to drink of the EarthBlood.\"\n\nWhen Covenant's summons comes, Linden meets with him and Jeremiah in their chambers. Covenant speaks primarily in non sequiturs, although he insists that he knows how to save the Land. At the same time, Jeremiah pleads with Linden to trust his companion. Feeling both rejected and suspicious, Linden refuses when Covenant asks for his white gold ring. In response, Covenant demands that she join him on the plateau, where he will show her how he intends to save the Land.\n\nLinden complies. She knows no other way to discover why and how her loved ones have changed. Instead of revealing their secrets, however, Covenant and Jeremiah create a portal which snatches her away from her present. Without transition, she finds herself with them ten millennia in the Land's past, during the time of Berek Halfhand's last wars.\n\nThey are near the dire forest of Garroting Deep\u2014and far from the place and time that Covenant and Jeremiah sought. Instead their purpose has been deflected by a man called the Theomach, who appears to have a mystical relationship with time. He is one of the Insequent, a race of humans who pursue arcane knowledge and power in complete isolation from each other: a race whose only shared trait, apparently, is a loathing for the _Elohim_. The Theomach interfered with Covenant and Jeremiah because he believed that their intentions were dangerous enough to attract the _Elohim_.\n\nThe result is that Linden, Covenant, and Jeremiah stand in the dead of winter many brutal leagues from _Melenkurion_ Skyweir, where Covenant and Jeremiah hope to use the EarthBlood and the Power of Command to defeat Lord Foul permanently. In desperation, Linden decides to approach Berek for help. She wins the future High Lord's trust by healing many of his injured\u2014and by introducing him to his own new-born health-sense.\n\nAfterward the Theomach accomplishes his own purpose by persuading Berek to accept him as a guide and teacher. To show his good faith, he speaks the Seven Words: a mighty invocation of Earthpower which Linden has never heard before.\n\nWith supplies and horses provided by Berek Halfhand, Linden, Covenant, and Jeremiah trek toward _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. But when the exhausted mounts start to die, Covenant and Jeremiah transport Linden to the Skyweir through a series of spatial portals. There Jeremiah reveals the magic of his talent for constructs. With the right materials, he is able to devise \"doors\": doors from one place to another; doors that bypass time; doors between realities. Building a door shaped like a large wooden box, he conveys himself, Covenant, and Linden deep into _Melenkurion_ Skyweir, to the hidden caves of the EarthBlood.\n\nCovenant is now ready to exert the Power of Command. But Linden drinks first, remembering Esmer's counsel. She then uses her Command to expose the secrets of her companions.\n\nAt once, a glamour is dispelled. Covenant shows his true form: he is Roger Covenant, not Thomas, and he despises all that his father loves. His right hand wields immense power: it is Kastenessen's, grafted onto him to wield Kastenessen's savage might. And on Jeremiah's back rides one of the _croyel_ , a succubus that both feeds from and strengthens its host. The sentience that Jeremiah has demonstrated is the _croyel_ 's, not his own. Gloating, Roger explains that he and the _croyel_ aspire to become gods. Bringing Linden into the past\u2014and bringing her here\u2014was an attempt to trick her into breaking the Arch of Time. So far, she has avoided that danger. But now she is trapped ten thousand years in the Land's past and cannot escape.\n\nA terrible battle follows, during which the Staff of Law turns black. Using her Staff, the Seven Words, and the EarthBlood, Linden opposes Roger and her possessed son. While an earthquake splits _Melenkurion_ Skyweir, however, Roger and Jeremiah escape, leaving Linden stranded.\n\nThe experience transforms her. She now believes that only Thomas Covenant can save the Land. At the same time, her determination to rescue Jeremiah becomes even stronger\u2014and more unscrupulous.\n\nAfter an encounter with Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep, who engraves her Staff with runes of power, she is retrieved by the Mahdoubt. Here the Mahdoubt is revealed as one of the Insequent. When Linden is returned to Revelstone in her proper time, she learns that Liand has acquired a piece of _orcrest_ , a stone capable of channeling Earthpower in various ways. She also hears that a stranger has single-handedly eliminated the entire horde of the Demondim.\n\nHe is the Harrow, yet another Insequent. He covets both Linden's Staff and Covenant's ring, and he has the power to take them by emptying her mind. Fortunately the Mahdoubt intervenes. Violating the ethics which govern the Insequent, she defeats the Harrow, winning from him the promise that he will not wrest the Staff of Law and Covenant's ring from Linden by force: a victory which costs the Mahdoubt her own life. After assuring Linden that he will gain his desires by other means, the Harrow disappears.\n\nThen Linden, her friends, and the three Humbled summon Ranyhyn and ride away from Revelstone. Because she still has no idea where Jeremiah is hidden, her stated intention is to reach Andelain and consult with the Dead, as Covenant once did. For private reasons, she also hopes to recover High Lord Loric's _krill_ , an eldritch dagger forged to channel extremes of power too great for any unaided mortal.\n\nAlong the way, she and her companions come upon a village which has been destroyed by a _caesure_ : a _caesure_ which Esmer controls as a weapon against the Harrow. There she learns that the Harrow knows where Jeremiah has been hidden\u2014and that Esmer intends to prevent the Insequent from revealing his secret. At the same time, Roger Covenant attacks with a force of Cavewights. In the ensuing battle, Linden's company is soon overwhelmed. Frantic, she takes a wild gamble: she tries to summon a Sandgorgon. Six of them charge into the fight, routing Roger and the Cavewights, and allowing the Harrow to escape.\n\nLater Linden hears that a large number of Sandgorgons have come to the Land, driven by the rent remnants of a Raver's malign spirit. In Covenant's name, they answered Linden's call. But now they have repaid their debt to him. They seek a new outlet for their own savage hungers, and for the Raver's malice.\n\nWhen Linden and her companions have done what they can for the homeless villagers, they ride on to Salva Gildenbourne, a great forest which encircles Andelain. There they encounter a party of Giants, Swordmainnir, all women except for one deranged man, Longwrath: their prisoner. When the Giants and Linden's company reach comparative safety, they stop to exchange tales.\n\nThe leader of the Giants, Rime Coldspray, the Ironhand, explains that Longwrath is a Swordmain who has been possessed by a _geas_. With nine other Swordmainnir, the Ironhand has been seeking the cause or purpose of his compulsion. After acquiring an apparently powerful sword, he has led the Giants to the Land. Here it becomes clear that his _geas_ requires him to kill Linden.\n\nTo protect her, the Swordmainnir agree to accompany her to Andelain. But during the next day, they are assailed by the _skurj_ , fiery worm-like monsters that serve Kastenessen. Two of the Giants are killed. Yet Liand saves the company by using his _orcrest_ to summon a thunderstorm. The downpour forces the _skurj_ underground, and the surviving companions are able to flee.\n\nAt last, they reach Andelain. The sacred Hills are warded by the Wraiths, small candle-flame sprites that repulse evil by drawing power from the awakened _krill_. Thus protected, the companions hasten to find the _krill_.\n\nDuring the dark of the moon, however, the company meets the Harrow again. Indirectly he has offered Linden a bargain: if she surrenders the Staff of Law and Covenant's ring, he will take her to Jeremiah. But while he taunts Linden, Infelice, the monarch of the _Elohim_ , appears. She argues passionately against the Harrow\u2014and against everything that Linden intends to do. Yet Linden ignores them both as she approaches the _krill_.\n\nThere the Dead begin to arrive. While the four original High Lords observe, Caer-Caveral and High Lord Elena escort Thomas Covenant's spectre. Yet the Lords and the last Forestal and Covenant himself refuse to speak. None of them answer Linden.\n\nDriven to the last extremity, she raises all of her power from both her Staff and Covenant's ring, and commits those contradictory magicks to the _krill_. Doing so, she cuts through the Laws of Life and Death until she succeeds at resurrecting Covenant; drawing his spirit out of the Arch of Time; restoring his slain body.\n\nYet power on such a scale has vast consequences. Linden's actions also awaken the Worm of the World's End.\n\nIn addition, there are other problems. In _Against All Things Ending_ , she finds that Covenant's leprosy is active again. And the stress of his return to mortality has fractured his mind. As a result, he is often unable to control his thoughts, his memories, or even his attention.\n\nWhen the companions are informed that days will pass before the World's End is accomplished, Linden decides to accept the Harrow's bargain: one last attempt to rescue Jeremiah by surrendering her Staff and Covenant's ring. Then, however, another Insequent appears, the Ardent, who has come to ensure that the Harrow does not deal falsely with Linden. Under pressure, the Harrow\u2014with the Ardent's support\u2014transports Linden, Covenant, and all of their companions to the Lost Deep, elaborate caverns which were once the home of the Viles, creators of the Demondim. There Linden follows the Harrow to Jeremiah's hiding place.\n\nThe boy is still ruled by the _croyel_ , and he has concealed himself even from the _Elohim_ within one of his constructs. When Linden breaks the construct, Roger arrives to murder the Harrow, and to claim Covenant's ring. But Covenant opposes Roger with the _krill_ , and while they struggle, Esmer suddenly takes Roger to safety. Esmer then announces that the company's actions have awakened an ancient bane, a sentient and eternal being called She Who Must Not Be Named. Now She is rising to devour the company.\n\nDesperately Linden and her companions try to flee, bringing succubus-ridden Jeremiah and a helpless Covenant, whose awareness of his circumstances has been blocked by Esmer. But while the company, led by ur-viles and Waynhim, scrambles to escape, Linden falls prey to the bane indirectly: believing herself to be invaded by worms and maggots, she collapses into unconsciousness. However, Covenant's love for her enables him to overcome Esmer's influence. With the aid of the Dead\u2014who sacrifice the spectre of Elena, Covenant's daughter\u2014he forestalls the bane until the Ardent is able to transport the company away.\n\nOn the Lower Land a considerable distance from Mount Thunder, the companions try to recover. All are exhausted, and Linden is trapped in nightmares, unable to regain consciousness. Dismayed by her condition, Covenant takes a desperate risk: he holds her underwater, hoping that the sensations of drowning will bring her back to herself. Fortunately his gamble succeeds.\n\nThe Ardent informs the company that he has caused his own death by interfering with the Harrow. Before he passes away, however, he supplies the company with food. Later he also transports the Ramen Cords, Pahni and Bhapa, to Revelstone so that they can try to win the support of the Masters.\n\nWhen the companions have regained some of their strength, Linden attempts to free Jeremiah from the _croyel_ by entering his mind: a graveyard where all of his thoughts and desires are buried. She fails; and before anyone can try a different approach, the company is attacked by _caesures_. In the confusion, Liand tries to use his _orcrest_ stone against the _croyel_ ; but Anele\u2014suddenly possessed by Kastenessen\u2014kills the young villager.\n\nA different attack soon follows: Roger and a host of Cavewights are joined by Esmer. Although the Swordmainnir and the _Haruchai_ fight furiously, they are vastly outnumbered. But ur-viles and Waynhim respond by rendering Esmer helpless with their manacles. Now sane, Anele challenges the _croyel_ with the _orcrest_. And when the Humbled Galt unexpectedly sacrifices himself to preserve Anele, Anele is able to destroy the succubus. The effort kills the old man, but not before he transfers his legacy of Earthpower to Jeremiah.\n\nTo save the company, Linden uses wild magic, wreaking terrible carnage even though she is not a rightful white gold wielder. In the aftermath, Esmer begs her to kill him. But she cannot: she has done too much killing. However, Stave\u2014Galt's father\u2014spares her by using the _krill_ to end Esmer's life.\n\nLater Covenant leaves the company, taking only the remaining Humbled, Clyme and Branl, with him. He intends to confront Joan in an effort to end her torment and stop the _caesures_ ; and he is unwilling to risk Linden against a rightful white gold wielder. Also he believes that Jeremiah still needs her. The boy is no longer possessed, but he remains buried in his long dissociation.\n\nStricken by Covenant's departure, Linden and her companions decide to let the Ranyhyn choose their destination. After an encounter with the lurker of the Sarangrave, a wetland monster with terrifying appetites and strengths, the great horses run, taking Linden, Jeremiah, and Stave ahead of the exhausted Giants and Manethrall Mahrtiir. After many leagues, the three reach a crater full of the bones of ancient monsters. There Jeremiah begins to build one of his constructs while Linden defends him from _caesures_. But then Infelice arrives, intending to kill the boy because she believes that he will devise a prison for the _Elohim_ \u2014and because she knows that Lord Foul wants to use Jeremiah's talent to imprison the Creator. However, Stave's strength of will enables him to distract Infelice; and with Linden's help, Jeremiah completes his construct. When he enters it, he emerges with his mind restored.\n\nMeanwhile Covenant and the Humbled travel toward Ridjeck Thome, where Covenant first defeated Lord Foul. Along the way, they encounter the Feroce, worshippers of the lurker, who offer Covenant a bargain: they will help him overcome Joan's defenders if he will try to preserve the lurker from the Worm. Knowing that he cannot protect the lurker except by saving the Earth, Covenant agrees.\n\nTrue to their word, the Feroce sacrifice many lives; but their aid does not suffice. In order to reach Joan, Covenant and the Humbled enter a _caesure_ : a doomed gamble from which Joan rescues Covenant so that she can kill him herself. And Joan is possessed by _turiya_ Raver, who casts Covenant adrift in his memories. But before Joan can summon a killing blast, Covenant draws on her wild magic to heal his mind. When she is distracted by the Ranyhyn, he uses the _krill_ to end her life.\n\nA tsunami caused by the Worm follows. It nearly claims Covenant, Clyme, and Branl. And when it passes\u2014when a new day begins\u2014the sun no longer rises. The world has fallen into perpetual twilight: the onset of the last dark.\n\n## 1.\n\nBetimes Some Wonder\n\nLinden Avery's fate may indeed have been written in water. It was certainly writ in tears. They blurred everything; redefined the foundations of her life.\n\nStanding in Muirwin Delenoth, resting place of abhorrence, with Jeremiah clasped in her arms, she felt emotions as extreme as the dismay which had followed Thomas Covenant's resurrection and the rousing of the Worm of the World's End; as paralyzing and uncontainable as the knowledge that she had doomed all of her loves. But there, in Andelain, the scale of her distress had seemed too great to be called despair. Here, in the company of bones and old death, her glad shock at Jeremiah's restoration was too great and complex to be joy.\n\nStave of the _Haruchai_ stood waiting with his arms folded, impassive as a man who had done nothing, and had never lost a son. Three Ranyhyn waited near him, watching Linden and Jeremiah with glory in their eyes. In the distant west, the sun drifted down shrouded in the hues of ash and dust, casting shadows like innominate auguries from the stone blades and plates which rimmed the hollow. Heaved aside by the deflagration of Jeremiah's construct, the skeletons of _quellvisks_ sprawled against the far slope of Muirwin Delenoth as if they sought to disavow their role in his redemption\u2014or as if they had drawn back in reverence.\n\nSuch things were the whole world, and the whole world waited. But Linden took no notice. She was unaware that she had dropped her Staff, or that Covenant's ring still hung on its chain around her neck, holding in its small circle the forged fate of all things. She regarded only Jeremiah, felt only him; knew only that he responded to her embrace. A miracle so vast\u2014\n\n_I did it, Mom_. For the first time in his life, he had spoken to her. _I made a door for my mind, and it_ opened.\n\nJoy was too small a word for her emotions. Happiness and gratitude and relief and even astonishment were trivial by comparison. A staggering confluence of valor and trust had restored her son. At that moment, she believed that if the Worm came for her now, or She Who Must Not Be Named, or even Lord Foul the Despiser, her only regret would be that she did not get to know who her son had become during his absence.\n\nSomehow he had weathered his excruciating dissociation. In graves he had endured what the Despiser and Roger Covenant and the _croyel_ had done to him.\n\nShe was murmuring his name without realizing it, trying to absorb the knowledge of him; trying to imprint his hug and his tangible legacy of Earthpower and his unmistakable awareness onto every neuron of her being. He was her adopted son. Physically she had known every inch of him for most of his life. But she had never met the underlying _him_ until this moment: until he had arisen from his absence and looked at her and spoken.\n\nThe way in which she repeated his name was weeping; but that, too, she did not realize. She was no more aware of her tears than she was of Stave and the Ranyhyn and passing time and the ancient ruin of bones. Holding Jeremiah in her arms\u2014and being held by him\u2014was enough.\n\nShe had no better name for what she felt than exaltation.\n\nYet the exaltation was Jeremiah's, not hers. He had become transcendent, numinous: an icon of transfiguration. He seemed to glow with warmth and health in her arms as if he had become the Staff of Law: not _her_ Staff, runed and ebony, transformed to blackness by her sins and failures, but rather the Staff of Law as it should have been, pure and beneficent, the Staff that Berek Halfhand had first created to serve the beauty of the Land.\n\nThe gift that Anele had given Jeremiah elevated him in ways that Linden could not define. He had not simply become responsive and aware. He appeared to dismiss the past ten years of his life as if they had no power over him.\n\nSuch things could not be dismissed.\n\n\"Chosen,\" Stave said as if he sought to call her back from an abyss. \"Linden Avery.\" An uncharacteristic timbre of pleading or regret ached in his voice. \"Will you not harken to me?\"\n\nShe was not ready to hear him. She did not want to step back from Jeremiah. He vindicated everything that she had done and endured in his name. If she withdrew from exaltation, she would be forced to think\u2014\n\nAnd every thought led to fear and contradiction; to dilemmas for which she was unprepared. No one could endure what her son had suffered without emotional damage; without scars and scarification. Yet she could not discern damage. In her embrace, he felt more than physically well. He seemed entirely _whole_ , mentally and spiritually intact.\n\nThat Linden could not believe. She knew better.\n\n\"Mom.\" Like hers, Jeremiah's voice wept gladly. \"Mom, stop crying. You're getting me all wet.\"\n\nFor his sake, she tried.\n\nLong ago under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir, she had forgotten the sensations of being a healer. Although she had cared for her companions in various ways, she had responded to their injuries as if her own actions were those of a stranger. But she had not forgotten what she had learned during her years in Berenford Memorial, tending the wounded souls of the abused and broken.\n\nTraining and experience had taught her that an escape from unreactive passivity was a vital step, crucial to everything that it enabled\u2014but it was only the _first_ step. When a crippled spirit found the courage to emerge from its defenses, it then had to face the horrors which had originally driven it into hiding. Otherwise deeper forms of healing could not occur.\n\nShe realized now that she was expecting a rush of agony from Jeremiah: the remembered anguish of every cruelty which the Despiser and Roger and the _croyel_ had inflicted. That prospect appalled her.\n\nBut when she considered her son clinically, she recognized that the outbreak which she dreaded was unlikely. Immediate firestorms of memory were rare. More commonly, a new form of dissociation intervened to protect the harmed mind while its new awareness was still fragile. Full recall came later\u2014if it came at all. Jeremiah felt whole to her because his worst recollections had not arisen from their graves.\n\nFor all she knew, they might remain buried indefinitely.\n\nWhy, then, was she afraid? Why did she contemplate anything except her son's restoration? Why could she not be content with miracles, as any other mother might have been?\n\nShe could not because Lord Foul's prophecies might still prove true, if the Despiser contrived to recapture Jeremiah\u2014\n\n\u2014or if events triggered more memories than he could withstand.\n\nShe had failed to resurrect Covenant without his leprosy. Other restorations might go awry. With or without Lord Foul's connivance, predatory pain lurked inside Jeremiah: she could not believe otherwise. Suffering as calamitous as his possession by the _croyel_ might overtake him without presage.\n\nFor that reason, she needed to remain alert in spite of her gladness. But she did not know where to begin trying to identify the truths buried beneath her son's presence.\n\n\"Chosen,\" Stave repeated more sharply. \"Linden Avery. I comprehend the force of your son's awakening, and of your reunion with him. Who will do so, if I do not? I, who have lost a son, and may only yearn bootlessly for his return to life? Nevertheless we cannot remain here.\n\n\"It appears that the Falls have ceased. Yet should the Unbeliever fail in his quest, they will surely return. And the wider perils of the world will not await the culmination of your release from sorrow. The last crisis of the Earth gathers against us. Also the Ranyhyn are restive. I deem that they are eager to rejoin our companions, and that they discern a need for haste.\"\n\nLong before Linden was ready to release him, Jeremiah withdrew. For a moment, he gazed at her with gleaming in his eyes like the stars on the foreheads of the Ranyhyn. Then he turned toward Stave.\n\nLinden was too full of other emotions to be surprised when Jeremiah reached out and hugged the _Haruchai_.\n\nAlthough Stave did not respond, he suffered the boy's clasp until Jeremiah let him go. But when Jeremiah stepped back, the former Master lifted his eyebrow as if he were mildly perplexed.\n\n\"You are much altered,\" he remarked. \"Is your condition such that you are able to remember Galt, who kept the fangs of the _croyel_ from your neck?\"\n\nJeremiah nodded. \"I remember. He's your son. He let himself be killed so Anele could get that monster off my back. So Anele could give me all this power.\"\n\n\u2014the hope of the Land.\n\nLinden watched the boy with a kind of awe. Some part of him must have remained conscious throughout the long years of his dissociation. Other aspects must have been evoked or informed by the _croyel_ 's use of him. Otherwise he would not have been able to emerge so swiftly\u2014or to know so much.\n\n\"Then,\" Stave said flatly, \"I am content that you are indeed restored.\"\n\nAs if in confirmation, the Ranyhyn tossed their heads, and Hynyn trumpeted an imperious acknowledgment. From among them, Khelen came forward and nudged Jeremiah, apparently urging the boy to mount.\n\nJeremiah, Linden tried to say; but she had no voice. She did not know where to begin. Too many aspects of her relationship with her son had taken on new meanings.\n\nBriefly the boy stroked the young stallion's muzzle: a small gesture of affection. Then he turned back to his mother.\n\n\"Mom.\" There were tears in his voice again, if not in his eyes. His grin fell away. With his halfhand, he pointed at the bullet hole over her heart. \"I'm sorry. I never wanted you to get shot. But I'm glad, too. I needed you so bad\u2014\" For a moment, the color of his gaze darkened, hinting at black depths of pain. \"I needed you to come after me. I was worse than dead.\"\n\nHis pajamas remained torn and stained. The horses ramping across the tops were almost indecipherable. And Liand's blood still soiled the tattered bottoms, in spite of Linden's efforts to wash them. She could barely remember that the fabric had once been sky-blue. It would never come clean.\n\nBut before she could reply, Jeremiah shook his head hard; blinked until his expression cleared. Gesturing around him, he snorted, \" _Quellvisks_. They were good for something after all.\"\n\nSomething which Lord Foul had not foreseen. In a sense, the boy had reincarnated himself from the old bones of monsters.\n\nOh, my son. Linden needed to stop weeping. Really, she could not go on like this. When Stave said her name again, his tone had become more peremptory. And he was right. They could not linger here without food or water or their companions. The wonder of her son's emergence from his portal was a small detail compared to the threat of the Worm. The world's end would not pause for any instance of mere human exaltation and relief.\n\n\"Say something, Mom,\" Jeremiah prodded. His tone suggested a teenager's impatience. \"Say anything. Tell me you heard Stave. He's right, we need to go.\" His next thought made him grin again. \"And I want to see the Giants' faces when they see me. They are not going to believe it.\"\n\nLinden tried to refuse. She wanted nothing except to concentrate on her son. Her thirst for the sound of his voice was acute. There was so much that she yearned to know about him. About what he had endured\u2014and how he had endured it. It did not matter where she began, as long as she could search for the truth.\n\nI never wanted you to get shot.\n\nBut there was something else\u2014Something in Stave's tone nagged at the edges of her health-sense.\n\nShe absolutely had to stop crying.\n\nWhen she rubbed at her eyes, the emptiness of her hands reminded her that she no longer held the Staff of Law.\n\nShe felt strangely reluctant to retrieve it. It represented responsibilities which were too great for her. Nevertheless she was capable now of many things that would have surpassed her less than an hour ago. She was still the same Linden Avery who had raged and failed and despaired; yet somehow she had also been made new. And watching over Jeremiah was a task to which she could commit herself without hesitation.\n\nTo meet that challenge, she might well need every conceivable resource.\n\nUnsteadily she stooped to reclaim her Staff.\n\nAs her fingers closed on the engraved blackness of the wood, another faint pang touched her nerves: an evanescent breath of approaching _wrongness_. Frowning, she raised her head to scent the air, extend her health-sense.\n\nThe atmosphere had a brittle taste, as if it were compounded of a substance that might shatter. She knew that the season was spring; but that fact seemed to have no meaning on the Lower Land. Hideous theurgies and slaughter had made a wasteland of the entire region. Muirwin Delenoth was as desiccated as its bones: it had been shaped by death.\n\n\"Mom?\" Jeremiah asked; but still she did not speak.\n\nDrawing warmth and sensitivity from her Staff, Linden considered the slopes of the hollow, the ragged plates around the rim. Then she lifted her attention to the declining sun and the tainted hue of the sky. The pall of ash and dust overhead was wrong in its own fashion: it was unnatural, imposed by some force beyond the reach of her senses. But it was not malice; not evil or deliberate. The almost imperceptible frisson of _wrongness_ rose from some other source.\n\n\"Stave\u2014?\" She had to swallow hard to clear her throat. \"Do you feel it?\"\n\nThe former Master's silence was answer enough.\n\nSlowly she turned in a circle, pushing her percipience to its limits. She expected the disturbance to come from the vicinity of Foul's Creche; from Covenant's search for Joan. But she felt nothing there. When she faced northwest, however, she found what she sought.\n\nIt was faint, almost too subtle to be discerned. Yet it was thin with distance, not weakness. The fact that she could detect it at all across so many leagues bespoke tremendous power. As soon as she tuned her nerves to the pitch of this specific malevolence\u2014and to the direction from which it spread\u2014she knew what it was.\n\nIt was Kevin's Dirt, and it came from Mount Thunder.\n\nFor the first time, Kastenessen was extending his bale over the Lower Land.\n\nRepeatedly he had tried to prevent Jeremiah's rescue from the _croyel_. Now he was sending the fug of Kevin's Dirt to hamper Linden and the Staff of Law. When it spread far enough, his theurgy would numb her senses, and Mahrtiir's, and perhaps Jeremiah's. And it would aggravate Covenant's leprosy. If Joan did not kill him first. With forces drawn from She Who Must Not Be Named, the mad _Elohim_ strove to ensure that Linden and her companions would not survive.\n\nA shudder like a chill ran through her. Her fingers clenched the Staff until her knuckles ached. Reflexively she confirmed that she still had Covenant's ring. An old comfort, it had steadied her for years, until he had refused her.\n\n_\u2014the last crisis of the Earth._\n\n\"I understand,\" she told Stave abruptly. \"We should go. Kevin's Dirt is coming. And maybe the _skurj_.\" Or Kastenessen might decide to challenge her himself now that he had lost Esmer. \"We need to find the Giants and Mahrtiir. Then we'll have to decide what we're going to do.\"\n\nWithout Covenant\u2014\n\nShe meant to mount Hyn and ride at once. But when she looked at her son again, she faltered. He seemed eager: too eager. Did she detect an undercurrent of alarm? If so, she suspected that he chafed to flee from his memories before they could emerge from their coverts and ravage him. He needed movement.\n\nStave waited for her impassively. Almost pleading, Linden asked him, \"Do we have to ride hard? I need to talk to Jeremiah. There's so much\u2014\" Her son had become someone she did not know. \"If the Ranyhyn run, I won't be able to hear him.\"\n\nA quirk at the corner of Stave's mouth may have implied a smile. \"Chosen,\" he answered, \"the great horses have demonstrated that they are well acquainted with our straits. Mayhap they will moderate their haste for your sake, and for your son's.\"\n\n\"Then let's _go_ ,\" urged Jeremiah. \"I can't wait to see the Giants. And Infelice gave me an idea. I want to try it.\"\n\nHe startled Linden. An idea? What could he possibly have gleaned from the interference of the _Elohim_? And how? Who had he become? Was he simply trying to pack down the earth that shielded him from his immured hurts? Or had he somehow learned strengths which she could not imagine?\n\nIf his instincts prompted him to seek safety by outrunning his wounds, surely she should trust him?\n\nPushing herself into motion, Linden turned toward Hyn.\n\nAt once, Stave came to help her mount. And when she was seated astride the familiar security of Hyn's back, he did the same for Jeremiah, boosting the boy effortlessly onto Khelen. Then he sprang for Hynyn.\n\nHynyn whinnied a command to the other horses. Together the three Ranyhyn flowed into motion so smoothly that Linden felt no need to cling. Urged by Jeremiah's shout of celebration, they accelerated at the slope of the caldera, pounding upward, flinging clots and plumes of dry dirt from their hooves. But once they had crested the rim, passed between the sandstone sentinels, and started down the long slope northward, they eased their pace to a light-footed canter. Their strides raised a low drum-roll from the baked ground; yet when Linden settled herself to Hyn's rhythm, she found that she would not need to shout in order to make herself heard.\n\nAhead of her, Kevin's Dirt expanded its maleficence by slow increments. Fortunately its peril was not exacerbated by _caesures_. Their absence troubled her on Covenant's behalf\u2014they might now be aimed at him as he approached Ridjeck Thome\u2014but it also reassured her. For the moment, at least, she, Jeremiah, and Stave were relatively safe.\n\nRelying on the former Master and the Ranyhyn to warn her at need, she turned her attention entirely on her son.\n\n\"Jeremiah?\" She resisted an impulse to raise her voice over the rattle of hooves. \"Can you hear me all right?\"\n\nHe flashed a grin at her. \"Sure, Mom. I've been listening to you my whole life. I could probably hear you if you whispered half a mile away.\"\n\nThat simple answer was enough to stun her for a moment. Covenant had assured her, _None of the love you lavished on your son was wasted_. _That isn't even possible_. All those years of speaking her love to Jeremiah without any response\u2014and yet he had heard her. More amazing still, he had believed her in spite of what the Despiser and his natural mother had done to him.\n\n_Until we know more about what's happened to him, just trust yourself._\n\nA fresh rush of emotion made her awkward. \"Then you've probably already figured out most of the questions I want to ask.\"\n\n\"Maybe.\" He cocked his head to one side, considering. \"Let's see.\n\n\"That _croyel_ \"\u2014he made a spitting noise\u2014\"used me to say all kinds of things. You want to know how many of them are true.\"\n\nLinden nodded mutely. Everything about Jeremiah seemed to have the power to astound her.\n\n\"Well,\" he continued slowly, \"a lot of them were. True, I mean.\" His voice held a note of caution, as if there were details that he wanted to avoid. \"Mom, you tried hard to take care of me. I know that. It wasn't your fault you couldn't reach me. I just hurt too much. But giving me those racetrack pieces was like a miracle. I don't know how you came up with the idea, but it was perfect.\n\n\"Using those bones\"\u2014he gestured behind him\u2014\"was the second time I managed to make a\u2014I don't know what else to call it\u2014a door for my mind. That racetrack was the first. I couldn't do anything with my body except build. I wanted to. I just couldn't. But with my mind\u2014\n\n\"Most of what the _croyel_ said about that was true. When I went through my door, I was here. I mean, not _here_.\" He indicated the arid landscape. \"I mean in the Land. In this world. But I was still just a mind. I was just kind of floating around. In one time or another. One place or another. I couldn't touch anything, or talk to anybody.\n\n\"But there were people that noticed me anyway. Powers. Beings. And if they noticed me, they could talk to me. The Vizard was one, like the _croyel_ said. He wanted to use me. The Viles once, but they weren't interested. I think I met a Demimage, but he couldn't figure out what I was. A couple of Ravers. They _wanted_ me.\" Jeremiah shuddered. \"A few _Elohim_ , but mostly they tried to convince me to go away and not come back.\" With a snort of derision, he added, \"Like that was going to happen. It was the only escape I had. I couldn't give it up.\"\n\n\"And Covenant?\" Linden asked carefully. \"Did the _croyel_ tell the truth about him?\"\n\n\"As much as that monster could stand,\" Jeremiah replied without hesitation. She heard gratitude in his voice, saw affection in the brown warmth of his eyes. \"I mean about the real Covenant. Not about Roger. The real Covenant talked to me more than all the rest put together.\n\n\"He talked like he actually cared about me.\"\n\nTreading as cautiously as she could, Linden probed for more. \"What did he say?\"\n\nThe boy grinned at her again. \"He told me I could count on you. Like I didn't know that already. If I needed you, you would do anything to help me, even if it was impossible. He said you have no idea how strong you really are. He said it makes you wonderful.\"\n\nWonderful\u2014? That idea stunned Linden once more. It closed her throat; almost brought her back to tears. For long, terrible days, she had been tormented by the fear that her son secretly belonged to the Despiser; that he had acquiesced to the _croyel_ ; that he had been forever marked and marred by Lord Foul's bonfire, Lord Foul's malice. Yet Covenant had spent years of Jeremiah's childhood telling him that his mother was wonderful. And Jeremiah had believed the Unbeliever. Even in his dissociation, he had recognized something in Linden that she herself could not see\u2014\n\nWhile she tried to master her emotions, Jeremiah looked away. Frowning with concentration, he scanned the beaten terrain. \"And he talked about the _Elohim_. I didn't really understand, but I think he was trying to explain why they're important. They're like a metaphor?\" He sounded uncertain. \"A symbol? They represent the stars. Or maybe they _are_ the stars. Or maybe the stars and the _Elohim_ are like shadows of each other. The shadows of the Creator's children.\"\n\nHe shrugged, flexing easily with the beat of Khelen's strides. \"He wanted me to get it, but it didn't make much sense.\"\n\nLinden, too, did not understand. But she did not care about the _Elohim_. At the moment, she cared only about the ineffable fact that Jeremiah was speaking to her; that her son had found his voice when he had recovered his mind. And he had recovered his will as well: oh, yes, his will beyond question. His years of self-protective absence had taught him unexpected resources of determination.\n\nThey encouraged her to keep him talking.\n\nShe avoided the most crucial issue because he avoided it. Instead she inquired further about his encounters with Covenant's spirit.\n\n\"I probably shouldn't admit this,\" she offered tentatively, \"but I almost panicked when I saw Revelstone and Mount Thunder in the living room. I came close to taking you and running.\" She still believed that she should have done so. \"Then neither of us would have been shot.\"\n\n\"And we wouldn't be here to fight for the Land,\" Jeremiah put in at once.\n\nShe conceded his point. She did not want to discuss the cost of trying to carry burdens which were too heavy for human arms to lift. \"Of course,\" she continued, \"I didn't know then that your mind was coming here at night, when I thought that you were asleep. But what I'm trying to ask is, what inspired you to build those models?\" And to build them on the same day that Roger Covenant came to demand custody of his mother? \"Was that Covenant's idea? Did he tell you to do it?\"\n\nJeremiah thought for a moment. \"Not exactly. He never _told_ me to do anything. But he made sure I knew Revelstone and Mount Thunder were important. He said things could happen there that might frustrate Lord Foul.\" Suddenly vehement, he snapped, \"I _hate_ that bastard.\" Then, hunching his shoulders and knotting his fists, he calmed himself. \"So I wanted to warn you. Legos were the only language I had.\"\n\nThe only language\u2014Such things threatened Linden's composure. But Jeremiah had touched on his unspoken wounds, albeit obliquely. That demanded her full attention. Her own reactions could wait.\n\nIn the dirt ahead of her, she saw the marks of three Ranyhyn galloping toward Muirwin Delenoth: longer strides, deeper hoof-cuts in the ground, but the same track. Clearly Hyn, Hynyn, and Khelen were retracing their path away from the Swordmainnir and Manethrall Mahrtiir. They aimed to rejoin Linden's companions instead of pursuing some other purpose.\n\nInstead of taking her to Covenant.\n\nShe told herself that she was glad. She wanted to be reunited with her friends. Wanted them, in effect, to meet Jeremiah for the first time. In addition, she needed their support, their comfort, their ready courage. And she felt that she could not afford to be distracted from her son: certainly not by her yearning for the only man whom she had ever truly loved.\n\nAs though he had caught the scent of her thoughts, Jeremiah asked abruptly, \"Do you think he's dead? Covenant, I mean. When he left, he looked like he was going to die. Like he planned on dying.\"\n\nStartled, Linden countered, \"Why do you think that? What made you think he was going to die?\"\n\nThe boy studied her. \"Isn't that what _you_ think? I must have picked up the idea from you.\"\n\nLinden winced. She could easily believe that her reaction to Covenant's departure had conveyed the impression that she was bracing herself for his death.\n\nWhile her son faced her with concern darkening in his eyes, she sighed, \"No, Jeremiah. I don't think Covenant is dead. And I don't think he was planning to die. You've met him, but you haven't seen him in action. Practically everything he does is almost inconceivable, but he does it anyway. That's why the Land needs him. Why we need him.\" Her own needs were more complex. \"Maybe he really does have an inherent relationship with wild magic. Or maybe he's just _more_ than anyone else I've ever met. Either way, I don't believe that Joan can kill him. There isn't enough of her left, and that Raver can't make her into something she isn't.\"\n\nAfter a moment, Linden forced herself to be honest. \"But I do think something is dying. If it isn't already dead.\" Every word was bitter to her. It was gall on her tongue. She said it, and the next one, and the next, because she wanted to be worthy of her son. \"That must be what you saw in me when he left. He doesn't love me anymore. Or he's afraid of me. I love him, but ever since the Ardent brought us out of the Lost Deep, I've been watching what Covenant and I had together die.\"\n\nJeremiah listened with an air of impatience; but he waited for her to finish. Then he said as if he were certain, \"You're wrong, Mom. I've heard him. He still loves you. Whatever he's doing, it isn't about not loving you. That's what made me think he's planning to die. He left the way he did because he isn't sure he'll ever see you again.\"\n\nHer son meant well: Linden knew that. He might even be right. Nevertheless she doubted him. Her awareness of the many ways in which she had failed ran too deep. After all, what had she done to enable Jeremiah's escape from his prison? Sure, she had resisted Infelice as much as she could. And she had extinguished Joan's _caesures_. But in the end, her only real contribution had been trust: trust in the Ranyhyn\u2014and in Esmer's reasons for restoring Jeremiah's racecar.\n\nShe could not believe in Covenant's love because she did not know how to make peace with herself.\n\nIn self-defense, she reverted to her earlier questions. \"We were talking about your models. You explained Revelstone and Mount Thunder. What about your Tinkertoy castle?\" She had seen its original in the Lost Deep. \"Were you trying to tell me something there, too? Was that another warning?\"\n\nHad Covenant nudged Jeremiah to prepare her in some fashion? If so, the effort had been wasted. It was too cryptic. Knowing nothing of the Lost Deep, she could not have interpreted her son's faery edifice.\n\nThis time, Jeremiah shook his head. \"I was just practicing. I only visited the Lost Deep once. I mean, on my own.\" Without Roger and the _croyel_. \"But while I was there, I saw what the Viles could do. I fell in love with that castle. Then later, when I started to get the idea I needed to warn you somehow, I didn't want to make a mistake. So I tried to copy the castle.\n\n\"I hadn't done anything like that before. Everything else I built I just sort of found. Even the racetrack. I don't know how to explain it. I didn't start out with an idea. The shapes came from whatever I was using. They all just _came_. But if I wanted to warn you, I had to choose the shapes for myself.\n\n\"The castle was my first try.\" Linden saw satisfaction in his mien: satisfaction\u2014and a new surge of eagerness. \"It was easier than I thought. Until then, I didn't know I can choose anything I want. Now I do. I just need the right pieces.\"\n\nNow, Linden thought. While he was eager. While he felt sure of himself.\n\nIt was probably too soon. In her former life, she would have waited longer; perhaps much longer. But her son had so little time. The Earth had so little.\n\nHer heart seemed to crowd her throat as she asked, \"What was it like, having the _croyel_ on your back? What did it do to you? What did Lord Foul do?\"\n\nAt once, Jeremiah's manner changed as if he had slammed a door. He jerked his face away. \"You know what it was like. I don't want to talk about it. I want to forget it ever happened.\"\n\nThen he nudged Khelen away from Hyn. To Stave, he called, \"Can we go faster? I want to reach the Giants.\"\n\n\"Chosen?\" Stave inquired. His tone implied no opinion.\n\nCursing to herself, Linden muttered, \"All right. They're probably worried about us.\"\n\nThe Swordmainnir had been left behind because they were too weary after their long struggles to run with the Ranyhyn. And Mahrtiir had stayed with them so that Narunal could guide them across the wide wilderland of the Spoiled Plains to rejoin the other horses.\n\nStave nodded. Briefly he stroked the side of Hynyn's neck.\n\nWith a whicker of command to Khelen and Hyn, the roan stallion gathered speed so fluidly that Linden could not discern the precise moment when he began to quicken his gait. He galloped slightly ahead of them, but they did not lose ground in spite of their smaller stature. Indeed, Hyn matched his pace with apparent ease. As she had done before, the mare cast the hard ground behind her as if she could equal Hynyn's thundering haste for hours or days.\n\nStave rode effortlessly, like a man who had become one with his mount. In Khelen's care, Jeremiah waved his arms and shouted encouragement. But Linden gripped her Staff and prayed that she had not driven her son to bury his wounds more deeply.\n\nThe quality of the light in the stained air told her that the sun was setting beyond the barrier of Landsdrop. In the distance ahead, still scores of leagues away, she felt the advance of Kevin's Dirt more strongly. After their fashion, the Ranyhyn were trying to outrace a doom for which she had no answer.\n\nLinden's relief and joy at her son's restoration would have been greater if she had not been so afraid for him.\n\n_In your pre_ s _ent state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you_. _It does not crowd at your back._\n\nIt was entirely impossible that he had not been maimed in some way by Lord Foul's malice and the _croyel_ 's cruelty.\n\n## 2.\n\nNightfall\n\nThe sun set, casting darkness across the Spoiled Plains; shrouding everything except the sensory glower of Kevin's Dirt. But Kastenessen's oblique assault on Earthpower and Law was increasingly vivid to Linden's percipience. Soon it would begin to hamper her. Even Jeremiah's inherited theurgy might be tainted. And the resources of the Staff would be diminished.\n\nIn addition, Covenant's leprosy would worsen. He might go blind, or lose the use of his hands altogether. He might find it difficult to keep his balance because his feet were numb.\n\n_I need to be numb_ , he had insisted in Andelain. _It doesn't just make me who I am. It makes me who I_ can _be._\n\nLinden did not understand that. The way in which he defined himself as a leper was like his relationship with wild magic, inherent, inexplicable\u2014and too ambiguous to be measured.\n\nCrossing terrain that made her feel numbed herself, Linden clung to the flowing reassurance of Hyn's back and prayed that some good would come of this long gallop through the threatened night.\n\nFortunately no _caesures_ appeared. Joan's attention was focused elsewhere; or _turiya_ Raver's was. Nevertheless Linden felt a growing disquiet across the region, an almost subliminal sense of disturbance that seemed separate from Kevin's Dirt. At first, she thought that she was tasting a nameless discomfiture in Hyn, a new anxiety that affected only the Ranyhyn. Yet when she pushed her percipience farther, she found a sensation of restiveness in the ground under Hyn's hooves. The foundations of the Lower Land appeared to be bracing themselves for an impact which they might not be able to withstand.\n\nAcross the leagues, Jeremiah's mood had changed. His eagerness had become impatience, frustration. He rode low over Khelen's neck, apparently urging the Ranyhyn to greater speed as if he fled from ghouls\u2014or as if he were filled to bursting with an unspoken sense of purpose.\n\nStars sprinkled the firmament overhead: the only light on the Lower Land. Surely the moon would rise soon? Even a slim crescent would do more than the lorn stars to soften the dark. But there was no moon. In its absence, the stars seemed strangely closer, at once more distinct and more vulnerable, as if they were drawing near to witness the outcome of their long yearning.\n\n_The shadows of the Creator's children_ , for good or ill: come boon or bane. They glistened like weeping in the absolute black of the heavens.\n\nWith growing urgency, Linden tried to recognize some specific feature of the terrain. But she had not attended to her surroundings during the ride to Muirwin Delenoth. She did not know where she was, and could only guess where she was going.\n\nHyn's unfaltering strides spoke eloquently of trust. Linden heard them well enough. She knew what they meant. Nevertheless her anxieties harried her through the night. Galled by them, she traversed an unreadable landscape in darkness like the onset of a nightmare from which there could be no awakening.\n\nHow much time had passed? An hour since sunset? Surely no more than two? Nonetheless the star-strewn dark seemed complete, as if it were the last night of the world.\n\nAbruptly Hynyn uttered a loud neigh like a blare of triumph in the face of oncoming evils. And a moment later, the stallion was answered. From the distance ahead came a welcoming whinny. Linden thought that she recognized Narunal's call.\n\n\"There, Chosen,\" Stave announced over the pounding of hooves. \"Our companions await us where we last found water.\"\n\nThe Ranyhyn were running between low hillocks like mounds inadequately cloaked in scraps of grass. Vaguely Linden smelled water. But her attention was fixed elsewhere, straining to discern the presence of the Swordmainnir and the Manethrall.\n\n\"At _last_!\" Jeremiah shouted. Then he began to halloo as if he expected everyone who could hear him to know his voice.\n\nIn moments, the Ranyhyn slowed their strides. Panting heavily, they dropped from a gallop to a canter, then to a jolting trot. Sure of their footing, they angled down into a gully where a small stream ran southward. As it muttered along its crooked path, it caught glints from the stars, a spangling of slight reflections which seemed to confirm that the lost lights were indeed becoming more distinct.\n\nSilhouetted vague and fireless against the faint glisten of the water stood ten shapes that Linden knew instantly: eight Giants, Manethrall Mahrtiir, and Narunal.\n\nAt once, Rime Coldspray and her comrades raised a loud huzzah that startled the night, shivering in the air like a challenge to calamity. Jeremiah replied gladly, and all of the Ranyhyn whickered their approval. Only Mahrtiir voiced neither pleasure nor exultation. His reactions were more complex.\n\nAs Hynyn, Hyn, and Khelen halted, Frostheart Grueburn and Stormpast Galesend surged forward to lift Linden and Jeremiah from their mounts. On Hyn's back, Linden almost felt equal to the exuberant relief of the Swordmainnir; but when Grueburn set her on her feet, the Giants towered over her, dwarfing her with their open hearts as much as with their size. She had more in common with Mahrtiir. While the Ironhand, Onyx Stonemage, and Cirrus Kindwind greeted Stave with claps on his back and shoulders that buffeted him in spite of his strength, Linden walked on legs stiff with riding toward the Manethrall. When she reached him, she dropped her Staff so that she could hug him with both arms.\n\nTaken aback by her display of affection, he resisted momentarily. But then he returned her clasp. \"Ringthane,\" he breathed softly. \"Linden Avery. Though I trust the Ranyhyn in all things, I must acknowledge that I have been sorely afraid. Also I am much vexed that I was not permitted to stand at your side. I am diminished in my own estimation. I must remember that I am Ramen and human. I must not judge myself by the majesty of the Ranyhyn.\"\n\nAs if she were answering him, Linden murmured privately, \"Jeremiah saved himself. Now I don't know how to help him.\"\n\nLike Mahrtiir, she would never be equal to miracles. She had to learn how to serve them, as he did.\n\nBut the Manethrall appeared not to understand her. \"Help him?\" he asked in a voice as low as hers. \"His alteration is plain. He is transformed beyond all expectation or conception. What manner of aid does he require?\"\n\nJeremiah was already talking to the Giants, practically babbling in his eagerness to tell his story. But _caesures_ and Stave and Infelice and Linden and the Ranyhyn and his racecar and Anele's legacy and a construct of bone all tried to find words at the same time: they tripped over each other and fell and bounced back up like tumblers performing some implausible feat of dexterity. Laughing at his own happy incoherence, he repeated his verbal pratfalls until he occasionally achieved a complete sentence. And the Giants laughed with him, rapt and delighted.\n\nOnly Stave stood apart. His native dispassion did not waver. If he took note of Linden's exchange with Mahrtiir, he feigned otherwise.\n\nWhispering so that she would not weep again, Linden told Mahrtiir, \"He doesn't want to remember what he's been through. I can't think about anything else. No one suffers like that without being damaged.\"\n\nThe Manethrall stepped back to regard her with his bandaged gaze. Still softly, he replied, \"That I comprehend, Ringthane. Who would if I do not, I who have lost eyes and use in a cause which exceeds my best strength? But I will speak once again of trust. Hear his vitality and joy. Hear him well. Far more than his wounds have been restored to him, and to you. If a lifetime of your love has not already wrought some healing, it will do so when its time is ripe.\"\n\nLinden had no response. She recognized his effort to reassure her, but she was not comforted. Jeremiah was not her only concern: other anxieties were tightening around her. His emergence required her to shift how she thought of herself.\n\nShe had no idea what had happened to Thomas Covenant. League by league, Kevin's Dirt swelled closer, expanding the ambit of Kastenessen's wrath and pain. Her awareness of a visceral alarm in the earth was growing stronger. And the Worm of the World's End was at work. Where its power was concerned, she doubted nothing that Infelice had told her; nothing that she had heard from Anele.\n\nThe company's circumstances, and the Land's, implied an imperative need for action. Now that she had rejoined her friends, she felt the pressure of events mounting. Instinctively she believed that she and her companions had to make decisions and act on them. Now, while they still could.\n\nYet she restrained herself for the sake of her son's rambling tale; and also for the sake of the Giants, so that they could gauge him for themselves. Raising both of her hands, she bowed her thanks and respect to Mahrtiir in the Ramen fashion. Then she retrieved the Staff of Law and went to the stream to quench her thirst. The Giants still carried some portion of the Ardent's largesse. Surely she could afford to eat a meal and rest before she imposed her tension on her friends?\n\nYes, she could afford that\u2014but she could not do it. When Jeremiah had given his audience a fairly complete description of what had occurred during his rescue or escape, she went in a gust of compulsion to join Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn and the rest of the Swordmainnir.\n\n\"Have you felt it?\" she asked without preamble. \"Kevin's Dirt is coming this way. Kastenessen knows where we are, and he intends to hurt us if he can. At this rate, Mahrtiir and I will start to lose our health-sense sometime around dawn. Even Jeremiah may be affected. And Kevin's Dirt is going to limit what I can do with my Staff. I won't be able to fight the _skurj_. I may not even be able to fight the Sandgorgons.\n\n\"Can you feel it?\"\n\nOne by one, the Giants turned toward her. She could not make out their expressions by starlight; but her nerves felt their enjoyment of Jeremiah subside, replaced by more somber emotions. The last of their laughter faded into the night. Standing with their Ironhand, the Swordmainnir regarded Linden gravely.\n\n\"Linden Giantfriend,\" Coldspray replied with an air of formality, \"we have felt it. But it will not assail us until dawn, as you have observed. For that reason among others, it is not our immediate consideration.\n\n\"You have ridden long and long without food or rest or sufficient water. And Giant that I am, I confess that my weariness clings to me, though we have bathed as well as we are able, and have conserved our endurance. Will you not partake of our remaining food? Will you not sleep for a time? The trials of the morrow will not be made less by effort in darkness, when we are scarce able to discern where we set our feet.\"\n\nLinden shook her head. Fears coerced her: she did not know how to relent.\n\n\"And there's some kind of distress in the ground,\" she countered. \"Can you feel that, too? It's like the rock under this whole part of the Lower Land is afraid. The Worm must be getting close. What else can it mean?\n\n\"I don't regret anything that we've done since we lost Liand and Anele.\" Anything except Covenant's departure\u2014and his desire to distance himself from her. \"But we're running out of time. We need to decide what we're going to do, and then we need to do it.\"\n\nThe Ironhand regarded Linden for a moment, apparently searching for some clue to the turmoil which goaded her. Then the leader of the Swordmainnir said more gently, \"You reveal a welcome alteration, Linden Giantfriend\u2014as welcome as your son's restoration in mind and power. Heretofore you have given your concern chiefly to him, heedless of the Earth's doom.\n\n\"I do not fault you in this,\" she hastened to add. \"We are Giants and adore children. Nonetheless other matters also weigh upon us. Your readiness now to challenge the foes of Land and life lifts our spirits.\"\n\nBefore Linden could find an appropriate response, Coldspray continued, \"Yet your need for food and rest remains. Though you did not choose to be so, you are the rock on which we have anchored our own purposes. Since our first encounter in Salva Gildenbourne, we have claimed a place in your company at every turn of the winds and currents. This we have done because we see more in you than you see in yourself, and also because we seek to make amends for the follies which led to Lostson Longwrath's _geas_. We will be guided by your heart.\n\n\"Still I must urge you to contain your apprehension for this one night. Much has transpired. Much has been asked of you\u2014and much given in return.\" She nodded toward Jeremiah. \"You would be more or less than mortal if you did not require time to absorb the gift of your son's restoration. And if you do not eat and rest now, you will be less able to withstand the coming storms.\n\n\"We will have need of you, Linden Giantfriend. You must grant to yourself some measure of kindness.\"\n\nThe Ironhand's consideration seemed to dissolve a barrier in Linden; to weaken or transform it. Her desire for decisions was as much an expression of incomprehension as it was of urgency. There were too many things that she did not understand. Covenant. Jeremiah. Lord Foul's plans for her son. And the _Elohim_ , who could have done so much differently.\n\nIn bafflement, she nodded to Coldspray. \"I'm sure you're right. Jeremiah must be hungry. And I could use a bath.\" The Ranyhyn had withdrawn into the night as if they had satisfied their own purposes; as if now they were content to wait until she determined hers. \"Let's all get some rest. Maybe we'll be able to see what to do more clearly in the morning.\"\n\nThe Giants replied with murmurs of approval; and Jeremiah yawned unexpectedly. \"I'm not just hungry,\" he announced. \"I'm _sleepy_. I thought I was too excited to sleep, but maybe I'm not.\"\n\nLinden nodded again. \"All right.\" Feeling suddenly drained, she turned to Stave. \"Will you guide me? I want to wash, but I'm not sure that I can find my way.\"\n\nWithout hesitation, the _Haruchai_ took her arm and steered her into the darkness away from the company. Trusting his friendship and his certainty, she accompanied him downstream.\n\nBut she wanted more than a bath. She wanted to understand. Questions about Jeremiah led her to _quellvisks_ , and to the _Elohim_. When she and Stave had gone beyond earshot of the Giants and her son, she asked him quietly, \"Why do you think they did it?\"\n\n\"Linden?\" the former Master inquired with as much gentleness as his dispassion allowed.\n\n\"Why did the _Elohim_ leave those bones where the Ranyhyn could find them? If they're so afraid of Jeremiah? They can move through time. The Theomach told me that. So did Esmer. They could have known that Jeremiah would need those bones. And they had the whole Earth to choose from. Why did they pick the Lower Land?\"\n\nWhy did they make possible a fate that they abhorred and then try to prevent it?\n\nStave shrugged. \"Mayhap they did not foresee him.\" Then he added, \"Their belief that they are equal to all things deludes them. They cannot perceive their own misapprehensions. How otherwise did they fail to foresee that you would permit ur-Lord Covenant to retain his white gold ring when you had become the Sun-Sage? Their fear of the Unbeliever's power and resurrection blinded them to other paths.\"\n\nBy slow increments, Linden began to relax. Stave's answer sounded reasonable. If nothing else, it implied that comprehension was attainable.\n\nAs far as she was concerned, the _Elohim_ had been wrong about her from the first.\n\nBefore long, the _Haruchai_ brought her to a small pool among the mounded hillocks. It was too shallow to let her immerse herself, had no virtue to assoil her sins; but it offered her enough water to scrub at the worst of her dirt and doubt. When Stave had assured her that he would stand watch somewhere out of sight, he faded soundlessly into the night, and she was alone.\n\nKneeling among the stones and sand at the pool's edge, she placed the Staff of Law beside her; lowered her face into the cold tang of the water. As long as she could hold her breath, she dragged her fingers through her hair and rubbed hard at her scalp. After that, she unbuttoned and dropped her shirt, removed her boots and socks, took off her grass-marked jeans.\n\nAlone with the stars, she did what she could to remove the stains of sweat and strain and dust and blood from her skin. With cold clean water, she tried to scour the soilure from her thoughts. Then she tossed her clothes into the pool and beat them like a woman who wanted to pound away every reminder that she was vulnerable to despair.\n\nhen she returned\u2014sodden, dripping, and chilled\u2014to her friends, she had not been made new. Her many taints had been ground too deeply into her to be simply washed away. Her runed Staff remained darkest black. If she raised fire from the wood, her flames of Earthpower and Law would be black as well, indistinguishable from the world's night. And there was an ache of apprehension in the ground that did not allow her to forget that her company and the Land and all of life were in peril. Nevertheless she had begun to feel the need for rest. And she knew that she was hungry.\n\n\"You look better,\" Jeremiah pronounced. \"I know how you like being clean.\" Then he snorted a soft laugh. \"I mean, I can guess. You sure gave me enough baths.\"\n\nLinden answered by wrapping him in a long, wet hug. She had no other way to express what she felt.\n\nIn her absence, the Giants had set out a meal for her: cheese, dried fruit, a bit of stale bread and some cured meat. Embracing Jeremiah, her nerves assured her that he had already eaten. Now she felt a tide of drowsiness rising in him. While she held him, he stifled a yawn.\n\n\"Mom. You're shivering.\"\n\nCold and over-wrought nerves had that effect, in spite of the heat clinging to the Spoiled Plains.\n\n\"You're right.\" Reluctantly she released him. \"Low blood sugar. I must be hungrier than I thought. Why don't you find a place to lie down while I eat something?\" Smiling crookedly, she added, \"If you're still awake when I'm done, you can tell me a bedtime story. I want to hear more about your visits to the Land.\" She particularly wished to hear more about Jeremiah's encounters with Covenant. \"They're bound to be more interesting than 'Bomba the Jungle Boy.'\"\n\nHe grinned, apparently remembering the books that she had read to him in another life. \"But I don't want to sleep.\" He made a sweeping gesture that included Stave and the Giants. \"This is too exciting.\"\n\n\"And it will still be exciting in the morning,\" Linden admonished him gently.\n\n\"Well\u2014\" He glanced around the floor of the gully. \"Maybe if I get comfortable somewhere.\"\n\n\"You do that.\" Inexplicably she wanted to weep again; but she swallowed the impulse. \"I really should eat.\" With a conscious effort, she turned to the meal that Frostheart Grueburn had left for her on a flat sheet of stone.\n\nNight covered Grueburn's face, and Rime Coldspray's. Linden could not see their expressions, but she felt them grinning. As Jeremiah moved away, looking for a clear stretch of sand and dirt, Cabledarm remarked quietly, \"Here Linden Giantfriend reveals yet another of her many selves. She is not merely the Sun-Sage, the Chosen, the indomitable seeker and guardian of her son. She is also the mother who provides care.\"\n\nLinden might have protested, if she could have done so with the same light-hearted kindliness that filled Cabledarm's voice. Instead she began eating; and after her first bites of hard cheese and stale bread, she was preoccupied with hunger.\n\nMahrtiir responded on her behalf. \"Are you taken aback, large ones?\" he said with a gruff attempt at humor. \"If so, I must chastise your lack of discernment. That she is a mother is plain.\"\n\nHaving spoken, however, he seemed disconcerted by the quiet laughter that greeted his gibe. Instead of laughing himself, he said more stiffly, \"Some have journeyed hard and long. Others have walked when they were weary and heart-sore. I have merely ridden and rested. I will stand watch with the Ranyhyn. And perhaps Stave will consent to join me. I have heard young Jeremiah's tale of great events. I would hear how those events are interpreted by the long memories and acute judgments of the _Haruchai_.\"\n\nStave glanced at Linden, then gave the Manethrall a barely perceptible nod. Together they walked away along the stream until they found an easy ascent out of the erosion-cut. A moment later, they were gone into the night.\n\nStill eating, Linden waited for the questions of the Giants.\n\nBut they did not question her. As if by common consent, they made themselves comfortable, some sitting against the walls of the gully, others half reclining beside the stream. Then in muted voices they began to tell old tales, stories which they all obviously knew well. None of their narratives went far: the Swordmainnir interrupted each constantly, sometimes with reminders of other tales, more often with good-natured jests. Nevertheless their interjections and ripostes had a soothing effect on Linden. That such strong warriors could be playful even now evoked an irrational sensation of safety. Indirectly they made light of their many perils and foes; and by doing so, they enabled Linden to relax further.\n\nSurely she could afford to rest while Mahrtiir, Stave, and the Ranyhyn watched over her and Jeremiah, and the Swordmainnir were content to amuse themselves with tales and gibes?\n\nWhen she had eaten everything that Grueburn had set out for her, she went to the stream for a long drink. Briefly she scanned the watercourse until her health-sense confirmed that Jeremiah was already asleep, sprawled unselfconsciously no more than a dozen steps away. Then she began to search for a place where she, too, could lie down.\n\nThe dampness and chill of her clothes were only vaguely unpleasant. She could have warmed them with her Staff, but she disliked the prospect of raising black fire here. It felt like a bad omen. And it might attract hazardous attention.\n\nRecumbent on the sand with only a few rocks to discomfit her, Linden rode the current of low Giantish voices as if it were a tide that lifted her into the worlds of dreams.\n\nThey were many and confusing, fraught with cryptic auguries and possible havoc. Muirwin Delenoth. An unleashed avalanche of water in the depths of Gravin Threndor. Resurrections. She Who Must Not Be Named. But one vision had more power over her than the others. In it, she and Jeremiah sat together in the living room that she would never see again, he on the floor surrounded by boxes of Legos, she in an armchair watching him. He was building an image of Mount Thunder in elaborate detail; and she loved watching him, as she had always done. The best part of the dream, however, was that he talked while he worked, happily explaining why he had chosen that image, what it meant to him, and how he had become so familiar with it, all in words which made perfect sense to her\u2014and which were forgotten as soon as they were uttered.\n\nOnce during the night, she was awakened by the visceral realization that a distant crisis had passed. Its aftershocks began to fade as soon as she became aware of them. Reassured by the knowledge that at least one cataclysm had kept its distance and run its course, she went back to sleep easily.\n\nShe yearned to return to Jeremiah and Legos, but that dream was gone. Instead, between one instant of consciousness and another, a hand touched her shoulder, and a low voice said her name. She recognized Stave before she knew that she was no longer asleep.\n\n\"Chosen,\" he said, still quietly, \"dawn draws nigh. Though the disturbance in the Earth has subsided, the Giants surmise that it is but the first of many. Indeed, they deem that some alteration has come to the Land. Having rested, they judge that it is now time to arise.\"\n\nIn an instant, Linden was fully awake. Jeremiah was stirring, roused by Stormpast Galesend. Like Stave, Manethrall Mahrtiir had returned. He conferred in whispers with the Ironhand, perhaps sharing any impressions that he had received from the Ranyhyn, while the other Swordmainnir secured their armor, checked their weapons, tied the scant remnant of their supplies into bundles.\n\nA low breeze drifted along the gully, touching Linden's nerves with an insidious sensation of change, not in the weather, but in something more fundamental, something in the nature of the air itself. The shift was not _wrongness_ or malice, yet it seemed to imply that it could be as destructive as evil.\n\nGripping Stave's arm and the Staff of Law, she climbed to her feet. \"Has anything happened? I mean, anything specific? Are the Ranyhyn worried?\"\n\nWith his usual detachment, Stave reported, \"The great horses appear restive. They snort at the air and toss their heads without any cause that I am able to discern. Nor do the Giants perceive any source of peril. Nonetheless\u2014\" He hesitated as if he were searching for contact with other _Haruchai_ minds; with memories which were beyond his reach. Then he continued, \"I share the apprehensions of the Swordmainnir. Some dire alteration approaches. We do well to meet it standing.\"\n\nA moment later, he added, \"It is in my heart that the Unbeliever has confronted his former mate, for good or ill.\" A hint of discomfort in his voice made him sound more formal. \"He has quelled her, or she has slain him. But the import of either outcome lies beyond my ken. Do such events conduce to the Earth's salvation or to its damnation? It is said that there is hope in contradiction, yet that insight surpasses me. I am _Haruchai_ , accustomed to clear sight or none.\n\n\"At your side, Chosen, I have made a study of uncertainty. Now I have learned that it is an abyss, no less unfathomable than the Lost Deep.\"\n\n\"Don't say that,\" Linden protested. She meant, Don't remind me that Covenant may be dead. We need him. _I_ need him. \"You understand more than you give yourself credit for.\"\n\nWithout uncertainty\u2014without hope in contradiction\u2014Stave would not have become her friend. He would not have stood with her against the united rejection of the Masters.\n\nStave appeared to raise an eyebrow. \"Where is the harm? Have I not made my allegiance plain? And did we not escape both the Lost Deep and the bane, though _skest_ and the _skurj_ also assailed us? Chosen, I do not fear to name uncertainty an abyss.\"\n\nLinden could have retorted, Sure, we escaped. After that bane nearly killed us. After we lost the Harrow, and the Ardent damned himself, and Covenant's hands were almost destroyed. After the Dead sacrificed Elena before I could ask her to forgive me. Don't you understand how _deep_ those wounds are? But she kept her bitterness to herself. All of her protests came to the same thing.\n\nShe had no hope for Covenant.\n\nInstead of responding, she left Stave and went to the stream. There she dropped her Staff, knelt, and plunged her face into the water, pulling her fingers through her hair while the cold stung her nerves.\n\nCovenant had asked or ordered her not to touch him. He had spoken as if he believed that she feared his leprosy\u2014or he feared it for her.\n\nThe Giants and now Mahrtiir conveyed the impression that they were waiting for her. When she glanced at the northwestern sky, she saw Kevin's Dirt glowering closer, riding the wind of Kastenessen's agony and virulence. In another hour at most, it would spread far enough to cover the company. Yet it remained hidden from mundane sight. It did not dull the stars. Indeed, it appeared to sharpen their brilliance and loss.\n\nLinden wiped water from her face, dragged her tangled hair back behind her ears, and rose to her feet. When she had retrieved her Staff, she moved to greet Jeremiah.\n\n\"Mom.\" She could not read his face except with her health-sense, but he sounded implausibly cheerful. \"Did you get some sleep? I sure did.\" He stretched his arms, rolled his head to loosen his neck. \"Now I feel like I can conquer the world.\"\n\nAs if he were performing a parlor trick, he snapped his fingers, and a quick spark appeared in the air above his hand; a brief instant of flame. In itself, it was a small thing, almost trivial. But it implied\u2014\n\nHe was already learning new uses for Anele's gift of Earthpower. Perhaps he was _becoming_ Earthpower.\n\nHis momentary display caught the attention of the Giants; but he ignored them to concentrate on Linden. \"What are we waiting for?\" he asked in a tone of rising excitement. \"We should go.\"\n\nInfelice had given him an idea\u2014\n\nHis manner troubled Linden. Instinctively she wanted to probe him again. She hungered to learn who he was in his new life. But she did not know what might happen if she interrupted his mood; his sense of purpose; his defenses. He might need such things more than he needed her understanding or sympathy.\n\nStave still stood nearby, a silent reminder of stoicism and rectitude. But he was more than that: he was also a reminder of trust. In the Hall of Gifts, she had confessed, _Roger said that Lord Foul has owned my son for a long time_. And Stave had replied, _I know naught of these matters_. _I do not know your son_. _Nor do I know all that he has suffered_. _But it is not so among the children of the_ Haruchai. _They are born to strength, and it is their birthright to remain who they are_.\n\n_Are you certain that the same may not be said of your son?_\n\nIf Linden asked him now, Stave might remark that Jeremiah had already proven himself in Muirwin Delenoth. The former Master might suggest that it would be better for her as well as for Jeremiah if she allowed him to discover his own path.\n\nShe was not ready for that. But the World's End would not wait for her to find enough courage. And when the Worm came, Jeremiah would share the Earth's fate no matter how hard she tried to save him.\n\nShe was responsible for the Worm's awakening. Now she needed to find better answers than the ones that had guided her here.\n\nSighing, Linden followed Jeremiah toward the Giants and the Manethrall. Sunrise would lift the darkness from the Lower Land. Perhaps it would shed some light into her as well.\n\nWhen she reached Mahrtiir, she said quietly, \"Kevin's Dirt is almost here. I hope that you'll let me know when it starts to blind you. I'll counteract it as much as I can. I don't like the way the air feels. We're going to need all the discernment we can get.\"\n\nThe Manethrall nodded. \"Ringthane, I hear you. I cannot evade the approach of Kastenessen's malevolence.\" Bitterness whetted the edges of his voice. \"It will make of me less than naught, a mere hindrance to my companions, as it did in the Lost Deep. Be assured that I will not scruple to seek your aid.\"\n\nThe promise appeared to cost him an effort of will or self-abnegation; but he spoke firmly, denying his pride.\n\nLinden rested her hand on his shoulder for a moment: a gesture of empathy to which he did not respond. Then she sighed, \"All right. We have a lot to talk about. Maybe it's time that we actually talked about it.\"\n\nBut she did not want to talk. She wanted to wait for the sun.\n\n\"Like you, Linden Giantfriend,\" Rime Coldspray offered, \"we mislike the touch of this air. It speaks of forces which lie beyond our ken. Perils draw nigh which have heretofore remained distant.\n\n\"Also the beings and powers which seek the World's End remain unopposed. I am the Ironhand of the Swordmainnir. I speak for my comrades when I say that we must now choose a new heading. And we must not dally in doing so, lest forces which we cannot oppose overtake us.\"\n\nLinden felt more than saw that night was ending. She smelled an easing of the dark. The first faint suggestion of daybreak drifted toward her from the east, riding the troubled breeze. But it did not dim the stars. Like the swift moil of Kevin's Dirt, the approach of dawn seemed to etch the profuse glitter overhead more precisely against the fathomless abyss of the heavens.\n\nStill she wanted to see the sun. With her Staff, she was capable of much. At need, the ready wood would answer her call with fire and heat and even healing. But she could no longer summon illumination. Jeremiah might be able to do so, if his mastery of his new magicks continued to grow. Covenant's ring would cast silver and peril in all directions if she forced herself to use it. But the stark ebony of her own access to Earthpower and Law precluded light.\n\nWhen the sun rose, the confused tangle of who she was and who she needed to be might begin to unravel like the recursive wards which had sealed the Lost Deep.\n\nStalling, she said uncertainly, \"We've been trusting the Ranyhyn. They've brought us this far. Maybe we should keep doing that.\"\n\nBut Manethrall Mahrtiir shook his head. \"Ringthane, they are Ranyhyn.\" She heard a note of finality or fatality in his voice. \"They wield neither ancient lore nor mighty theurgies. They have borne many of our burdens. Doubtless they will bear more. But they cannot determine the Earth's doom. The deeds required of us they cannot perform.\n\n\"Also,\" he added more sadly, \"I sense no clear purpose among them. They are restive, truly, and urgent to do what they may. But they neither command nor encourage us to ride. Rather they abide their discomfort, hoping\u2014or so I deem\u2014that we will soon determine our own intents.\"\n\nNow, Linden thought. Now the sun would show itself. Surely the east had begun to lighten? Certainly the funereal bindings of night had loosened their grip on the landscape. A kind of vagueness eroded the dark. In hints, the contours of the watercourse and the stream unveiled themselves. She could make out the Giants more clearly, starker shapes in the enshrouding gloom.\n\n\"That's all right, Mom,\" Jeremiah put in, impatient for his chance to speak. \"Like I told you, Infelice gave me an idea. I want to try it.\"\n\nLinden avoided his gaze. \"Can you wait a little longer, Jeremiah, honey? Just until sunrise?\"\n\n\"But\u2014\" he began, then stopped himself. Turning to the east, he frowned at the blurred outlines of the horizon. \"It should already be here. Why isn't it here?\"\n\nKevin's Dirt was less than a league away, a cruel seethe spurred southward by rage. Night continued to fade from the Lower Land, giving way to a preternatural dusk, an imposed twilight. Nevertheless there was no clear daybreak, no sign of the sun.\n\n\"This is wrong,\" Linden breathed. \"Something is wrong.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" muttered Onyx Stonemage through her teeth. \"Something comes. I know not what it may presage, but my heart speaks to me of dread.\"\n\nThe stars shone like distant cries. Somehow Kevin's Dirt and even the swell of gloaming made them brighter, louder. A change had come to the firmament of the heavens, a change that threatened the isolate gleams. A change that caused them pain.\n\nNow? Linden thought. Now? Her sensitivity to organic truth assured her that the sun should appear _now_ ; that it should already have crested the crepuscular horizon. The absolute necessity of night and day required it, the life-giving sequence of rest and energy, relief and effort. The most fundamental implication of the Law of Time\u2014\n\nShe was wrong. There was no sun. There would be no sun.\n\nThe nature of existence had become unreliable.\n\nThe dusk softened until she could discern the faces around her indistinctly; until she could almost see the details of their grimaces and fears, their clenched expectations. But then the greying of the world seemed to stabilize as though it had found a point of equilibrium between night and day. After that, there was no increase of light.\n\nThe sun was not going to rise because it could not. Forces beyond Linden's comprehension held the Land in a gloom like the onset of the last dark.\n\nWhile Linden struggled to grasp the truth, several of the Giants gasped. Sharply Stave said, \"Attend, Chosen.\"\n\nShe flicked a glance around her, saw that all of her companions were staring upward.\n\nFor an instant or two, a few heartbeats, startlement confused her. The sky was too full of stars; of lights that glittered like wailing. She could not understand the panoply. She felt the leading edge of Kevin's Dirt, tasted the shock and horror of her companions, recognized a jolt of vehemence from Jeremiah; but she did not see what her companions saw.\n\nThen she did.\n\nOh, God\u2014\n\nStars were going out.\n\nOne. Then another. A pause while realities reeled. Two together as if they had been swallowed simultaneously.\n\nGod in Heaven! The sun was not the only casualty. And the Worm of the World's End had not yet reached the Land.\n\nThe stars were vast in number, of course they were: numberless beyond counting. By the measure of their profusion, their losses were small; almost trivial. But by the measure of brief human lives\u2014by any measure that included life and death\u2014the scale of the carnage surpassed conception.\n\nWhat kind of power could eat _stars_?\n\nWho could hope to stand against it?\n\n\"Mom!\" Jeremiah said urgently. \"You need to listen. I've been waiting long enough.\"\n\nShe could not hear him; could not drag her gaze down to meet his. She was transfixed by the incremental ruin of beauty. She had to watch it because there was no sun.\n\n\"Maybe it's a good thing I waited.\" Jeremiah's voice was taut with restraint. \"Maybe now you'll understand why my idea is important. Maybe now _I_ understand what Covenant was trying to tell me.\" But then he could not hold back a yell. \" _Mom!_ \"\n\nHis shout dragged at her attention. \"Jeremiah\u2014\" His name caught in her throat. Hoarse as a woman who had spent the night howling, she asked, \"What is it, honey? What's so important?\"\n\nDon't you see it? The stars are going out!\n\n\"You need to _listen_ ,\" he repeated. \"I know what to do!\"\n\nStave regarded the boy steadily. The former Master's gaze seemed full of the deaths of stars. Mahrtiir continued to peer blindly upward, but he appeared to be tracking the progress of Kevin's Dirt. Perhaps the stars were beyond the reach of his remaining senses.\n\nSlowly the Giants forced themselves to lower their heads. Blinking as though they had been appalled, they turned their eyes on Jeremiah. None of them spoke. Rigid as women who had become stone, they were too full of horror to express it.\n\nWithout stars, every sailor on the seas of the world would be lost. Every Giant aboard a ship, every seafarer from all the peoples of the Earth: trackless and doomed.\n\n\"All right.\" Jeremiah sounded incongruously satisfied and eager, as if the heavens held nothing fearsome. Nothing except an opportunity. \"I have an idea. I said that already. Infelice gave it to me. I mean, I got it from her. I'm sure she didn't mean what I heard.\"\n\nFortunately Kevin's Dirt had no immediate effect: it wrought its particular harm slowly. With her health-sense if not with her eyes, Linden watched her son. He no longer looked like a boy. He looked like a young man who did not need her.\n\nThe sight made her heart shiver as if she were feverish.\n\n\"You'll have to start from the beginning, Jeremiah. I don't know what you're talking about.\"\n\n\"You _do_ , Mom,\" he replied without hesitation. \"You were there. You just haven't thought about it enough.\n\n\"The stars going out.\" His assurance amazed Linden. It frightened her. \"That's the Worm. It's eating the _Elohim_.\"\n\nToo stricken to speak, everyone stared at Jeremiah. Beneath his familiar fierceness, Mahrtiir's visage betrayed an ashen dismay. The muscles of Rime Coldspray's jaws knotted and released like the hard beat of her heart. Latebirth had covered her eyes with her hands. Frostheart Grueburn gaped like a woman who had forgotten the meaning of her actions.\n\nEvery Giant\u2014\n\n\"So what are they afraid of?\" Jeremiah asked. \"I mean, the _Elohim_. I'm just a kid. Why are they scared of me? What do they think I can do that's worse than being _eaten_?\"\n\n_His purpose for us is an abomination, more so than our doom in the maw of the Worm._\n\n\"Infelice told us,\" he answered himself. \"She thinks I'm going to _trap_ them. And she knows I can do it. I can make a door they can't refuse. No matter how far they scatter, or how hard they try to hide. They can't refuse. That's part of who they are. They'll have to come if I make a door. I mean, the _right_ door. The right size and shape. The right materials. I can construct a doorway that _forces_ them. They'll have to pass through it.\n\n\"So of course she thinks I'll make a door they can't get out of.\" \u2014 _the Worm is mere extinction_. \"That's what the Vizard wanted. It's what she would do if she were me.\" _The prison which the boy will devise is eternal helplessness, fully cognizant and forever futile_. \"She thinks I'll trap the _Elohim_ forever.\"\n\nCaught in such a construct, Infelice and her people would _out-live the ending of suns and stars_.\n\nStave regarded Jeremiah without expression. Several of the Swordmainnir studied him as if he were changing in front of them, revealing unguessed aspects of horror or hope.\n\n\"But she doesn't know me, Mom.\" Jeremiah sounded almost smug. \"She doesn't know what I've been learning all these years.\n\n\"I'm not crazy like the Harrow. I know I can't build anything big or strong enough to hold the Worm. But I can make a door that sucks the _Elohim_ in. A door that takes them to a place where the Worm can't get at them. Only it won't be a prison because my door will let them leave whenever they want. I can keep them alive until they decide it's safe to come out.\n\n\"Then the stars will stop dying. And we'll have a better chance to stop the Worm.\"\n\nHe was moving too quickly for Linden. She scrambled to catch up with him; to untangle the significance of what he was saying. What had he told her about the _Elohim_? _They're like a metaphor?_ _A symbol?_ _They represent the stars_. _Or maybe they_ are _the stars_. _Or maybe the stars and the_ Elohim _are like shadows of each other_.\n\nThe idea made a weird kind of sense. Saving the _Elohim_ might actually stop\u2014or at least delay\u2014the destruction of the stars.\n\nStill Linden faltered. _His purpose for us is an abomination, more so than our doom in the maw of the Worm. But it is not the worst evil._\n\nInfelice believed that Lord Foul would eventually use Jeremiah to trap the Creator. Would that outcome be more or less likely if Linden's son contrived to preserve some of the _Elohim_?\n\nSuch questions were beyond her. She could not imagine their answers. She could hardly believe that they had answers.\n\nShe required an act of will to avoid looking up at the slow ravage of the heavens.\n\n\"I am exceeded,\" muttered Mahrtiir under his breath. \"Here even a youth of newborn mind surpasses a Manethrall of the Ramen. Serving only the Ranyhyn, my people are too small to comprehend or equal such powers.\"\n\nWhen no one else found a response, Linden asked tentatively, \"But Jeremiah, honey, what will that accomplish? We can't stop the Worm. We just can't. It's too much for us.\"\n\n\"But I can _slow it down_!\" Jeremiah crowed. \"If I can build my door before it eats too many _Elohim_ , I can buy us time!\" With exaggerated patience, he explained, \"The _Elohim_ are its natural food. If it doesn't get enough to eat, it'll be weaker. It'll move more slowly.\n\n\"Then who knows?\" He shrugged as though he knew nothing of uncertainty. \"Maybe we'll think of something. Or Covenant will. He's like that.\"\n\nIf Covenant were still alive. If he had survived his encounter with Joan and _turiya_ Raver. And if the Worm did not swallow Jeremiah's door whole. _By the measure of mountains, it is a small thing, no more than a range of hills_. It would dwarf anything that Jeremiah could build.\n\nAnd still the Worm would get all of the nourishment that it needed from the EarthBlood under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. Anele had said as much. He had gleaned his knowledge from a stretch of veined malachite at the foot of the Hazard: stone lined with stains like Linden's jeans.\n\nThe prospect of acting on Jeremiah's desires scared her. She drew inferences from it that appalled her. If he did what he wanted to do, she would have to\u2014\n\nThat thought she could not complete. It led her toward places which were too extreme to be contemplated.\n\nThe construct which he envisioned would be vulnerable. It would need protection. She would have to\u2014\n\nAgainst the _Worm_? She had never had that kind of strength. No one with her did. Perhaps even Covenant did not.\n\nShe would have to\u2014\n\nHow could she make such choices? How could any mother put her son at risk and not stand ready to defend him?\n\nAnd yet\u2014\n\nHe was not the sum of her responsibilities. She had brought about the deaths of _Elohim_ and stars. Liand, Anele, and Galt. Even Esmer. All of Lord Foul's victims. She had awakened the Worm: she bore the burden of a world's ruin.\n\nHolding up a hand to ward off Jeremiah's eagerness, she said, \"I'm sorry, honey.\" She could not meet his hot gaze. \"I need to think about this. It puts a lot of pressure on you, and we can't be sure what the results will be.\" What materials would his construct require? And where in this blighted landscape could such things be found? \"I want to talk to Rime Coldspray.\" She already knew what Stave and Mahrtiir would say. \"Then I'll decide.\"\n\n\"Mom!\" he protested. But almost at once he bit down on his frustration. Sounding truculent, he muttered, \"Talk as much as you want. It won't change anything. I'm sure I'm right.\"\n\nLinden glanced at Stave, asking him with her eyes to watch over her son. Then she raised her head to the Ironhand. \"Do you mind if we talk alone?\"\n\nColdspray acquiesced with a shrug. Her jaws continued to bunch arrhythmically, chewing prayers or curses, as she walked away along the stream.\n\nConsumed by her own prayers, Linden followed.\n\nThey did not go far. Linden halted when Coldspray did, still within sight of their companions. Arms folded across her cataphract, the Ironhand stood rigid, waiting for Linden to speak.\n\nLinden understood her attitude: she read it in the lines of Coldspray's visage, the set of her shoulders. The Ironhand was not reluctant to talk to Linden. Instead she was shaken to the core by the sight of stars dying; by the sheer scale of what was being lost.\n\n\"Here's my problem,\" Linden began. Reluctance and doubt made her brusque. \"I don't know what to think of Jeremiah. He's my _son_. Seeing him like this is like seeing a new dawn. But I don't know what's happening to him\u2014or in him. After what he's been through, I don't understand how he can be so eager. It doesn't seem natural.\n\n\"Mahrtiir thinks that I should trust him.\" _Far more than his wounds have been restored to him, and to you_. \"That's hard for me. Where I come from, people who have been outrageously damaged don't suddenly become whole. I know that I haven't said much about my former life.\" She had been shot through the heart. Where she had been born\u2014where she belonged\u2014she had no life left. \"But back then, I was a doctor. A healer.\" Such assertions felt false to her now. She claimed them only so that Coldspray would understand her. \"I specialized in trying to help people with broken minds. And I never saw any of them recover completely without facing what happened to them. Not once.\n\n\"I'm afraid for him, Coldspray. I'm afraid of what might happen to him if he can do what he has in mind. I'm afraid of what might happen if he can't.\"\n\nEither outcome might enable Lord Foul to claim him.\n\nBrusque herself, Coldspray asked, \"Is your health-sense now dulled?\"\n\nLinden shook her head. \"Kevin's Dirt works slowly. It hasn't had time to affect me yet.\"\n\n\"Then I cannot counsel you as you wish to be counseled. Your son is closed to my discernment, as you are. Your perceptions exceed any that I am able to proffer.\"\n\nMore softly, the Ironhand admitted, \"Yet I am able to conceive of no course more worthy of our hearts and lives than his. What greater deed can we attempt, few as we are, and friendless in this gloom? For that reason alone, I would follow him wheresoever his eagerness leads. But there is more.\n\n\"Linden Giantfriend, my spirit is wracked by the deaths of stars. In their name, my counsel is young Jeremiah's. We must do what lies within our strength to preserve the _Elohim_.\"\n\nBefore Linden could respond, Coldspray continued, \"Nevertheless your son's purpose is perilous.\" Her tone tightened. \"Indeed, its hazards are extreme. Should he succeed in his intent, he will draw every surviving _Elohim_ to him. Doing so, he will also draw the Worm. They are its food. It will seek them out. Therefore his portal, his door, will require defense. It will require a defense greater than eight Swordmainnir, or eight score, or eight hundred can provide.\n\n\"For this reason, the choice must be yours. You alone among us wield true power.\" Sternly she concluded, \"Knowing the plight of the heavens, you will not turn aside.\"\n\nPerilous, Linden thought. Oh, Jeremiah! The same concern had occurred to her, although she had not gauged its implications so concretely. She dreaded what it might require of her.\n\nWithout realizing that she had lifted her eyes, she found herself staring skyward, transfixed by the calamity overhead. A gloom like bereavement covered the Lower Land. For all she knew, it covered the whole world. It would never be relieved.\n\nThen she realized that Rime Coldspray was right. She would not turn aside. She could not.\n\nNevertheless the Giants clearly did not grasp all that Jeremiah's desires entailed. They were dangerous, yes; but there was more. They meant that Linden would have to leave him. Abandon him to his peril. So that she could find a way to ward his construct when it was complete. In spite of her Staff and Covenant's ring, she was too weak. She would have to go looking for greater power.\n\nIf such power existed anywhere, and could be found.\n\nIf Covenant did not return\u2014\n\nShe saw no consolation in the gradual reaving of the stars. The heavens were an abyss of uncertainty. Stave did not fear such things. She did. She would have met a kinder fate in the maw of She Who Must Not Be Named.\n\nFinally she forced herself to meet Rime Coldspray's gaze.\n\nBecause she could not bear to say what she was thinking, she murmured, \"I would feel better about it if you were laughing. It's going to be hard.\" Earlier she had felt that the foundations of her life were shifting. Now they were being shattered. \"We don't just have to find whatever it is that Jeremiah needs to make his door. And we don't just have to protect him. Somehow we have to live through it.\"\n\nIn response, Coldspray managed a wan chuckle. \"Then I must concede that I have failed you. If joy is in the ears that hear, I have grown deaf. My hearing is whelmed by the clamor of an unrisen sun, and by the shrieking of slain stars.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about it,\" Linden answered as if she, too, were dying. \"That makes two of us. I'm so deaf, I keep forgetting to be glad that my son is alive and eager.\n\n\"Come on.\" She gestured toward the waiting company. \"Let's go find out what Jeremiah needs to save the _Elohim_.\"\n\nThe Ironhand nodded. \"Well said, Linden Giantfriend.\" Now she made no effort to force a laugh. \"Let us confront the challenge of these times together. While we do what we can, there is no fault in failure.\"\n\nConfront the challenge, Linden mused as she and Coldspray began walking. What choice did they have? But if they succeeded in any fashion, they would not do so together. Eventually she would have to face her fears. And she would have to face them alone.\n\nHer yearning for Covenant was so acute that it brought tears to her eyes.\n\nJeremiah seemed to swim through the blurring of her vision as he came to meet her. \"Well, Mom?\" he asked before she could say anything. \"What did you decide?\"\n\nInstead of replying, she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him hard, mutely pleading for his forgiveness. Then she took him with her to rejoin the rest of their companions.\n\nStave regarded her return impassively, as if his resolve sufficed for both of them. But the Giants and Mahrtiir were more troubled. Grueburn, Cirrus Kindwind, and the others studied Linden with doubt in their eyes. Perhaps they worried that her desire for Covenant ruled her; that she would insist on waiting for him. But the Manethrall's disturbance was of another kind. His sense of his own uselessness galled him like an unhealed wound. In the risk that Jeremiah wanted to take, Mahrtiir would be able to contribute nothing except his service to the Ranyhyn. He would have been better content if the loss of his eyes had killed him.\n\nLinden paused as though she wanted to be sure that all of her friends were paying attention. But in truth she was searching herself for courage, and trying to blink away her tears. She had always been vulnerable to the kind of paralysis that came from fear. From fear and despair.\n\n\"All right,\" she finally managed to say. \"I'm willing to do this your way, Jeremiah. What do you need to make your door?\"\n\nShe suspected that it could not be formed of bone. Bones implied mortality, and the _Elohim_ did not die. They could only be devoured. Or sacrificed.\n\nJeremiah's instant enthusiasm seemed to fill the gully from wall to wall. Indeed, it seemed to urge the stars closer so that they could hear him. Nevertheless his eagerness made him appear strangely fragile to his mother. What would happen to him if his intentions failed? Or if the Worm simply ate his door after he had gathered all of the _Elohim_ in one place? How would he bear it?\n\n\"Stone,\" he replied at once. \"A lot of it. In big chunks. I mean, really big. I won't be able to handle some of them, even with Earthpower.\" He flashed a glance around the Swordmainnir. \"I'm going to need all the help you can give me.\"\n\n\"Forsooth,\" Rime Coldspray responded in a noncommittal rumble. \"If aid you require, aid you shall have. But of stone the Earth is a vast storehouse. Even this parched wasteland is rich in forms and substances and textures and indeed purities of stone. Surely, young Jeremiah, the portal which you propose cannot be composed of random fragments. Even the theurgies of stonework practiced by Giants demand rock of particular natures and qualities. We must ask you to name the stone which you deem needful.\"\n\nAgain Jeremiah did not hesitate. Where his constructs were concerned, he seemed incapable of doubt. \"It's green. More like a deposit than actual rock. I don't know what it's called, but I saw some when you took me across the Hazard. Green like veins.\"\n\n\"Malachite,\" Onyx Stonemage pronounced; and Linden's stomach tightened as if the word were a prophecy.\n\nJeremiah nodded. \"That's it. But there it was just veins. I need plenty of it. It doesn't have to be pure. As long as there's malachite in the stone, I can use it.\" After a flicker of thought, he added, \"But if it isn't pure, I'll need more of it. I have to get the right amount. The less pure it is, the bigger the door has to be.\"\n\n\"Sadly,\" Cabledarm put in before Linden or the Ironhand could speak, \"we have seen no malachite since our escape from the Lost Deep. We are Giants, certain of stone. Our course in these last days has encountered no malachite.\"\n\nNow Jeremiah faltered. \"But you must\u2014\" he began, then stopped. After a moment, he admitted, \"I didn't see anything like it myself.\" His enthusiasm was crumbling. \"The _croyel_ controlled me, but it didn't control what I saw.\"\n\nCaught in his emotions, Linden tried to help him. \"Stave? The Masters scouted the whole Land. Did they find anything that resembled malachite around here?\"\n\nThe _Haruchai_ shook his head. \"We are not Giants. Seeking signs of peril, we observe in a different fashion.\"\n\nJeremiah's consternation dominated the dusk. It demanded answers.\n\nLinden faced him with disappointment in her eyes. \"Jeremiah, honey. I'm sorry. I don't know what else we\u2014\"\n\nHe cut her off. Ferocity flared in him as if he had suddenly become someone else: a creature of savagery and suspicion. His hands curled into claws. \"That's what you wanted to talk to Coldspray about,\" he snarled. \"You wanted to be sure I couldn't get what I need before you said yes.\"\n\nHis transformation shocked Linden. Suffering had done this to him, _this_. But she was not prepared for it. While she reeled inwardly, she could not respond.\n\nAround her, the Giants recoiled, as startled as she was, and full of disapproval. But Manethrall Mahrtiir's reaction was immediate anger. \"It is _not_ , boy,\" he snapped. \"There is no particle of her which does not desire your well-being\u2014aye, and the continuance of the Land. You speak now with the voice of the _croyel_ , and will _be silent_.\"\n\nSurprise stopped Jeremiah. For an instant, his vehemence faltered.\n\nAt once, Mahrtiir continued, \"Behold!\" With one arm, he flung a vehement gesture down the length of the watercourse.\n\nAs if by a flourish of magic, he dispelled Jeremiah's indignation. Instantaneously thrilled, Jeremiah wheeled to gaze where the Manethrall pointed.\n\nThe Ranyhyn were coming, four majestic horses bright with purpose. Prancing like pride made flesh, Hynyn led Hyn, Khelen, and Narunal along the stream toward the company.\n\n\"Their restiveness is answered,\" said the Manethrall. His tone was grim, but softer and more respectful, moderated by devotion. \"Their uncertainty was ours. We have now determined our need. Thus their path is made plain.\n\n\"Mount,\" he urged Linden and Stave. Jeremiah was already running toward Khelen, unable to contain his eagerness. \"Ride and hasten. The Ranyhyn have announced their will. Did they not discover bone when bone was needed? They will do as much for malachite. But we must not delay, lest the last _Elohim_ be consumed ere we are able to attempt their preservation.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" Rime Coldspray assented. She and her comrades made a visible effort to set aside their discomfiture. \"Make ready, Swordmainnir,\" she instructed. \"We cannot estimate the leagues which lie ahead of us, but we must traverse them swiftly.\"\n\n\"Yet again,\" grumbled Frostheart Grueburn. \"Must we run interminably?\" Nevertheless she did not dally as she tightened her armor and checked her sword.\n\n\"These great beasts,\" the Ironhand replied sternly, \"have given aid when we had no other. If they crave haste, they will learn that Giants comprehend its import.\"\n\nJeremiah had swarmed onto Khelen's back. Now he waved his arms like demands at the company. Hyn approached Linden, nudged her shoulder. For a moment, however, Linden did not react. Her heart was burning down to ash in her chest, and she did not know how to move.\n\nShe was sure now that Jeremiah's eagerness was his way of fleeing.\n\nWithout waiting for her consent, Stave boosted Linden astride the dappled mare. At the same time, Mahrtiir appeared to flow into his seat on Narunal. Mere heartbeats later, Stave mounted Hynyn; and the Giants announced their readiness.\n\nWith Khelen and Jeremiah in the lead, the company crossed out of the gully toward the northeast; toward the marge-land between the Shattered Hills and Sarangrave Flat.\n\nFollowing her son, and surrounded by Giants, Linden wept again. She had been given her first glimpse of Jeremiah's immured pain. She knew now that he needed her\u2014and that she was going to abandon him anyway.\n\nThat choice had been made for her. Acting on it would be worse.\n\n## 3.\n\nNot Dead to Life and Use\n\nBarely able to hold himself upright, Thomas Covenant stood on the cooled flow of Hotash Slay at the headland or boundary of the promontory where Foul's Creche had once ruled the southeast. Beyond him and against the cliffs on either side, wild seas thrashed in the aftermath of the tsunami. He heard their turmoil, a thunderous seethe and crash like the frantic labor of the ocean's heart. But through the surly dusk of a dawnless day, he could hardly see the eruption and spray and retreat of the lashed waves. There was no sun. Distinct as murders, the stars were going out.\n\nThis was a consequence of the Worm's rousing, as it was of his resurrection. It heralded the world's ruin. Now every death pierced him. Joan's end felt like a knife in his own chest. Killing her, he had wounded himself\u2014\n\nHe needed Linden. He did not know how to bear what he had become without her.\n\nBut he could not reach her. She was too far away\u2014and he was too badly injured. A shard of stone at the edge of the Shattered Hills had restored the old gash on his forehead: an accusation confirmed during his confrontation with Joan. Blood still oozed into the drying crust around his eyes and down his cheeks. Falling on rocks and coral had gashed his ribs badly. Some of them were cracked or broken. Splinters of pain gouged every breath. His jeans and T-shirt had been shredded. A lattice-work of torn flesh and more blood marked his arms and chest and legs.\n\nThe _krill_ 's heat must have burned his hands; his foreshortened fingers. But that damage, at least, he did not feel. Leprosy disguised his lesser hurts.\n\nBy comparison, the Humbled were almost whole. They, too, had been struck by scraps of flung rock. A cut marred the side of Branl's neck. Clyme's arms and tunic showed rents, contusions, small wounds. But they had not shared Covenant's floundering on the seabed, or felt Joan's blow. And they were _Haruchai_. They would be able to go on.\n\nNow they appeared to be watching for some sign that the doomed sun would rise, or that the incremental extinction of the stars would cease. But perhaps they were waiting for the Ranyhyn. If they permitted themselves anything as human as prayer, they may have been praying that Mhornym and Naybahn had survived the tsunami.\n\nWithout mounts, there was nothing further that Covenant or the maimed Masters could do to defend the Land. The Shattered Hills were an indurated barricade thronging with _skest_ , masterless and unpredictable. And the distance between him and Linden was impossible; scores of leagues\u2014\n\nHis need for her was just one more wound that could not be healed.\n\nThe gloom lightened until it resembled mid-evening or the last paling before sunrise. But it grew no brighter. All of the illumination seemed to descend from the precise and imperiled stars. It was their lament.\n\nThe Worm was coming\u2014and Covenant had no idea what to do. The light of the _krill_ 's gem had gone out. There was no wild magic left in him. Simply staying on his feet required every shred of his remaining strength. He bore Joan's ring in the name of an unattainable dream.\n\nOh, he needed Linden. He needed to make things right with her before the end.\n\nSuch yearnings were as doomed as the stars. The _Elohim_ had no hope of escaping the Worm's vast hunger.\n\nTime may have passed, but he did not notice it. He did not notice that he was still bleeding. The stab of abused ribs when he breathed insisted that he was alive; but he ignored it. He did not think about anything except Joan and stars and Linden.\n\nLong ago, he had promised that he would do no more killing. Now he was forsworn, as he had been in so many other ways.\n\nEventually Branl spoke. \"Ur-Lord, we cannot remain as we are.\" Faithful as a grave, he carried Loric's _krill_ clad in the remnants of Anele's apparel. \"We will forfeit our lives to no purpose. If the _skest_ do not assail us, privation and your wounds will bring death. We must delay no longer.\n\n\"If the Worm's advance may be measured by the fate of the stars, some few days will pass ere all time and life are extinguished. While they endure, a reunion with your companions\u2014and with the Staff of Law\u2014may yet be achieved. For that reason, we must abandon Naybahn and Mhornym. We must concede that they have perished. In their place, we must summon other Ranyhyn.\"\n\nAfter a pause\u2014a moment of hesitation?\u2014he added, \"And you must consent to ride. We cannot hope for your healing, except by the succor of the Staff.\"\n\nCovenant meant to say, No. He meant to say, Never. He could not break more promises. But those words eluded him. Instead his knees folded, and he sank to the stone. Some other part of him croaked, \"Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into.\"\n\nHe did not realize that he had spoken aloud until he tried to laugh. His chest hurt too much for laughter.\n\n\"Unbeliever?\" Undercurrents of anger fretted Clyme's tone. He and Branl had followed Covenant into a _caesure_. They had saved him when he was lost. \"Do you accuse us? These straits are not of our making.\"\n\nFor a while, Covenant could not imagine what Clyme was talking about. Then he managed to say, \"Oh, you.\" He dismissed the notion. \"I didn't mean you.\" Perhaps he should have laid the blame at the feet of the Creator; but he did not. \"I meant Foamfollower. This is all his fault.\n\n\"If he hadn't insisted on keeping me alive. Making impossible things possible. Laughing in the Despiser's face. He was always the Pure One, even if he didn't think so himself. None of us would be here without him.\"\n\nEven the Worm would not. Covenant would have died decades or millennia before Linden first met him.\n\nTime was a M\u00f6bius strip. Every implication looped back on itself. Every _if_ led to a _then_ which in turn redefined the _if_. But his human mind could not comprehend causality and sequence in such terms.\n\nThe Humbled regarded him as if he were babbling. Their faces kept secrets. _Try to believe that you are pure_. Who had said that to him? Like his heart, his mind was failing. He could not remember. Then he could. It was one of the _jheherrin_ ; one of the creatures who had aided him after he had denied their prayer for salvation.\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" Branl said finally. \"Your hurts undermine your thoughts. Saltheart Foamfollower cannot be held to account for Corruption's deeds.\"\n\nBaffled by the simplification of such reasoning, Covenant tried to shake his head. Instead the twilight seemed to waver as if it were dissolving; as if reality itself were in flux. \"That's not the point.\" The point was that the _Haruchai_ had no sense of humor. \"The point is, I'm not going to ride the Ranyhyn.\" Foamfollower would not have known how to laugh if he had not been so open and honest in his grief. \"I made a promise.\" A vow. \"Promises are important. You know that at least as well as I do.\"\n\n\"We do,\" Clyme acknowledged. \"We are the Humbled, avowed to your service. We comprehend given oaths. Yet yours contradicts ours. If you do not ride, your death becomes certain. This we will not permit while choice remains to us.\"\n\nThey had entered a _caesure_ for Covenant's sake.\n\n\"Do you not comprehend the extremity of your straits? Weakened as you are, your oath cannot hold. Soon you will lapse from consciousness. Then we will summon the Ranyhyn and bear you away. This you can do naught to prevent. Where, then, is the harm in granting your consent?\n\n\"Did you not permit Mhornym and Naybahn to retrieve you from the path of the tsunami? Did their aid not violate your word?\"\n\nYou don't understand. Covenant was too weak for this argument. He could not explain himself to the Humbled. Clyme and Branl had carried him; the Ranyhyn had not. The horses had only helped the Masters help him.\n\nIn various ways, the Ranyhyn had always aided him\u2014but they did so because he did not ride.\n\nHe needed Linden. If nothing else, he had to ask her forgiveness. Express his love. Confess his sins. How else would he ever be able to put his ex-wife behind him? Nevertheless he could not face her like this. Not at the price of another broken promise.\n\nHolding out his halfhand, he murmured, \"Give me the _krill_.\"\n\nThe Humbled looked uncertain in the preternatural twilight. Branl may have lifted an eyebrow. Clyme may have frowned. But apparently they could think of no reason to refuse. After a moment, Branl placed Loric's dagger in Covenant's grasp.\n\nTrembling as though his burdens were too heavy for him, Covenant dropped the old cloth: Anele's last legacy. He did not need it now. The _krill_ was cold. Briefly he steadied the forged metal, peered at the inert gem. Then he reached up to pull the chain that bore Joan's ring over his head.\n\n\"You know why the light went out. Joan was the only rightful white gold wielder here. The only one with a ring that belonged to her. The _krill_ 's power died when she did.\n\n\"But I still have a claim on her ring. I married her with it.\"'Til death do us part. \"And I'm something more.\" He had become so in the inferno of the Banefire, and in the apotheosis of his death by wild magic at Lord Foul's hands. \"I'm white gold.\" How else had he been able to transmute Joan's power, using it to heal his mind\u2014and to refuse _turiya_ Raver's malice? \"Mhoram said so. Maybe I'm not the rightful wielder of _this_ ring, but I can still use it.\"\n\nShaking, he pushed Joan's ring on its chain onto the little finger of his left hand. It stuck at the remaining knuckle, but he did not try to force it. He did not intend to wear it long.\n\nWith as much care as he could muster, he closed both hands around the haft of the _krill_. Then, suddenly desperate, he stabbed the blade at the stone under him.\n\nThe dagger was only sharp when it was vivified by the possibilities of wild magic. Lightless, it was dull. It could not pierce cooled lava.\n\nBut it did. As he struck, the scale of his need and the fundamental strictures of his nature brought forth a familiar blaze from the gem: familiar and absolute, as necessary as breath and blood. It shone into his eyes like the nova of a distant star. The power-whetted blade cut inward as though the stone were damp mud.\n\nWhen he took his hands away, his fingers and palms felt no heat: the numbed skin of his cheeks felt none. Nevertheless he trusted the efficacy of wild magic; believed that the _krill_ was already growing hot.\n\nBlinking through dazzles, he squinted at Clyme and Branl. At first, they were bright with phosphorescence, as spectral as the Dead. Then they seemed to reacquire their mortality. But they were not diminished. Rather they looked as precise and cryptic as icons in the dagger's brilliance. Together they confronted Covenant's display of power as if they were prepared to decide the fate of worlds.\n\nAs distinctly as he could, Covenant said, \"I forbid you to put me on the back of a Ranyhyn. Find some other answer.\"\n\nThen he sagged. He thought that he had come to the end of himself. The Humbled were right: he could not hold out against his wounds. He had lost too much blood, and was in too much pain. If Branl and Clyme did not obey him, he would have to trust the great horses of Ra to forgive him.\n\nWhen he felt certain that he was done, however, he found that he was not. A distant sensation of power seemed to call him back from the collapse craved by his ravaged body. Involuntarily he straightened his spine, sat more upright. He imagined that he heard either Clyme or Branl say, This delay will prove fatal. Then he saw them recoil like men who had been slapped. He felt their surprise.\n\nDirectly in front of him, the figure of a man stepped into the light as though he had been made manifest by wild magic and the eldritch puissance of Loric's _krill_.\n\nThe newcomer seemed to emanate imponderable age. Indeed, he appeared to be fraying at the edges as he arrived, blurring as though he took in years and released vitality or substance with every breath. Nevertheless he looked taller than the Humbled\u2014taller and more real\u2014although he was not. His apparent stature was an effect of the light and Covenant's astonishment and his own magicks. He wore the ancient robes, tattered and colorless, of a guardian who had remained at his post, rooted by duty, for an epoch. Yet his features were familiar; so familiar that Covenant wondered why he could not identify them. A man like that\u2014\n\nAfter two heartbeats, or perhaps three, he noticed that Branl and Clyme were preparing to defend him. Or they were\u2014\n\nHellfire.\n\n\u2014bowing. _Bowing?_\n\nTogether they each dropped to one knee and lowered their heads as if they were in the presence of some august figure incarnated from the dreamstuff of _Haruchai_ legends.\n\nIn Covenant, memories reopened like wounds, and he recognized Brinn.\n\nThe _ak-Haru_. Brinn of the _Haruchai_ , who had outdone the Theomach in mortal combat to become the Guardian of the One Tree.\n\nHere.\n\nIf Covenant had ever doubted that the Worm was coming, he believed it now. There could be no surer sign than Brinn's arrival. Even the absence of the sun, and the slow havoc spreading among the stars, did not announce the Earth's last days more clearly.\n\nWhile Covenant stared, open-mouthed and helpless, the _ak-Haru_ approached until he was no more than two strides from the _krill_. There he stopped, ignoring the obeisance of the Humbled. His gaze was fixed on Covenant.\n\nIn a voice rheumy with isolation and too much time, he said, \"My old friend.\" Words seemed to scrape from his mouth as if they had grown jagged with disuse. The skin of his face had been seamed and lined until it resembled a mud-flat now baked and parched, webbed with cracks. \"I perceive that your plight is dire, as it has ever been. The fact that I have come is cause for sorrow. Yet it is cause for joy that my coming proves timely. Once again, I learn that there is hope in contradiction.\"\n\nIllumined by Loric's gem, Brinn's eyes shone among their wrinkles with a warmth of affection that Covenant had not seen in any other _Haruchai_ face.\n\n\"It is well,\" Brinn continued, \"that you have reawakened the Vilesilencer's _krill_.\" Strain complicated his tone, but not his gaze. \"Lacking some beacon to guide me across the wide seas, my search for you might have been delayed. However, you have done what must be done, as you have done from the first. For that reason among many others, I swallow my sorrow and greet you gladly, ur-Lord and Unbeliever, Thomas Covenant, friend.\"\n\nStill Covenant stared. Only the pervasive force of Brinn's acquired theurgy kept him from crumpling. Never in life had Brinn of the _Haruchai_ called him _friend_.\n\nSudden woe and rue and gratitude clogged his throat. He had to choke them down before he was able to inquire hoarsely, \"What are you doing here?\"\n\nAt the Isle of the One Tree, Brinn had told him, _That is the grace which has been given to you, to bear what must be borne_. Surely now Covenant had reached the limit of what he could be expected to endure?\n\nStill Brinn did not glance at either of the Humbled. His attention belonged to Covenant alone. Speaking more sternly, as if he were setting friendship aside, he replied, \"All things exist organically. This you know, Unbeliever. As one swells, another dwindles. As the Worm of death rises, the Tree of life declines.\" A lift of his hand referred to the heavens. \"After long ages of slumber, the Worm now draws nigh unto the Land, seeking its final sustenance. In natural consequence, the One Tree expires to its roots. Thus I am freed of my Guardianship.\n\n\"Alas, my powers diminish as the Tree fails. I am made less by the deaths of stars and _Elohim_. And it was never my task to preserve the Worm's sleep, except by protecting the One Tree. I have no virtue to oppose the World's End. Nor am I permitted to do so, regardless of the leanings of my heart. That burden is yours, Unbeliever, as it is the Chosen's as well, and also her son's. Together you must save or damn the Earth, as it was foretold in the time of the Old Lords.\"\n\nThen the _ak-Haru_ 's manner softened until it resembled his gaze. \"Yet I will not disregard the leanings of my heart. When I had achieved the stewardship of the One Tree, and you were thereby grieved, I assured you that good would come of it, when there was need. That promise I fain would honor. Therefore have I journeyed hither while some small portion of my strength endures, bringing both gifts and counsel. Mayhap thereafter I will also be able to perform a service or grant a boon, if my life does not fray and fall in the attempt.\"\n\nCovenant went on staring as though he had been made witless. Part of him heard hope in every word. Part of him had already fled toward Linden, thinking, Gifts? Counsel? A chance to make things right with her? And part of him remained stunned, too astonished to comprehend anything. Brinn had come like a figure in a dream. In another moment, he would depart in the same fashion, with the same effectlessness.\n\nBut the Guardian of the One Tree did not appear to take offense at Covenant's silence. His affection seemed to accept every facet of Covenant's condition. Nodding at what he saw, the _ak-Haru_ took one step back from the _krill_. Then at last he looked at Branl and Clyme, still half kneeling, still bowing their heads in homage.\n\nNow his mien darkened. Lines of anger tightened his visage.\n\n\"First, however,\" he pronounced severely, \"I will deliver myself of a reprimand which has long festered within me, tainting my regard for those whom I must name my people.\n\n\" _Haruchai_ , Masters, Humbled, I have come to reproach you.\"\n\nAt once, Clyme and Branl arose. The manner in which they surged to their feet and folded their arms conveyed surprise and indignation. In every line, their stances offered defiance.\n\nStolid as a graven image, Branl stated, \"You are the _ak-Haru_ who was once named _Kenaustin Ardenol_ , though you are now Brinn of the _Haruchai_. We do not lightly gainsay you. If you have cause to reproach us, however, you discern some fault which we do not find in ourselves.\n\n\"The weakness of uncertainty we acknowledge. Failure we likewise acknowledge. Against our given word, we have permitted Desecration, upon occasion because we were opposed by those whom we esteem, and upon occasion because the ur-Lord Thomas Covenant commanded it. Yet we have stood as Halfhands at his side. For his sake, we have dared the Lost Deep and She Who Must Not Be Named and Esmer _mere_ -son. We have confronted the _skurj_ and Cavewights and the Unbeliever's own misbegotten scion. We have entered into a Fall, hazarding endless banishment from time and life, and have there given aid to the ur-Lord when he could not aid himself.\n\n\"You are the _ak-Haru_. Would you have done otherwise in our place? Wherefore will you reproach us?\"\n\nBrinn dismissed Branl's protest with a soft snort. \"Your valor is beyond aspersion,\" he answered as if such things were trivial. Thunderclouds of ire seemed to gather about his head, contradicting the twilight and the clear stars. \"Set aside your pride and hear me.\n\n\"Doubtless others have spoken of arrogance. I do not. Rather the fault with which I charge you is _simony_.\" He spat that word. His eyes flashed dangerously, echoing the _krill_ 's radiance. \"You have grown ungenerous of spirit, demeaning what would else have been a proud heritage. You have withheld knowledge from the folk of the Land when knowledge might have nurtured strength. And you have withheld trust from Linden Avery the Chosen, setting yourselves in opposition to her efforts and sacrifices because you were unable to share her love and passion. These are the deeds of misers. They do not become you.\n\n\"Upon a time, the _Haruchai_ were not ungiving in this fashion. Had they not been ruled by open-handedness, they would have been less grievously stung by the Vizard's scorn. Yet open their hands were, and open they remained. The bonds among them were as vital as sun and snows, and as enduring as mountains. The wounds of scorn they sought to heal by open means, in direct challenge and honest combat. Thus it was that High Lord Kevin's generosity moved them to emulation. The Vow of the Bloodguard expressed an answering generosity, a desire to repay expansive welcome with expansive service until both welcome and service overflowed.\n\n\"Yet across the millennia of your Mastery you have allowed harsh times and cruel circumstances to bar the doors of your hearts. I will not cite your reasons for doing so, lest you deem yourselves thereby excused. Rather I say to you plainly that you have diminished yourselves until I am loath to acknowledge you as my people.\"\n\nInstinctively Covenant wanted to defend Clyme and Branl. Oh, he agreed with the Guardian. How could he not? Nevertheless the Humbled had stood by him like the _Haruchai_ of old. They had saved him again and again when he could not have saved himself.\n\nBut his companions did not turn to him for justification. They did not look at him at all. As if they were proud to be castigated, they faced Brinn squarely.\n\n\" _Ak-Haru_ ,\" Clyme replied, \"this accusation is unjust.\" Tautness marred his flat tone. \"We do not comprehend it. What deed of ours\u2014or of any Master\u2014has given rise to your wrath?\"\n\nAt once, the Guardian retorted, \"Are you truly so blind that you see no fault in naming yourselves 'the Masters of the Land'?\" His voice had become a distant rattle of thunder. In spite of his diminishment, his words had the power to summon storms. \"The Land is not a thing to be possessed as though it were a garment. It was not created for your use, that you might hazard it in a vain attempt to heal your ancient humiliation.\"\n\nUnmoved, Branl countered, \"Yet you yourself have done as we do. You are our exemplar. Our distrust of Linden Avery we learned first from you, who saw Corruption's hand at work in her, and who strove to preserve the Unbeliever from her errors.\"\n\nOmens of lightning glared from Brinn's eyes. \"I concede,\" he answered, \"that I trod your path when I forsook the Unbeliever's service. What of it? Did Cail not return to speak of the Chosen's salvific efforts at the Isle of the One Tree? And if you did not heed him, did you also fail to heed the First of the Search and Pitchwife when they described the forming of a new Staff of Law, and the unmaking of the Sunbane?\n\n\"No,\" he said harshly. \"Do not protest that you have endeavored to treat the Chosen with both restraint and respect. I am not swayed. Your restraint and your respect are as miserly as your deeds. Had you permitted them to do so, the Giants would have reminded you that open hands and open spirits were once valued among the _Haruchai_. Yet for many centuries you have offered the kindred of the Unhomed naught but unwelcome.\n\n\" _Unwelcome_ , forsooth!\" The _ak-Haru_ 's indignation was a thunderclap. \"For the _Giants_ , of all the peoples of the Earth. That is my reproach. Humbled, Masters, _Haruchai_ , I marvel that you are not shamed.\"\n\nNow even Covenant's numbed nerves and blunt health-sense felt tension rising in the Humbled. Brinn's objurgation stirred millennia of suppressed passions, of ire and resentment and denied helplessness, into living flames.\n\nSpeaking softly, ominously, Clyme asked, \"Do you seek to renew our humiliation? Is that the purpose which has brought you among us, the last purpose of your life?\"\n\n\"Paugh!\" The Guardian made a dismissive gesture with both hands. \"I am done with you. You do not hear, and so you cannot be redeemed. From this moment, I speak only to the Unbeliever. He will not disregard the remnants of my life, as you have done.\"\n\nHis gesture seemed to dispel the sensation of storms seething around him. He was definitely growing weaker, but he did not act weakened. Simply by turning away from the Humbled, he thwarted their outrage; cast them into shadow. Now they stood silent, like men whose mouths had been sealed. When Brinn faced Covenant again, he was smiling with a hint of remorse\u2014and also with an air of satisfaction.\n\nOn the far side of the _krill_ , he seated himself cross-legged in front of Covenant. His eyes in their nests of seams and wrinkles glittered with refreshed affection. He sat with his elbows braced on his thighs and his chin propped on his fists; held himself leaning forward to study Covenant more closely. When Brinn was comfortably settled, however, he said nothing. Instead he gazed at Covenant as if he, the _ak-Haru_ , had been made content by the sight of his old friend's face.\n\nCovenant wanted to lie down. His forehead throbbed, and broken bones gnawed like teeth in his chest, biting deeper with every slight movement. Brinn's obscure intentions and the dammed fury of the Humbled and his own wounds exceeded him. He ached to close his eyes and slump backward and let everything go.\n\nYet he did not. His heart had not forgotten its stubborn litany of loves and needs. And the Guardian had come because he wanted to help in some fashion. Covenant could not allow himself to lapse while so much remained unresolved.\n\nWith an effort that nearly made him sob, he muttered, \"You aren't exactly being fair. You know that, don't you?\"\n\nBrinn's smile grew warmer. \"It is for this that I esteem you, Thomas Covenant\u2014this among many other qualities. Regardless of your own plight, you do not neglect the hurts of your companions.\" Then his mien assumed more somber lines. \"But now we must take counsel together. Your wounds are grave, my friend. Some healing you must have. Yet with healing will come sleep. It must, for your need is extreme. Therefore we must converse before I expend my waning strength. If you have not chosen your course, these Humbled will determine it on your behalf\u2014and they will not determine wisely.\"\n\nCovenant groaned. \"You see me. You know what I've done. What's left? What can I possibly hope to accomplish?\"\n\nHe meant, Take me to Linden. If you have that kind of power, use it. Before I'm too far gone to tell her I'm sorry.\n\nThe Guardian nodded. \"Indeed, Unbeliever, I see you. Your desires are plain to me. You yearn to be reunited with Linden Avery the Chosen for the Land's sake, and for your own. Were these Humbled less parsimonious in their dealings, they would honor the passion which binds you to your loves. But I must urge you to reconsider the Land's peril.\n\n\"You have slain your former mate, a deed costly to you, and hurtful, yet nonetheless necessary. What then remains for you to attempt? Have you forgotten _turiya_ Herem? He who reveled in your former mate's agony and abasement? He is not slain. Of that I need not assure you. You are already certain of it.\"\n\nOh, hell, Covenant thought. _Turiya_? But he did not have enough life left to curse aloud. On the fall of a shuddering breath, he asked, \"You want me to go after _him_?\"\n\nBrinn's study did not waver. Instead of answering directly, he inquired, \"He has failed Corruption's chief intent for him. What will he now essay in restitution?\"\n\nHellfire. Covenant groaned again. He was in no shape to think, much less talk. Nevertheless he did what he could. Brinn had called him _friend_.\n\n\"He'll try to possess someone else. Or something else. He isn't good for much unless he's wearing a body.\"\n\nThe _ak-Haru_ leaned closer. \"Then whose flesh will he assume? Not yours, that is certain. He is not such a fool. Nor will he attempt the Humbled. Their intransigence has not waned. He cannot rule them. Among the _skest_ , he may perchance strive to attain your death. But they are little, and by nature timorous, readily cowed. Also I deem that _turiya_ Herem is too prideful to be contented by them.\"\n\nCovenant peered past the actinic brightness of the _krill_ as if he were going blind. \"So\u2014?\" His former companion faded in and out of focus. Give me a hint. I can't keep doing this.\n\nThe Raver had a long head start.\n\nBrinn watched as though his gaze could penetrate Covenant's soul. \"I ask again. Whose flesh will he assume? Of those that fear the Worm's coming, which is comparatively near? Which is driven by hungers apt for possession?\"\n\nCovenant flinched at an intuitive leap. \"What, the _lurker_?\" He stared through a blur of argent and failing consciousness. \"You want me to go after _turiya_ before he can possess the _lurker_?\"\n\nSo far, the monster had kept its word. True to the alliance, Horrim Carabal had sent the Feroce to rescue Covenant and the Humbled from the _skest_. But still\u2014The lurker of the Sarangrave had been a tale of horror for millennia. In some sense, it was the Despiser's creation. Directly or indirectly, Lord Foul had invoked an immense and sentient atrocity from the poisons leaking out of Mount Thunder.\n\nNow Brinn wanted Covenant to defend that\u2014that thing\u2014from _turiya_ Herem?\n\nThe Guardian replied with a grin as poignant as the deaths of stars. \"Name a better purpose, my friend, and I will honor it.\"\n\nCovenant meant to say, No. That's insane. But then he thought, So what? The Worm was coming. He had killed Joan. Everything was insane. The idea of trying to track down and stop a Raver\u2014in his condition\u2014was probably no crazier than his desire to see Linden again.\n\nOver the course of his life in the Land, he had caused or allowed terrible bloodshed. The Riders of the Clave whom he had killed personally were minor casualties compared to the uncounted villagers and _Haruchai_ that he had forsaken to slaughter while he searched for the One Tree. Saltheart Foamfollower had died helping him. Inadvertently he had killed Elena, his own daughter. Then he had brought about the sacrifice of her spirit to She Who Must Not Be Named.\n\nBut he had never struck a blow against the Despiser's most fatal servants. And the lurker possessed by a Raver would be an appalling foe. More insidiously dangerous than Roger and a whole host of Cavewights. Conceivably more powerful than _skurj_ and Sandgorgons. If that monster challenged Linden, she would have to face it without Covenant or love.\n\nThinking about her made his wounds burn. His damaged ribs were acid and remorse in his chest. He wanted\u2014Oh, he _wanted_. Nevertheless he understood Brinn.\n\nHe rubbed at the crust around his eyes, touched the fresh accusation on his forehead. Eventually he managed to mutter, \"Damnation, Brinn. I'm going to need a horse.\"\n\nThe _ak-Haru_ beamed at him like Loric's gem. \"And you will not ride the Ranyhyn. For this also I esteem you, ur-Lord. Yet a steed has been offered to you. You need only speak the beast's name.\"\n\nBrinn's voice invoked memories. As if from a great distance, Covenant heard the dying croak of the Ardent's last gift.\n\n\"Ah.\" In spite of his satisfaction, Brinn's sigh conveyed a tinge of regret. \"I see the recall in your gaze. My friend, you are indeed as I have remembered you. I am now content to provide those gifts which lie within my power.\"\n\nHis vigor seemed undimmed as he rose to his feet.\n\n\"Remain only a short while,\" he urged Covenant. \"Your healing will be my second gift. Here is my first.\"\n\nWhile Covenant watched, stupefied by too many hurts, Brinn raised a hand to his mouth and gave one sharp whistle as clear as a commandment.\n\nCovenant was losing his grip on consciousness. The only _Haruchai_ who had ever called him _friend_ had asked too much of him. He was no longer sure of what he saw or heard. The Guardian's call may have echoed through the maze of the Shattered Hills. The stars appeared to draw closer. They seemed to cry out. Perhaps their wailing was underscored by a clatter of hooves, irregular and indefinite.\n\nWhen the Ranyhyn arrived with their star-blazed foreheads shining like the emblems of _Elohim_ , Covenant thought that he saw four of them.\n\nTwo must have been Mhornym and Naybahn. They looked worse than Covenant felt. Ripped flesh hung in strips from their sides, exposing the damaged gleam of bones, especially along their ribs and on their knees. Blood oozed everywhere as if they were coated in ruin. They limped on legs that should not have supported them, and their eyes were dull with mute agony.\n\nBut they were still alive. They had heard Brinn's call. Somehow they had found the resolve to answer.\n\nProudly the _ak-Haru_ announced, \"Here are heroes. They have participated bravely and well in the defense of the Earth. Such battles are not won at a single stroke. They must be fought incrementally, by one selfless act of valor following another in its necessary sequence. Now Naybahn and Mhornym have completed their task. Their part is done. Though my strength wanes, I will preserve them. Then I will release them. While the Earth endures, no further service will be asked of them.\"\n\nThen he turned to the other horses, a palomino stallion and a black. \"And here are Rallyn and Hooryl. They have come to bear the Humbled on a quest which will require much of them, and of their riders. That they do so fearfully is no fault in them. They are Ranyhyn. Fear will not hinder their service.\"\n\nBriefly Covenant looked at Clyme and Branl. The sight of them made him wince. His senses were too blunt to discern anything except rigid indignation.\n\nBut Brinn ignored the Masters. Facing Covenant again, he said as if he were bidding farewell, \"Now, Unbeliever, Illender, Prover of Life, you must speak the name. Only its name will summon the steed and obtain its compliance.\"\n\nThe stars were too close. Covenant had never seen them look so near. Yet their proximity only accentuated the voids between them, the immeasurable gulfs of their isolation. Vaguely he wondered whether the _Elohim_ felt the same loneliness. Perhaps that explained their prideful self-absorption, their insistence that they were complete in themselves, _equal to all things_. Perhaps their surquedry was nothing more than compensation for prolonged sterility and sorrow.\n\nBut then the lamentation overhead and Brinn's kindness compelled him. Swallowing the taste of blood and woe, he did as the Guardian of the dying One Tree asked or commanded.\n\n\"Mishio Massima.\"\n\nBrinn's smile was a confluence of hope and regret as he stepped past the _krill_ to touch Covenant's blamed forehead lightly with one finger.\n\nAt the same time, he urged quietly, \"Recall that the _krill_ is capable of much. With use, it has become more than it was.\"\n\nHis touch seemed to light a star in Covenant's brain. Suddenly the dusk in all direction became a swirl of lights: the same swirl which had filled the Isle's cavern long ago when Covenant had tried to claim a branch of the One Tree. If Linden had not stopped him then, he might have brought about the world's end without realizing what he did.\n\nHe needed to make things right with her. He needed to tell her that he loved her\u2014and that he had killed Joan.\n\nBrinn had spoken of a service\u2014a boon\u2014but he had not revealed what it might be.\n\nThen the stars took Covenant, and he went to sleep as if he were falling into the heavens.\n\n## 4.\n\n\"Try to Believe\"\n\nSoreness and jostling finally roused Covenant. He had no idea where he was; but for a while, he did not care. If the flexing sensations of movement had not insisted on his attention, he would have tried to go back to sleep.\n\nHis whole body ached as though he had suffered a beating. A dull throb in his forehead matched the rhythm that carried him. But when he braced himself to draw a deeper breath, he found that the piercing hurt of broken ribs was gone. Bruises like groans had replaced the effects of sharp rocks and rending coral. His weakness felt more like convalescence than blood-loss.\n\nA week, he thought to the cadence of hooves, the flow of stubborn muscles. Just let me rest for a week. Then I'll open my eyes. I promise.\n\nHe did not have a week. He doubted that he could afford hours.\n\nVaguely he deduced that he was mounted. But not bareback: not on a Ranyhyn. The saddle under him reminded him of the Harrow's fallen destrier. And he was not held upright. No, he was sprawled resting along a long neck. The saddle horn dug into his abdomen. His legs dangled free of stirrups. The jolts were the beat of a hard canter.\n\nHe remembered Mishio Massima, the Ardent's mangy, shovel-headed horse. Clyme and Branl must have boosted him onto the steed while he slept. And they must have secured his arms\u2014perhaps with the reins\u2014so that he would not fall.\n\nMishio Massima's jarring gait punished his recent wounds. Nonetheless he was grateful. At Brinn's insistence, no doubt, the Humbled had honored Covenant's promise to the Ranyhyn.\n\nFor a time, he was content to rest as he was in spite of the prod of the saddle horn. The mystery of Brinn's aid remained with him; the miracle of Brinn's friendship. Covenant was less alone in the world than he had believed himself to be. Less alone than he felt with the rigid companionship of the Humbled. The dying Guardian of the One Tree had given him a profound gift\u2014\n\nBut it was not an unalloyed blessing. True, Brinn had mended the worst of his injuries. But the Guardian had also given him a task which he feared to contemplate.\n\nRemembering _turiya_ Raver, Covenant flinched. He needed to open his eyes. Hell, he needed to sit up. He had to know where he was. And where the Humbled were taking him. And how they had resolved their contention with their _ak-Haru_ \u2014if they had resolved it at all. And what the service or boon that Brinn had mentioned might be.\n\nThe possibility that _turiya_ Herem might take possession of the lurker of the Sarangrave frightened Covenant as much as the idea that he might never see Linden again.\n\nWith an effort, he lifted his head; lowered it again. Blinking, he tried to clear his sight. Then he made an attempt to free his arms.\n\n\"A moment, ur-Lord,\" Clyme said over the steady rumble of hooves. \"We will unbind you.\"\n\nNow Covenant realized that the hoof-beats of the horses were muffled. The ground where they ran was too yielding to be stone; too soft for bare dirt.\n\nPeering sideways through the gloom, he saw a shape veer toward him: a horse and rider. When Hooryl came near enough to brush his leg, Clyme bent down to undo the reins.\n\nBriefly Covenant fought the blur that marred his vision. It seemed worse than it should have been. He could still see stars overhead, but his companion's features were a twilit smear. He had to squint in order to discern that the horses were cantering on thick turf.\n\nHell and blood. He should have been able to see better than this. Brinn had healed him, and leprosy did not progress so swiftly.\n\nUnless\u2014\n\nStung by an intuitive apprehension, he pulled his awkward arms under him; pushed himself off his mount's neck. Then he clutched at the saddle horn to keep his balance.\n\nHe could not feel the horn at all, except with the nerves of his elbows and shoulders. His hands were numb.\n\n\"What\u2014?\" he panted. He seemed to need all of his strength to keep his seat. Insensate in their boots, his feet floundered for the stirrups and did not find them. \"What's going on?\" His voice was as vague as his vision. He had slept too long. \"What's happening to me? My eyes are going.\"\n\nAround him, the aegis of the gloaming was complete. It ruled everything. It was leaking into his head; into his mind. Only the stars as they died were vivid to him.\n\nClyme draped the untied reins over Covenant's forearms. Hooryl moved away from Mishio Massima, perhaps so that Covenant could move his leg freely while he groped for the stirrup.\n\n\"Kevin's Dirt has overtaken us.\" Clyme sounded angry. No, it was more than that. He sounded like a man who had given up pretending that he was not angry. \"It came upon us at midday. Clearly Kastenessen now directs his malice over the Lower Land, doubtless seeking to harm you, and also to hinder the Staff of Law. In this, he succeeds. To our sight, it is plain that Kevin's Dirt deepens your illness.\"\n\nCovenant had guessed as much. But he had not expected the effects of Kastenessen's brume to be so swift. Came upon us at midday? How much time had he lost?\n\nHe turned his head to confirm that Branl also rode beside him. The motion and his mount's strides made his head pound and his ribs throb. But those pains were more bearable than his earlier hurts; somehow more human. He could imagine that they would fade.\n\nBranl's visage wore a frown like a knot between his brows. It looked permanent, as if it had always been there; as if it had merely been masked by a learned and unnatural impassivity.\n\nSlowly the vagueness faded from Covenant's thoughts. After a moment, he was able to ask Branl, \"Where are we?\"\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" the Humbled answered, \"the Ranyhyn are cunning. They eluded the snares of the _skest_ and escaped the maze of the Shattered Hills well before the onset of Kevin's Dirt. Now we return along the path of our approach to Kurash Qwellinir. The cliff above the Sunbirth Sea lies there.\" He gestured eastward. \"If your mount is able to sustain its pace, we will soon gain the region where we last found _aliantha_.\"\n\nCovenant sighed his relief. This was not the most direct route to the Sarangrave, but it was the shortest path to food. If Branl and Clyme had over-ruled their _ak-Haru_ 's counsel\u2014if they had decided to seek Linden and the Giants instead of pursuing _turiya_ \u2014they would have headed northwest from the Shattered Hills.\n\nCovenant looked around at the caliginous vista of the grass, the slope rising incrementally toward the east, the greying of the world. When he was ready, he announced, \"I want to stop for a while. I ache everywhere. I need to walk around some. I'm sure this nag\"\u2014he indicated Mishio Massima with his chin\u2014\"can use a break.\" In fact, the Ardent's beast seemed preternaturally hardy. Unlike the Harrow's charger, apparently, this horse had been bred for endurance. \"If nothing else, it probably wants grass. And we should talk.\"\n\nHe felt sure that the Humbled had much to tell him\u2014if they chose to do so.\n\nClyme and Branl consented promptly: a bad sign. Had they trusted Brinn's advice, they would have argued that Covenant required haste. But they slowed their mounts without a word. Mishio Massima eased to a bone-rattling trot, then jerked to a walk like a thing formed of tree-limbs rather than flesh and bone.\n\nBefore the beast halted, Covenant slid out of the saddle. At first, his legs refused to hold him, and he dropped to his knees. Fortunately the turf cushioned the impact. Then he forced himself to his feet. Stifling a groan, he began to stamp in a circle, trying vainly to drive some sensation back into his ankles and feet. Their numbness affected him like imminent vertigo: he needed to rediscover balance. As he moved, he twisted his trunk from side to side, testing the condition of his ribs. Briefly he rolled his head and swung his arms. When he had assured himself that he was substantially intact, he took a few deep breaths and braced himself to confront the Humbled.\n\nThey had dismounted. Now they stood facing him, Branl with his clenched frown, Clyme with his hands curled into fists. But the mounts were moving away, trotting westward. Covenant guessed that they had caught the scent of water.\n\nAlone with his companions, he rubbed at the crusted blood around his eyes; probed the new scar on his forehead with the nub-ends of his fingers. His fingers felt nothing, but the tenderness of the cut assured him that it needed more time to heal.\n\nThe Humbled had not endured their _ak-Haru_ 's reproach gently: that was obvious. Groping for a tone of respect, Covenant said, \"I'm not sure, of course. I was asleep. But I get the impression there are things you should tell me. Something happened while I was out\u2014and I'm not talking about Kevin's Dirt. Did Brinn say anything else? Did he\u2014?\"\n\nClyme interrupted him curtly. \"He did not. We were not heeded. No further speech was exchanged.\"\n\nCovenant stared. \"Are you sure? He said something about a boon. A service. He didn't tell you what it was?\"\n\nBrinn was _Haruchai_ : he could have spoken to the Humbled mind to mind more fluently and thoroughly than aloud.\n\n\"He did not,\" Clyme repeated, rigid as metal. \"He refused our mental communion, as only Stave has done heretofore. In his thoughts we found only silence.\"\n\nFrowning like Branl, Covenant wavered on his feet. Keeping his balance was as difficult as he had feared. Too much had happened. He needed the feedback of nerves which no longer communicated with the rest of his body.\n\nTo that extent, at least, he knew how the Humbled felt. The Guardian had undermined their foundations.\n\n\"What does that mean to you?\" he asked carefully. \"Has he given up on us?\"\n\nAfter a moment, Clyme appeared to relent. His shoulders released some of their tension. Less stiffly, he replied, \"When the _ak-Haru_ had extended his strength for your healing, he was much reduced. Indeed, he resembled a man drawing the last breaths of extreme age. We deem that he did not speak again of a boon because he had come to the end of himself. He could not do more.\"\n\nAh, hell, Covenant sighed. He hated to think that Brinn had simply passed away. After so much time and devotion\u2014He wanted to believe that his former companion would find some form of resolution or contentment; but Clyme gave him scant reason for hope.\n\nHowever, he could not afford to dwell on grief. Other issues were more compulsory.\n\n\"Then tell me what's changed for you.\" He strained his eyes to study the faces of the Humbled. When neither of them spoke, he made an attempt to sound gentle. \"Was being criticized by your _ak-Haru_ that bad?\"\n\nBoth men stiffened. Their anger made them vivid in the gloom. Branl's glower looked fierce enough to split his skull. Clyme knocked the knuckles of his fists together as if he were stifling an impulse to hit someone.\n\nLike the cut of a blade, Clyme stated, \"His words were hurtful to no purpose. He did not reproach what we have done. His reproach was that we are who we are. Is the wind to be faulted because it blows? Are the stones to be accused because they are not trees? We are _Haruchai_. We cannot be other than ourselves.\"\n\n\"Mayhap it was his right to speak as he did,\" Branl conceded. He was not less indignant than Clyme: he had merely assumed their shared burden of truthfulness. \"He is the _ak-Haru_ , Guardian of the One Tree. No other _Haruchai_ has equaled his attainments.\"\n\n\"Nevertheless,\" Clyme snapped. \"We care naught for his right to speak. Our true grievance, ur-Lord, is that he sought to counsel you, and his counsel was _false_.\"\n\nHe spat that word as if it were a curse.\n\n\"False?\" Covenant nearly choked. \"Hellfire! How do you get to a conclusion like that? You said it yourself. He's the _ak-Haru_ , for God's sake! How can you even _think_ a word like 'false,' never mind say it out loud?\"\n\nNow Clyme did not relent. His tone held an outrage so deep that it seemed to arise from the marrow of his bones.\n\n\"We do not charge him with malign intent, but rather with mistaken comprehension. As he has misesteemed us, so he has misjudged the Land's peril.\n\n\"The lurker's plight is of no consequence. That monstrous wight is an avatar of Corruption. A Raver's possession cannot increase its misbegotten appetites. It requires no urging to seek our ruin.\n\n\"Recall,\" he insisted as though Covenant had tried to interrupt him, \"that the Soulsease has found new depths among the roots of Gravin Threndor. The Defiles Course will not resume its accustomed flow until the immeasurable abyss of the Lost Deep has been filled. Thus the poisons which supply the lurker's most necessary sustenance have been much reduced. Already its hungers swell. They must. Having grown so vast, they must be vastly fed. Such a creature will not long remember that it fears your magicks, or Linden Avery's. Your alliance was a thing of the moment. It cannot endure.\n\n\"To abandon all other needs in the lurker's name is madness.\"\n\nMadness? Covenant wanted to protest. Is that what you think of Brinn? Is that what you think of _me_? But the Humbled were not done.\n\n\"That is reason enough to set aside the _ak-Haru_ 's counsel,\" put in Branl. \"Yet there are other reasons as well.\n\n\"Has not the Ardent cited the ravages of the _skurj_ and the Sandgorgons in concert? Has not Kevin's Dirt been sent to weaken us? And is not Kastenessen the source of both evils? There lies your true path, ur-Lord. You must join with Linden Avery to challenge the mad _Elohim_ 's malevolence. That task is paramount. An end to Kevin's Dirt must be accomplished.\n\n\"Doubtless Kastenessen is both spurred and guided by _moksha_ Jehannum. Certainly the Sandgorgons heed the Raver, seduced as they are by the remnants of _samadhi_ Sheol's spirit. Yet the power is Kastenessen's. There can be no true defense of the Land while he stands in opposition.\"\n\nFacing his companions, Covenant floundered. Anger he had expected. They were _Haruchai_ , Masters and Humbled; proud. Naturally they had taken umbrage at Brinn's judgments. But he had not expected them to express their indignation like this.\n\nShaken and dismayed, he felt a reflexive desire to argue. He could have pointed out that Kastenessen was almost certainly positioned somewhere among the secrets of Mount Thunder, and that the distance was insurmountable. No doubt Linden was closer; but finding her would not take Covenant nearer to Kastenessen.\n\nWhile he tried to assemble the necessary words, however, he realized that the distance was effectively irrelevant. _Turiya_ 's head start was already insurmountable. Under the circumstances, one impossible distance was much like another.\n\nIn any case, no rational argument would sway the Humbled. They were too angry. Behind their masks, their attitude was based on a passion that Covenant did not understand.\n\n_Something_ had stung a primal nerve in them: primal and intimate. They had been hurt in a place at once carefully hidden and exquisitely raw. The pain of that singular wound drove them to extremes of emotion which Covenant had not witnessed before in any _Haruchai_.\n\nUnsure of himself, he tried to be cautious. \"The Feroce saved us.\" Still he winced at his own bleakness, his tone of confrontation. In his way, he was as irate as the Humbled. \"Horrim Carabal held up his end. He didn't have to. He could have left us to the _skest_. After all, he hates wild magic. He hates the _krill_. But he kept his word anyway. We wouldn't be here talking about it if he hadn't honored his agreement. Maybe you can ignore that. I can't.\n\n\"First you wanted me to break my promise to the Ranyhyn. Now you want me to turn my back on an alliance. That doesn't sound like you. It doesn't sound like any _Haruchai_ I've ever met.\" He had to grit his teeth to keep from shouting. \"What's happened to you?\"\n\nDark as incarnations of wrath, Clyme and Branl glared at Covenant. For a long moment, they did not reply. They did not move. Perhaps deliberately, they gave him a chance to fear that they would turn away from him. The Masters had spurned Stave\u2014\n\nBut then, suddenly, Branl snatched the bundle of Loric's _krill_ from inside his tunic. With a flick of his wrists, he spun the blade free of Anele's tattered heritage. As the gem's argence blazed out, he stabbed the dagger into the grass.\n\nIn the _krill_ 's radiance, both Branl and Clyme looked hieratic, chthonic, as if they had already taken their places among the Dead. The reflections in their eyes gave them the authority of spirits unconstrained by the boundaries of life and time.\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" Clyme announced, \"we are the Humbled in all sooth, the Humbled triumphant and maimed. Have you forgotten so much that you do not recognize the men whom we have chosen to become?\" His ire sounded more and more like lamentation. It sounded like fear. \"Do you not recall that it is our task to embody you among our people? You are the purpose and substance of our lives.\n\n\"If you do not return to Linden Avery, and do so swiftly, you will perish. We cannot stem the harm which Kevin's Dirt wreaks within you. Nor can the lurker of the Sarangrave succor you. Without the balm of the Staff of Law, your end is certain.\n\n\"Come good or ill, boon or bane, you must not heed the counsel of the _ak-Haru_.\"\n\nAs Clyme spoke, Covenant finally heard what lay behind the frustrated fury of the Humbled. As though the insight had come to him from the lost expanse of the Arch of Time, he understood; and he found himself trying to laugh, although he wanted to weep. Oh, Clyme. Oh, Branl. Have you come to this? After so much fidelity and striving, is this the best you can do?\n\nTheir beliefs were too small to vindicate the race of the _Haruchai_. At the same time, they were too much for Covenant.\n\nThat was their tragedy. They had attached an almost metaphysical significance to a lone and lonely man who could not bear the burden. He was unequal to the task of meaning, not because he was sick and weak\u2014although he was\u2014but because he was just one man, nothing more. Even if he transcended his own inadequacies indefinitely, he could not provide transcendence for anybody else. The _Haruchai_ needed to find it within themselves, not in him.\n\nNothing else would relieve the bereavement which had haunted them for millennia.\n\nBut they were not Giants: they would not respond to laughter; even to laughter as strained and loss-ridden as Covenant's. Their hearts spoke a different language.\n\nAs if he were translating alien precepts into pragmatic speech, he replied, \"Did I ever tell you that I respect you? I hope I did. I've said as many hurtful things as Brinn did, but none of it would have been worth saying if I didn't respect you absolutely. You're the standard I use to measure myself\u2014or you would be if I thought that highly of who I am. The idea that men like you care whether I live or die makes me want to prove you're right about me.\n\n\"But what's at stake here\u2014what we're talking about\u2014what we have to do\u2014isn't about whether or not I live through it. It's about the Land, and the Worm, and Lord Foul. We can't let the fact that I'm sick choose our commitments for us.\n\n\"I've made promises. Now I have to take the risk of keeping them. I have to be willing to pay whatever they cost.\"\n\nAnd his agreement with the lurker had been founded on a lie: the mistaken belief that he was the Pure One of _jheherrin_ legend. He needed to redeem that falsehood.\n\nClyme and Branl watched him without saying anything; without any expression that he could interpret. Clyme braced his fists on his hips. Branl folded his arms like barriers across his chest. If they grasped that import of his affirmation, they gave no sign.\n\nNevertheless Covenant went on as if he had won their consent to continue. \"But that cost\u2014It may not be what you think. Which is my fault,\" he added quickly, \"not yours.\n\n\"I don't say much about myself. I probably haven't told you or anybody that my disease\u2014that leprosy\u2014isn't fatal. Lepers can get worse for a long time without dying. Usually it's the things that happen to them _because_ they're lepers that kill them.\n\n\"Kastenessen can make me a whole lot sicker without stopping me. Kevin's Dirt is nasty stuff, but it won't save him. He only imagines it will because he's crazy and desperate.\n\n\"Meanwhile leprosy is like most of the things we struggle with. It's a curse, but sometimes it can also be a blessing.\"\n\nCast back by the _krill_ 's brilliance, the surrounding twilight seemed to deepen, drawing the stars ever closer to the world's doom. At the same time, the Humbled began to look both more substantial and more mundane; less like emblems from the realm of death. Unwillingly, perhaps, but irrefusably, they were being lured out of their moral reality into Covenant's.\n\nMore sure of himself now, the Unbeliever said, \"Look at it this way. Have you never wondered why none of the Ravers has ever tried to possess me? They've had me helpless often enough. So why am I still here? Sure, Foul told them not to take me. He didn't want them to get my ring. But why did they obey?\n\n\"Well, they've been his servants so long, you might think they're incapable of independent thought. That's one theory. But it can't be true. If it were, they wouldn't be much use. He would have to spend all his time telling them what to do. No, he has to be able to give them orders and then leave them alone while they figure out how to accomplish what he wants. They have to be able think for themselves.\n\n\"And they're by God _Ravers_. It's their _nature_ to be hungry for power and destruction.\" Just like Horrim Carabal. \"So why have they never, not once in all these millennia, ever tried to possess me? Why haven't they tried to take my ring?\"\n\nCovenant spread his hands, his foreshortened fingers, showing the Humbled that they were empty\u2014and that such appearances were as deceptive as the stoicism of the _Haruchai_.\n\n\"I think I know why. It's the same reason we can trust the lurker. And the same reason I have to do what I can to save him. Because they're afraid. They're all afraid. Horrim Carabal is afraid of the Worm. And the Ravers\u2014Well, of course they're afraid of Lord Foul. But I'm guessing they're also afraid of leprosy. They're afraid of what it might be like to possess a body and a mind as sick as mine. They're afraid of all this numbness, and going blind, and feeling crippled not to mention impotent even when they have wild magic to play with.\"\n\nHe shrugged as if he were susceptible to contradiction; yet with every word he felt stronger. \"Maybe being me would be too much like being the Despiser, trapped and helpless and full of despair even though he's too powerful and too damn eternal to be killed. Possessing other people, or other monsters, they can at least feel and hate and destroy. With me, they might not be able to do any of those things.\"\n\nHe was vaguely surprised to see Clyme and Branl blink in unison as if they were closing the shutters of their minds against illumination. But the moment was brief; no more than a flicker.\n\nAs if he were confessing an article of faith, Covenant concluded, \"That's why I might be able to save the lurker. It's why I have to be a leper. _Turiya_ won't even consider possessing me. Leprosy is my best defense. Even Lord Foul can't stop me if I'm numb enough.\"\n\nThen he held his breath. He could not read his companions: he saw only anger and blankness and inflexibility. Argent lit them against the backdrop of the sunless day, but did not reveal their hearts.\n\nThey were slow to respond. They may have been sifting through their imponderable storehouse of memories, testing Covenant's asseveration against their entire history with him.\n\nWhen Clyme finally answered, Covenant was not prepared for his response. Nothing in his manner, or in Branl's, hinted that the Humbled were capable of any reply except denial.\n\n\"How then,\" Clyme asked with the finality of a knell, \"shall we pursue the Raver? He is no longer hampered by the limitations of flesh. Even the Ranyhyn cannot equal his fleetness, and your mount is no Ranyhyn. How can the lurker be spared if we cannot overtake _turiya_ Herem?\"\n\nDimly through the dusk, Covenant saw Rallyn and Hooryl returning, bringing Mishio Massima with them. They seemed to know that the time had come to bear their riders again.\n\nHe exhaled hard; panted briefly for air. \"I have no idea,\" he admitted. \"I'll have to think of something.\"\n\nAt that moment, he believed that he would succeed. Like Brinn, Clyme and Branl had given him what he needed. While the Humbled stood with him, he could imagine that anything was possible.\n\nut he put off thinking until he and his companions had ridden far enough to find _aliantha_. He needed time to absorb Clyme's and Branl's acquiescence. And he felt thin with hunger. He had eaten nothing since he and his companions had left their covert in the cliff early the previous morning. The streams that the Ranyhyn discovered now eased him somewhat; but water was not nourishment\u2014and it was certainly not treasure-berries. He craved the rich benison of the Land's health and vitality. Without it, he could not reason clearly enough to untangle the riddle of _turiya_ Herem's head start.\n\nFortunately Branl and Clyme knew where they had last seen _aliantha_. And Covenant did not doubt that the Ranyhyn could have located the holly-like shrubs even without the guidance of the Humbled. The way seemed long to him, but Clyme pointed toward the first bush well before the unbroken twilight became midafternoon.\n\nThere Covenant dismounted. At once, Mishio Massima lowered its head to the grass as if nothing mattered except food. Carrying the _krill_ again, Branl remained with Covenant while Clyme rode ahead to gather more berries so that Covenant would not be required to waste time searching for a sufficient meal.\n\nAt the first tang of the fruit in his mouth, Covenant seemed to feel Brinn's hand reaching out to him across the leagues and hours; touching his sore forehead and damaged ribs and battered arms with renewal. In its own way, _aliantha_ was as much a gift as the _ak-Haru_ 's aid, and as precious. It answered questions which the Humbled had not asked.\n\nIt was for _this_ that Covenant had to find and stop _turiya_ , and then go on to the next battle, and the next. Not for the lurker. Not for the _Elohim_ , in spite of their slow, inexorable decimation. Not even for Linden, although his ache for her resembled weeping. No, it was for _aliantha_ that he had to fight: for treasure-berries, and for Wraiths; for hurtloam and Glimmermere and Salva Gildenbourne, Andelain and EarthBlood; for the Ranyhyn and their Ramen; for ur-viles and Waynhim; and for every mortal heart as valiant and treasurable as Liand's, or as Anele's. For their sake, he had to catch up with the Raver. He had to find a way.\n\nWhen he had eaten enough to take the edge off his hunger, he began to pace slowly, chewing fruit, scattering seeds, and talking. The numbness of his feet made him feel that he walked a friable surface tipping him toward vertigo. Nevertheless he persevered. He needed to hear his thoughts aloud in order to believe in them. And he needed movement to loosen the knots that bound him to his limitations.\n\nThe Worm was coming. Lord Foul's triumph drew closer with every hesitation, every delay. The Land could not be saved by anything less than extravagant efforts and hope.\n\nHope did not come easily to lepers. But Covenant had learned that there were better answers than grim survival and despair. He had been taught by more friends and loves than he could count.\n\nUnsteadily he ate, and marked out a circle on the giving ground with his steps, and talked.\n\n\"I keep thinking about Linden,\" he muttered as if he were speaking to Branl. With a wave of one hand, he dismissed a protest which his companion did not utter. \"I was watching her. I remember her life almost as well as mine.\n\n\"She should have died when she first arrived on Kevin's Watch. A _caesure_ broke the Watch right after she met Anele. All those tons of shattered granite collapsed like they fell from the sky. She should have been crushed. They both should have been reduced to pulp. But she kept them alive.\n\n\"I'm asking myself, how did she _do_ that?\"\n\nConcentrating on other things, he lost his balance as if he had tripped. He almost fell. The deadening of his nerves was becoming extreme. Still he was familiar with such dilemmas. The loss of sensation was like Unbelief. It could be managed. Sometimes it could be set aside. And under the right circumstances, it could become a form of strength.\n\nHow else had he twice defeated the Despiser?\n\n\"I was watching,\" he repeated as he resumed his tread. \"I saw what happened. I mean, what _literally_ happened. She slipped outside time. And she took Anele with her. Somehow she bypassed cause and effect and even ordinary gravity so that she and Anele came down on top of the rubble instead of under it. Hell, she didn't even break bones.\n\n\"But _how_? That was a neat trick. How did she manage it?\"\n\nPeripherally Covenant noticed Clyme's return. But the Unbeliever did not interrupt the awkward whirl, the vertigo in slow motion, of his paced circle.\n\n\"It's obvious, really. She did it with wild magic. She used my ring, even though she had no idea what she was doing, and she certainly never did anything like that before. It must have been pure reflex. Raw instinct. But that part doesn't matter. What matters is, she _did_ it. She proved it's possible.\n\n\"If wild magic is the keystone of the Arch of Time, it _participates_ somehow.\" Those words raised echoes for him. They implied memories which eluded recognition. \"You could say Linden did the opposite of what Joan was doing. Instead of shattering pieces of time, she found her way around them.\"\n\nThe Humbled studied him in silence. Their faces remained as blank as age-worn carvings.\n\n\"Well.\" Unaware of what he did, Covenant spread gestures in all directions as if he were flinging out his arms for balance; as if he sought to encompass the world. \"If she could do it, why can't we? After all, my poor son and that damned _croyel_ did it. They slipped through time to take her into the past. Which the Mahdoubt also knew how to do. And they slipped past distance to reach _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. Which both the Harrow and the Ardent knew how to do. So why don't we do the same thing?\"\n\nThere was something that he needed to remember, but he did not try to force it. Instead he let the past reach him in its own way.\n\nClyme slid down from Hooryl's back. Lifting the hem of his tunic, he showed Covenant that he carried a feast of treasure-berries. But Covenant did not pause. He could not stop talking now, even for the Land's largesse.\n\n\"Ignorance, I suppose. We don't know what Roger and the _croyel_ and at least some of the Insequent knew. If I ever understood how they did it, I sure as hell don't remember. And we probably haven't earned the knowledge. But when you can see a thing is possible, ignorance looks less irreducible. You can afford to try out theories or just plain guesswork because you know what you want to accomplish.\"\n\nAs if by an act of grace, the memory he sought came to him.\n\n_Time is the keystone of life, just as wild magic is the keystone of Time._ Among the Dead, the Theomach had said that. _It is Time which is endangered_. His counsel had inspired Covenant to risk a _caesure_ in order to confront Joan. _The path to its preservation lies through Time._\n\nThat was cryptic at best; hardly comprehensible. Nevertheless it sufficed.\n\nAbruptly Covenant stopped pacing, planted his legs for balance. His head continued its slow spin, but he faced the Humbled as squarely as he could.\n\n\"And Loric's _krill_ isn't our only instrument of power. We have white gold.\" He tapped his sternum where Joan's wedding band hung under his tattered T-shirt. \"If Linden can use my ring, I ought to be able to use Joan's.\"\n\n_You are the white gold._\n\n_Recall that the_ krill _is capable of much._\n\nWithout transition, he told Clyme, \"Give me some of that. I've got work to do, and I'm still hungry.\"\n\nHe had no real idea how to carry out his intentions. But he had found a place to start. And he could trust the Ranyhyn to help him.\n\nHe had suffered enough. Now he meant to surprise the hell out of _turiya_ Herem.\n\nefore long, he had satisfied his hunger. The bounty of _aliantha_ seemed to supply all of his immediate lacks. Each berry enriched his veins and muscles and even the fate written on his forehead until he was almost strong, almost steady. The threat of dizziness receded. His health-sense remained vague as a wisp, but he felt an unexpected tingle of renewed sensation in his ankles and wrists.\n\nWhen he was ready, he thanked Clyme. He urged the Master to save as many treasure-berries as he could. Then he asked Branl for the _krill_.\n\n\"I'm not sure what I'm doing,\" he admitted. \"But it's always helped me to have another source of power.\" The Staff of Law in Elena's hands. The Illearth Stone in Foul's Creche. Sunder's _orcrest_. Covenant had relied upon external catalysts or triggers until the Despiser's venom had eaten away his instinctive defenses, his visceral reluctance. \"And this ring is Joan's, not mine. Using it won't be easy.\"\n\nIn contrast, he had earned the privilege of wielding Loric's eldritch dagger. He had paid for it with bloodshed.\n\nBranl did not hesitate. Removing the wrapped blade from its place under his tunic, he delivered it to the Unbeliever.\n\nCovenant hefted the dagger, felt its weight and its implied power. \"Now what?\" he asked, thinking aloud again. In spite of his millennia within the Arch of Time, the prospect of theurgy still disturbed him. Magic suited Linden. Her health-sense guided her: she could control herself. Covenant was only a leper. Nevertheless he had come too far to start shirking hazards that scared him.\n\nHow often had he told Linden to trust herself?\n\n\"Well, let's see. I don't understand _how_ the Harrow and the Ardent did what they did. As far as I know, they just appeared and disappeared whenever they wanted. But Roger and the _croyel_ are another matter.\n\n\"They faced each other with Linden between them. They raised their arms to make an arch over her head. An arch like a door.\" Instinctively he began to pace again. \"A portal. But I can't do that. I can't stand in two places at once.\"\n\nCould Clyme or Branl assist him? He rejected that idea. _Haruchai_ did not wield magic. Whenever they could, they eschewed weapons of any kind. And Covenant had already required the Humbled to violate too many of their chosen prohibitions.\n\n\"Sounds like an impasse,\" he muttered. \"But it can't be.\" He lifted his burden with a shrug. \"So maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe Roger and the _croyel_ weren't making a door. Maybe it just looked like a door. Maybe it was really something else.\n\n\"Like what?\" For a moment, nothing occurred to him. Then he felt a surge of possibility. \"How about an _enclosure_? A way to keep everybody together while Roger and the _croyel_ combined their magicks?\n\n\" _That_ I can do.\"\n\n\"Ur-Lord?\" asked Clyme. Another man might have sounded baffled. The Humbled's tone expressed only polite disinterest. \"Your meaning is obscure to us. Speak more plainly.\"\n\nNourished by _aliantha_ , a sensation like eagerness throbbed in Covenant's veins. Perhaps lepers were capable of hope after all.\n\n\"Watch,\" he said as if he were sure of himself. \"Mount up.\" He took a few steps to increase his distance from the Humbled and the Ranyhyn. \"Keep my horse with you. I'll join you when I'm ready.\n\n\"And concentrate on _turiya_. Rallyn and Hooryl can find him if they know that's what we want.\"\n\nHis companions may have hesitated. If so, he did not see it. He had already turned his attention to his task.\n\nHis arms still ached. The _krill_ seemed too heavy to bear. In spite of Brinn's gifts, and the Land's, he remained weak. Nonetheless he used the stubs of his halfhand to pull out Joan's wedding band on its chain.\n\nAh, Joan\u2014Her ring had encircled a world of promises, but none of them were kept. If he got the chance, he intended to make better promises before the end.\n\nDrawing the chain over his head, he forced Joan's ring onto the truncated end of the little finger of his left hand. With the chain dangling, he unwrapped the remnants of Anele's raiment from the _krill_ , carefully keeping fabric between the ring and any part of the dagger.\n\nWhen the silver purity of the gem blazed out, defying the dusk in all directions, he paused. While his eyes adjusted to the shock of radiance, he tried to take stock of his condition; his fitness for what he meant to attempt.\n\nAt one time, he had feared white gold. He had been positively dependent on the idea that he was helpless; that he was capable of nothing, and that therefore nothing could be required of him. At another time, he had again feared wild magic, but for the opposite reason. Afflicted by Lord Foul's venom, he had raised fire from his ring too easily. He had become capable of appalling destruction and bloodshed at any provocation.\n\nNow he felt like an amalgam of those two Covenants, an alloy: the leper who feared the responsibility of any power, and the poisoned man whose violence threatened to defy constraint. He could imagine himself accomplishing _everything and nothing_ ,\n\n_hero and fool_\n\n_potent, helpless\u2014_\n\n_and with the one word of truth or treachery,_\n\n_he will save or damn the Earth_\n\n_because he is mad and sane,_\n\n_cold and passionate,_\n\n_lost and found._\n\nJust like lepers everywhere, he reminded himself so that he would not falter. Just like all of us. Everybody who still cares. We're all in the same mess.\n\n\"Well, hell,\" he drawled unsteadily. \"What's the point of dithering? Now's as good a time as any.\"\n\nDamned if you do, damned if you don't. The Despiser's favorite game.\n\nWincing as though he expected to be struck down, Covenant released his left hand from the blade's haft and slapped Joan's ring against the shining gem.\n\nIn that instant, his whole body became fire.\n\nHe was burning, but he was not burned: he blazed unconsumed. He felt as incandescent as the torrent of wild magic with which Lord Foul had once slain and freed him, yet he was not harmed. All around him, the twilight became darkness, impenetrable, impermeable. But within the ambit of his theurgy, silver reigned. It made every blade of grass along the sloping turf look sacred; distinct and ineffable. Argent lit Branl and Clyme on their Ranyhyn, holding Mishio Massima between them: it etched them against the sunless world as if it had incarnated them from the numinous substance of Covenant's imagination. Emblazonry shone on Rallyn's forehead, and on Hooryl's. Even the Ardent's horse resembled reified sorcery, ready to run between realities. Power surged in Covenant's veins until he did not know how to contain it.\n\n\"Ur-Lord!\" Branl called through the blare of light. \"Be wary! Such might is perilous!\"\n\nBut Covenant knew his limitations. He knew the difference between his puissance now and the immensely greater forces which he had wielded in his past life. In any case, he was still too frail to sustain so much power\u2014and this ring was not his. The _krill_ was probably burning his halfhand. For all he knew, Joan's ring was burning his finger. He simply could not feel the pain.\n\nDeliberately he dropped his left hand to his side, gripped the dagger with only his right. As he did so, the fire left him. He no longer spread brightness and flame in all directions; no longer poured out light as though his flesh were wild magic. But the _krill_ 's gem retained the radiance which he had summoned from it. Theurgy ran down the blade like water or blood.\n\nAt once, he stooped to touch the grass with the point of Loric's weapon. He let the blade's weight sink in as deeply as it wished, but he made no effort to drive the _krill_ deeper. Then he watched as the rough turf became lambent as if it had been touched with ecstasy.\n\nHe feared to see that the _krill_ 's touch had killed the grass, left it scorched and withered. But somehow he had invoked a form of power which was not destructive. Instead of dying, the turf continued to shine where he had cut through it.\n\nCrouched and stumbling, he began to drag the dagger in a line through the grass.\n\nHis heart strained as he moved on. He intended to draw a circle around the Ranyhyn and Mishio Massima; to enclose them in wild magic. But of course such precision was impossible for him. Rather than a circle, he was creating a ragged imitation of one. Nevertheless he persisted; and his silver clung to the grass.\n\nNow he could feel a throb of yearning from Joan's ring in his wrist and forearm. Her wedding band ached for more power. Perhaps it remembered the use which she had made of it, and craved ruin. But there was no wish for harm in Covenant's heart, and he was familiar with wild magic. His argent did no hurt.\n\nStaggering, he looked around to get his bearings. Then he went on, pulling Loric's dagger through the grass; inscribing his crude and hopeful mockery of a circle.\n\nHis heart beat harder. He tottered from step to step in a cripple's stoop that cramped his lungs, exhausted his muscles. He wanted to stop. Wanted rest. An end to all this striving and inadequacy.\n\nBut he wanted other things more.\n\nGradually he passed behind the horses. Over his shoulder, he could see the place where he had begun. It still shone as though it fed on streams of his life-blood.\n\nCome on, leper, he urged himself. Just take it one step at a time. One step. At a time.\n\nDrawing argent with him as if it were alive in the grass, he went on.\n\n\"Hold to your purpose, ur-Lord,\" Clyme urged. \"You near its completion.\"\n\nCovenant did not glance at the Humbled. His attention was fixed on the end of his leper's circle, his lurching enclosure. For no better reason than exhaustion, he was holding his breath. His muscles sobbed in protest. He nearly fell through the last few steps.\n\nThe argent would fade quickly if he did not continue to feed it. He did not have time to straighten his back, or breathe, or run to his mount.\n\nSomehow he had to do it.\n\nBut before he could decide to take the risk, Clyme snatched him from his feet. Cradled in Clyme's arms, Covenant was carried to his horse, tossed carefully into the saddle. At once, Branl caught Covenant's arm to steady him while Clyme sprang for Hooryl's back.\n\nThe world seemed to veer and yaw. There was not enough air, never enough air; or Covenant had forgotten how to inhale.\n\n\"Now, ur-Lord,\" Branl instructed him. \"It must be now.\"\n\nThe enclosure was already starting to flicker and go out.\n\nCovenant's companions raised his arms for him. They lifted Loric's _krill_ and Joan's ring high over his head. Together they helped him strike the dagger's gem with white gold a second time.\n\nJust for an instant, the Unbeliever became a conflagration again, a being of fire and theurgy. Then the Ranyhyn and Mishio Massima surged forward\u2014and the world vanished as though it had been erased from existence.\n\nhen his mount hit the ground at a full gallop, Covenant nearly lost his seat. His feet had not found the stirrups: he could not steady himself. And the after-flash of power filled his head. He flopped in the saddle like a loosely filled sack. Without the support of the Humbled, he would have fallen.\n\nHe had no idea where he was. The _krill_ 's brightness effaced his surroundings. It made black night where there may only have been twilight. Illumined by silver, the horses pounded the turf: he recognized nothing else. For all he knew, he and his companions had only traveled a dozen strides.\n\nBut then the Ranyhyn and Mishio Massima began to slow their gallop to an easy canter. Although images of wild magic still spun like vertigo in Covenant's mind, his body began to recover its center. His extremities were numb: the nerves of his torso and hips and thighs were not. They reacted reflexively.\n\nBy slow increments, he became aware that he was holding the dagger dangerously close to his mount. For Mishio Massima's protection as well as his own, he flipped the fabric that shielded his hands over the blade; covered the gem.\n\nAt once, darkness swept over him. It felt strangely like solace.\n\nHe almost said, Have mercy on me. Instead he managed to pant, \"What happened? Where are we?\"\n\n\"It appears, ur-Lord,\" Branl replied, \"that your efforts have succeeded.\" He took the _krill_ from Covenant, wrapped it more securely in Anele's raiment. \"We gauge that we have traversed some two score leagues, perhaps more. And our heading is to the northwest. The distance to Sarangrave Flat has been halved.\n\n\"In a sunless world, time is difficult to ascertain. Yet we are able to discern its passage. By our measure, an hour remains ere this gloom surrenders to true night. Our translation hither has not been altogether instant. Nevertheless we have been swift beyond comprehension.\n\n\"Ur-Lord\"\u2014for a moment, the Master appeared to hesitate\u2014\"if your strength suffices for a second exertion, we do not doubt that we will gain the marge of the Sarangrave. Mayhap we will do so ere _turiya_ Herem threatens the lurker.\"\n\nA second\u2014? Covenant groaned to himself. Hellfire! Ask me to bring back the sun while you're at it. The dusk seemed to wheel around him as if it arose from his dizziness; as if he were the source of the enshrouding twilight. His legs and back would not suffer the strain.\n\nIf he staggered just once\u2014if he pulled the _krill_ out of the grass for any reason\u2014he would have to start again from the beginning.\n\n\"Your weariness is plain,\" Clyme continued. \"But _aliantha_ will restore you.\" He showed Covenant his remaining treasure-berries. \"Then we will aid you.\"\n\n\"Aid me?\" Covenant asked. Mishio Massima cantered smoothly\u2014and yet he felt that he was seated on rolling logs or a canted boulder. \"How?\"\n\nClyme faced him through the dulled grey of the air. \"We will devise a means.\"\n\nCovenant stared. \"Well, damnation,\" he muttered after a few heartbeats. \"Since you put it that way\u2014\"\n\nWhen had any _Haruchai_ ever failed him?\n\nThe Ranyhyn appeared to understand. With Mishio Massima, they dropped from a canter to a trot and then a walk. In a moment, they halted.\n\nClutching the saddle horn with one hand for balance, Covenant reached to Clyme for food.\n\nHis hunger surprised him. He had eaten enough earlier; more than enough. But as soon as he bit into the first berry, he found that he craved the Land's nurturance. Convalescence was a harsh taskmaster; and his first expenditure of wild magic had depleted his stamina. Careless of future needs, he ate eagerly.\n\nIt was entirely conceivable that he had no future.\n\nStill the taste and efficacy of _aliantha_ gave him their blessing. After a few swallows, the whirling in his head subsided as new energy anointed him with possibilities. As if he were choosing his fate, he devoured Clyme's supply of treasure-berries. Formally, like an act of contrition, he thanked both of the Humbled. Then he announced that he was ready.\n\nHis mount seemed oblivious to everything except the chance to crop grass. But the eyes of the Ranyhyn rolled fretfully, and long tremors ran through their muscles. He did not believe that they were exhausted: they were the great horses of Ra; and they had not lacked for forage and water. Rather he guessed that they were afraid. They knew where they were going.\n\nSomething about the lurker\u2014Covenant had heard tales of their old trepidation, the only dread that they had never mastered. No doubt he had once known why they felt such fear. Now that memory was gone, lost when he had sealed the cracks in his flawed mind.\n\nThinking about the lurker, he felt a pang of his own. He had personal memories of Horrim Carabal; private reasons to be afraid. That the lurker of the Sarangrave feared white gold and the _krill_ was no comfort. If _turiya_ Raver managed to take possession of the monster, Horrim Carabal would resist Covenant with malice as well as terror.\n\nNevertheless he did not hesitate. \"What now?\" he asked his companions. \"How are we going to do this?\"\n\n\"I will bear you, ur-Lord,\" Clyme answered, \"in such a way that you need only press the _krill_ into the grass.\" He dropped from Hooryl's back, offered his arms to help Covenant dismount. \"Thus supported, you will complete the enclosure more swiftly.\"\n\nHe did not add that any circle he fashioned would be more symmetrical than Covenant's.\n\n\"Ah, hell,\" Covenant sighed. \"Why not?\" As he let Clyme lift him down, he muttered, \"But it's too bad you couldn't think of anything even less dignified. I should at least try to look as pitiful as I feel.\"\n\nThe Humbled gazed at him without expression. Neither of them replied. Calmly Branl surrendered Loric's blade.\n\nSwearing under his breath, Covenant accompanied Clyme away from the horses. He had never accomplished anything without help; and yet he still had not learned how to accept assistance gracefully. Being a leper had taught him to think and act and live alone. He ought to act on his decisions without hazarding anyone else.\n\nUnfortunately he could not pretend that he was strong enough for his task. When he and Clyme reached a safe distance, he said harshly, \"Let's do this. I'm not getting any younger.\"\n\nVexed at himself, he unwound cloth from the _krill_ 's gem. In the abrupt wash of radiance, he closed his left fist and punched the strange stone with Joan's ring.\n\nAgain he seemed to become argent delirancy. Power burned in his veins, flamed from his flesh, sprang toward the dying stars. In spite of his mortality, he felt that he had the resources of gods. The sensation was terrible and delicious, an exaltation of wild magic; capable of anything. But it was also brief. It forsook him as soon as he separated his hands.\n\nStill the effects of that moment clung to him, vivid as vision or prophecy. He hardly felt Clyme scoop him from the ground. He was scarcely aware that Clyme bent low, holding him within easy reach of the turf.\n\nAs if of its own volition, the dagger's blade sank until it pierced grass and cut soil, pulling Covenant's clasp with it. Then Clyme began to move so that the _krill_ sliced the earth with shining silver.\n\nSecured against vertigo by Clyme's unyielding arms, Covenant watched as the flow of power which sustained his line in the grass emanated from Joan's ring aching on his finger. Indirectly, therefore, it came from the secret recesses of his heart. That was why he had been left so depleted\u2014and so hungry. With wild magic, he expended his own spirit.\n\nHe wanted Clyme to hurry.\n\nClyme did not appear to make haste. Nevertheless he had already completed a perfect semicircle. From behind the horses, Covenant could see the spot where he had started. He would reach it in a score of heartbeats.\n\nPerhaps because Clyme moved with such alacrity in spite of his crouched, crab-wise steps, or perhaps because his circle was so exact, Covenant's power shone more brightly, promising translation across a greater distance. With the help of the Humbled, he might have been able to travel the Lower Land from border to border in mere hours.\n\nThe thought of such imponderable speed made him dizzy again. If he could stop _turiya_ \u2014and if he could do at least _some_ thing to help Horrim Carabal survive the Worm's arrival in the Land\u2014he might actually have time to rejoin Linden. Wherever her own exigencies had taken her, he might be able to find her.\n\nIf.\n\nThen the enclosure was done. It shone like the _krill_ , defining itself against the gloom. At once, Clyme surged upright. Sprinting, he carried Covenant toward their mounts. Before Covenant could regain his balance, he sat in Mishio Massima's saddle. Branl steadied him while Clyme mounted Hooryl.\n\nAs if he were pitching himself over a precipice, Covenant brought the ring and the gem together above his head.\n\nHe became an instant of wild magic; and reality vanished as the horses sprang into a gallop.\n\nHe could not perceive time. He had no opportunity to draw a breath. His heart did not beat, or he did not feel it measure out his life. The disappearance of the world was as sudden as a blink, complete as soon as it began. Yet time must have passed. When the world reappeared, the horses were running hard, pounding along uneven slopes at the full extent of Mishio Massima's strength. And the half-light, the gloaming\u2014\n\nThe dusk had deepened. The horses galloped in the core of the _krill_ 's illumination; but beyond it, the darkness looked solid as a wall. Covenant and the Humbled had ridden into a realm of shadows, or night had fallen.\n\nWhile he reeled, he tried to ask, Now where are we? But his throat was too tight to release words.\n\nAfter a moment, however, the horses began to slow; and Branl urged him to cover the _krill_. \"When you are no longer blinded by its light, you will perceive that the Sarangrave is nigh. It lies a stone's throw to the west.\"\n\n\"Here _turiya_ Herem's spoor is strong,\" added Clyme. His tone was sharper than Branl's, whetted by anger or anticipation. \"Nonetheless it appears that we are belated. The scent enters the wetlands ahead of us. Indeed\u2014\" The Master paused as if he were tasting the air. Then he stated, \"We discern struggle, a contest of powers. Frenzy lashes the waters at some distance. We deem that a battle has begun.\"\n\nBegun\u2014? Alarm ran like acid along Covenant's nerves. In an instant, he forgot dizziness, fatigue, depletion. \"Hellfire,\" he rasped. \"This is my fault. I took too long.\" Recovering. Thinking. \"Now I'm going to have to do this the hard way.\"\n\nInstead of veiling Loric's dagger, he held it over his head. A beacon\u2014\n\nSpectral against the coming night, tangled brush and gnarled trees became visible off to Covenant's left: limbs and twigs that resembled bleached bones in the silver light; clumps of reeds like thickets of spears; dark floating pads with nacreous flowers; noxious scum; troubled waters so black that they refused lumination. The tenebrous air was thick with stagnation and rot, the putrid remains of corpses. The fetor made knots in Covenant's guts. Instinctively he wanted to shy away.\n\nNevertheless the Ranyhyn and Mishio Massima cantered toward the area where _turiya_ Herem had entered Sarangrave Flat as if that were Covenant's truest desire.\n\nHell and _blood_. He was not ready for this. Not after everything that he had already endured.\n\nEven his blunt nerves sensed the inherited dread that gathered in Rallyn and Hooryl.\n\n\"Ur-Lord.\" Branl held out his hand, asking for the _krill_ as though he believed that he and Clyme could fight for the lurker in Covenant's stead.\n\nBut Covenant kept his only blade, his only light. He had no intention of risking his companions in the vile marshes of Horrim Carabal's demesne.\n\nFar away through the scrub and trees, the scrannel brush and marshgrass, he caught flickers of a diseased silver that reminded him of his one confrontation with the lurker many centuries ago. Instinctively he believed that the monster was exerting its malevolent theurgies against the Raver. If Horrim Carabal had welcomed _turiya_ 's possession, there would be no battle.\n\n\"Ur-Lord?\" Branl asked again.\n\nBloody damnation! Covenant had to act. He was already late. He chose to believe that the lurker was fighting hard; but as the Raver mastered more and more of Horrim Carabal's imponderable bulk, the monster's resistance would weaken. Soon the lurker might begin to submit.\n\nWhile the horses closed the distance, Covenant raised his voice. \"We need the Feroce! I won't ride in that marsh. Some of those waters can strip flesh off bones.\" This decision, at least, his companions would approve. \"And I don't know how else to communicate with the lurker!\"\n\n\"We are come too late,\" countered Branl. \"Already the Raver lays claim\u2014\"\n\n\"But he hasn't won yet,\" Covenant retorted. \"Horrim Carabal is _huge_. _Turiya_ can't overrun the whole lurker at once. Parts of that monster must be fighting back.\n\n\"I need to talk to it while it can still resist!\"\n\nIf Lord Foul's servant triumphed, Horrim Carabal would be a horrific foe.\n\nClyme's passion grew stronger, feeding on a private repudiation. \"We know not how to summon the lurker's acolytes.\"\n\n\"Then they'll just have to summon themselves,\" Covenant snapped. If they could discern his beacon. If their fear of white gold and Loric's _krill_ alerted them to his presence. \"If they don't, what good is an alliance?\"\n\nThe wetland was close: too close for Rallyn and Hooryl. Their fright showed in their flaring eyes; in the tremors which marred their strides.\n\n\"Stop!\" Covenant shouted to the horses. \"I want to stop here!\" Then he swung one leg over Mishio Massima's back; stood in the stirrup and braced himself to drop to the ground.\n\nHooryl and Rallyn complied. With the Ardent's mount between them, they slowed in sharp jerks, almost locking their knees. Within half a dozen strides, they halted, quivering as if they were feverish.\n\nAt once, Covenant let go and hit the grass, running toward the border of the Sarangrave, and waving the _krill_ : a signal to any being or creature capable of noticing him.\n\nClyme and Branl accompanied Covenant as if they had expected his unpremeditated rush. In the sweeping wash of argent, they looked as ghostly as the wide wetland; as vulnerable to banishment as the Dead. Still they were _Haruchai_ , as solid as their promises. Covenant did not doubt them.\n\nBut now he feared them. Their _ak-Haru_ had judged them severely\u2014and they bore an old grudge against Ravers. He shuddered to imagine how they would react when they learned that he meant to leave them behind.\n\n\"I'm here!\" he yelled as he hit soggy ground, stopped at the water's edge. \"We made an alliance! I want to keep it, but I can't if you _don't hear me_!\"\n\nHe needed to know how far into the marsh _turiya_ 's possession had spread. And he needed to get there; to the point of conflict, the heart of the struggle. Nothing that he tried would work if he did not first get ahead of the Raver.\n\nHe wanted the power to _forbid_ Lord Foul's servant, the ancient puissance of the Colossus; but that knowledge was lost.\n\nThrashed by distant fighting, the water at Covenant's feet heaved against its scum and muck. Gouts of tiny plant life rose into the air like miniature geysers, then slumped back into the slime. He thought that he heard screaming, inarticulate fury like far-off thunder; but he could not be sure through the slosh and slap of the disturbed wetland. He strained his eyes for hints of the Feroce, but the _krill_ 's radiance blinded him to everything beyond its reach. Again he yelled for attention\u2014and still there was no sign that he had been heard.\n\n\"God _damn_ it! What good is an alliance if you won't help me at least _try_ to honor it?\"\n\nNothing.\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" Clyme offered, \"we will bear you. We discern the conflict, though it is distant. We will convey you to a place where you may strike with some hope of effect.\"\n\n\" _How_ distant?\" snarled Covenant. \"Is it leagues? Can you imagine what will happen to you if you try to carry me through _leagues_ of this stuff?\" He slapped a gesture at the marsh: bogs and quagmires; quicksand; depths and shallows; poisoned pools as harsh as vitriol. \"And _turiya_ is going to keep moving. What if he takes possession faster than you can travel? Our lives will be wasted.\"\n\nFacing the Sarangrave again, he howled, \" _I need the Feroce!_ \"\n\nHe had time to panic\u2014and time as well to admit that behind his alarm lay a secret relief at the possibility that he might be spared.\n\nThen Clyme nodded once. \"Ur-Lord, you are answered.\"\n\nHell and blood\u2014\"Where? I don't see anything.\"\n\nCovenant expected flickers of green like hints of the Illearth Stone, an approach of power the hue of sick and rotting chrysoprase. But though he searched until his temples ached, he found nothing except _krill_ -light and darkness.\n\n\"On other occasions,\" Branl answered, \"we beheld the Feroce bearing fires in their palms. Yet when the Masters observed them in centuries past, they moved within the Sarangrave without flames\u2014indeed, without any evident magicks. We surmise that they require theurgy only when they are parted from the wetland.\n\n\"Nevertheless we discern them. Two now approach.\"\n\nTwo? Covenant stared and saw nothing. Only two?\n\nWould two be enough?\n\nAt the limit of the light, he spotted a blur of movement. The creatures were stealthy, creeping behind clumps of scrub, stealing through pestilential grasses and mirkweed, crouching among trees that writhed as if they were in torment. He recalled the timidity of the lurker's acolytes during his earlier encounter with them. They had called him _the Pure One, wielder of metal and agony_ , and they had feared him. Without their High God's command, they would not have dared to enter his presence.\n\nBut he had no time for their craven courage. \"I'm _waiting_ , dammit!\" he shouted. \"I made a promise, and I intend to keep it! Your High God _needs_ me!\"\n\nFronds rustled some distance away. Passing bodies contradicted the sluggish distress of the waters. At unexpected moments, the large round eyes of the Feroce caught reflections of silver. They were hardly tall enough to reach Covenant's chest. And they were desperately afraid. Naked and hairless, clad only in the commandments that ruled their fright, they slipped between patches of cover or ducked under pads and rushes as if they believed that Covenant could extinguish them with a glance.\n\nBut at last they emerged. At the boundary of the marsh, they risked the _krill_ 's radiance.\n\nFlinching, the Feroce brought forth guttering emerald from the palms of their hands. Then they crept onto the mud that marked the border of the Sarangrave. There they stood before Covenant, cowering in supplication.\n\n\"Be merciful!\" they whimpered as if they shared one voice; one mind. \"You are the Pure One. You wield abhorrent metal and deliver agony. Such agony! Yet you accepted our High God's alliance. The Feroce surrendered many and many lives to complete his offered service. Take pity upon us now. Become the Pure One who redeems, as you have done before.\n\n\"Our High God cannot withstand the horror that assails him.\"\n\nTheir tone was piteous, but Covenant felt too much pressure to respond gently. \"I'm not the Pure One,\" he retorted. \"I've never been the Pure One. But I try to keep my promises.\"\n\nIn truth, he had not committed himself to fight for the lurker. Deliberately he had withheld that reassurance. As far as he was concerned, however, Horrim Carabal had exceeded the terms of their agreement. And he believed that the lurker had a role to play in the Land's defense, although he could not name it.\n\n\"Right now,\" he continued without pausing, \"I can't. I'm too far away. I'll fight for your High God, but first he has to help me. He has to take me where I'm needed.\"\n\n\"Not?\" quavered the Feroce as if they had heard only his denial. \"You are not the Pure One? We do not comprehend.\" Their protest sounded like the soughing of bogs, the suck of quicksand deprived of victims. \"You wield vicious metal. You bring excruciation. You have delivered such agony to our High God that he quails to hear you. You are required to be the Pure One. There is no other.\"\n\n\"Stop!\" Covenant demanded harshly. \"Call me whatever you want. We don't have time for this.\n\n\"Here!\"\n\nFrantic to show his good faith, he swept cloth around the _krill_ 's gem and blade. Instantly the light vanished. Night rushed over the region: it seemed to reel in its haste to fill the void left by covering the dagger. The fires of the Feroce revealed only themselves.\n\nUrgent and awkward, Covenant thrust the wrapped knife into the waist of his jeans, then jerked Joan's ring from his finger, looped the chain over his head, dropped the band under his shirt; made himself appear defenseless.\n\n\"I'll need metal to fight.\" Fear made him savage. \"And I'll have to hurt your High God. I'll have to hurt him _bad_. I need to cut off the infection,\" sever every portion possessed by _turiya_. \"I don't know another way.\" He had no idea how to kill a Raver.\n\n\"But I can't do anything if he doesn't _take me where I'm needed_!\"\n\nThe lurker was enormous. It could survive terrible damage.\n\nAs one, the creatures gave a quivering shriek as if he had appalled them to the core of their soft bodies. Their fires sprang high; dropped low. Flames dripped between their fingers like corroded flesh or spilth.\n\nCovenant swore in frustration. He should have gotten here sooner. If he were not so easily wounded, so damn mortal\u2014\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" cautioned Branl. \"Ready yourself. Again you are answered.\"\n\nWhile Covenant strove to see, a dark shape arose from the waters.\n\nVisible only as a starker blackness in the dark, a tentacle rose and rose as if it were reaching for the heavens. It was thick as a cedar, tall as an elm. Its surface squirmed with desperation. In spite of Kevin's Dirt, Covenant felt the lurker's strength, its bitter hunger. Reaching high above him, its arm seemed to search with inhuman senses for the taste of its prey.\n\nCovenant had time to tell the tentacle or the Feroce, \"Leave my companions here. They can't help me. I'll need them later.\"\n\nThen the tentacle lashed down. Like a cracked whip, it snapped around him. Its fingers grasped every possible surface of his shirt, his jeans, his limbs. Coils clasped his arms hard to his sides. A heartbeat later, the tentacle sprang back; jerked him into the air with appalling ease.\n\nHe heard no response from the _Haruchai_. Only the voice of the Feroce scaled, frail and frantic, into the dark.\n\n\"Try to believe that you are the Pure One.\"\n\nIn a flicker as brief as a blink, he thought that he saw the Humbled take hold of Horrim Carabal's acolytes. Then the lurker snatched him through the sky as though the monster intended to hurl him into the heart of Sarangrave Flat.\n\nHellfire! He could not move his arms; could hardly breathe. Black trees and obscured streams rushed below him as if they were plunging into an abyss. If the lurker did not fling him to his death, it was going to squeeze out his life.\n\n_Your alliance was a thing of the moment._\n\nThe Feroce would have reacted differently if their High God had been mastered by _turiya_. The Humbled would have tried to ward Covenant. But he could not be sure that the lurker understood his intentions\u2014or knew how effortlessly he might be crushed.\n\nHe had no measure for direction or distance. The wetland seethed like a cataract below him. Night blinded every horizon. The roar of wind in his ears covered the stricken pound of his pulse. When he was thrown, he would soar for leagues before he hit and died.\n\nWithout warning, the coils wrenched him downward. Before he could even try to fill his lungs, Horrim Carabal slammed him into a pool, buried him in deep water acrid with poisons. His eyes would have been ruined in their sockets if he had not clenched them shut.\n\nBut the tentacle did not stop. It tore him through water and muck as easily as it had carried him above the marsh, as if he had no substance and did not need air.\n\nThe monster did not mean him harm. It had good reason to be terrified of white gold and Loric's _krill_. Good reason to fear wild magic. But it did not understand its own strength\u2014or Covenant's weakness. He was dying for air. The corrupt water stung him like a swarm of ants, biting and endless. Apart from suffocation and dread and pain, he felt only nascent fire, as if his mere presence sufficed to set the toxic waters ablaze.\n\nBut he was well acquainted with pain. It was human and inevitable: he could ignore it. And dread was akin to fury. _You are the white gold_. When his fear became a form of rage, he could burn his way free.\n\nSuffocation was altogether worse. Drowning was worse. He could more readily have endured the excoriation within a _caesure_. Drowning was desperation. It led only to unthinking frenzy.\n\nHe had to have air. _He had to have air_.\n\nOr he had to have peace: the silence of the last dark, voiceless and blissful: the surrender of every demand and desire.\n\nAir or peace: one or the other. He could not be given both.\n\nBut he wanted air.\n\nHe would never get it. He was already failing.\n\nStill his given body remembered its own exigencies, its own compulsory striving. It locked itself against the impulse to inhale death\u2014\n\n\u2014until the lurker suddenly ripped him upward.\n\nHe knew nothing; remembered nothing; could not interpret his changed rush through the fluid dark. But the flesh which Linden had fashioned for him was ruled by strictures that did not require conscious choices. As the tentacle heaved him out of the water and thrust him high, the pressure in his chest seemed to explode. Bursting, he found air.\n\nFor a time, nothing existed except wretched gasping and life. Blots like devoured stars swam across the void inside his eyelids, inside his head. Air and the wind of his blind movement exacerbated the sting of the waters until it felt feral, as fierce as wasps. Every breath was tumid and rank, difficult to take. The night tortured him with questions for which there were no answers.\n\n_Try to believe that you are pure._\n\nBecause he had to see, he slitted a glimpse outward and found ruptured dazzles there as well.\n\nHis eyes bled tears. Light smeared his vision. The shining was a noxious silver like and unlike the alloyed clarity of wild magic. And it was tainted by an underhue of emerald that resembled the virulence of the Illearth Stone. He did not understand it. The tentacle jerked him from side to side, asking its own febrile questions. The Sarangrave's fouled waters clung to his skin like scales. He felt blisters bubbling everywhere.\n\nBut tears washed away bitter minerals and evil. Blinking rapidly, he began to see.\n\nBelow him stretched a pool the size of a small lake. It veered one way and another as the tentacle squirmed. Its surface blazed with a nacreous lucence as dangerous as necrosis.\n\nFrom the depths of the water rose two more tentacles. They were thick as towers, supple as serpents, mighty as siege-engines. And they were locked in battle. One struck at the other while the other writhed to avoid blows that would have toppled oaks. The ferocity of their movement churned the pool to froth. Their struggle cast shadows like screams across the wetland, but did not quench the light.\n\nThe attacking arm feinted to distract the other. An instant later, the attacker flung itself like a noose around its foe near the water-line. It tightened and strained, apparently trying to rip the other arm in half.\n\nAt first, Covenant did not recognize what was happening. Then he did. The lurker seemed to be fighting itself, but it was not. It was resisting the Raver. Covenant felt _turiya_ 's loud malevolence in the caught tentacle. The Raver's mastery of the monster had reached this far along one arm. Now Horrim Carabal strove to tear off the possessed part of itself before _turiya_ could claim more.\n\nA doomed struggle: the lurker could not clench tightly enough, dismember itself swiftly enough. And it could not make the Raver flinch or shy because the Raver was not afraid. Moments after the monster grabbed its own arm, Covenant saw _turiya_ Herem's evil slip past the constriction and spread farther.\n\nThe lurker released that arm, tried for a new grip. What else could the monster do? But it could not preserve itself by that means. The truth was plain. The Raver's viciousness moved too easily. Even if the lurker contrived to stop _turiya_ in one place, Lord Foul's servant would simply shift his possession to another tentacle.\n\nA timid shriek thronged into the dark sky. Around the pool were gathered the lurker's worshippers, hundreds of them. Some stood to their waists in the water: others crowded the verge. From all of their hands shone green fires, bright desperation. Their wailing was a ululation of terror. But their hands and flames moved in unison, dropping low and then rising high as one, swaying from side to side like an invocation.\n\nIn the distance behind them crouched tormented growth and lurid streams, helpless in spite of innumerable toxins. Beyond the light lay beleaguered darkness.\n\nThe Feroce were trying to save their High God. Surely that was what they were doing? But Covenant had no idea what they sought to accomplish.\n\nThen he understood.\n\nTwo nights ago, in his cave above the Sunbirth Sea, the lurker's creatures had given him unexpected aid. Wielding their peculiar theurgy, they had caused the Harrow's prostrate destrier to recover its captious nature. _We have not given it strength_. _We cannot_. _But we have caused it to remember what it is_. That gift had enabled the beast to bear Covenant farther than he would have thought possible.\n\nNow the Feroce were fighting for the spirit of their High God with the only power they had: the power to impose memories. Frantically they struggled to help the lurker recall freedom.\n\nThat effort, too, was doomed. _Turiya_ Herem was stronger.\n\nNevertheless the effects of emerald worship and panic granted Covenant a little time to gather himself.\n\nHe could not help the lurker as he was, trapped in the tentacle's coils. But he had only one way to communicate with the monster, to explain his needs and intentions; and the turgid atmosphere resisted every breath. His gasping did not bring in enough good air to support a shout that the Feroce might hear.\n\nHe tried anyway.\n\n\"Listen,\" he croaked: a sound too small to pierce the forlorn shrieking; the savage slash and pound of tentacles; the turmoil of bright water. \"I want to fight, but I can't move my arms. I have to reach the _krill_. And your High God has to work with me. We have to fight together.\"\n\nHis flawed sight detected no sign that any of the creatures had heard him.\n\nStill the lurker of the Sarangrave feared possession more than pain. Doubtless the monster did not understand what Covenant had said. Yet it recognized that he had spoken. Perhaps it had felt his resistance as he squirmed against its coils.\n\nAbruptly a fourth arm reached out of the scourged pool. It snatched up a cluster of the Feroce. Wrapping them like Covenant, the massive appendage lifted them until he could look straight into their appalled eyes.\n\n\"Listen,\" he panted again. \"I need my arms. I have to reach my knife.\" It was likely that the Feroce did not know Loric's dagger by name. \"And your High God has to carry me to the right place. The place where I can cut off the horror, all of it.\n\n\"Make him understand. We have to do this _now_.\"\n\n_Turiya_ did not fear the lurker, but he would fear the _krill_. He would fear wild magic.\n\nRound eyes gaped at Covenant as if they had been blinded. The creatures had been crying out continuously. They did not stop. And there was no difference between the wailing in front of Covenant and the shrieks from below. All of the Feroce had one voice, the same voice. They uttered only anguish.\n\nYet the grip of the lurker's arm loosened. Its fingers shifted the coils lower on Covenant's chest.\n\nStill he could hardly breathe. The air was too damn thick\u2014\n\nWith all of his insignificant strength, he tried to grasp the _krill_.\n\nThe tentacle moved farther. After a moment that made dots of weakness dance across his sight, his halfhand found the dagger.\n\nNow, he thought. Hellfire! _Now_.\n\nHolding his weapon for his life, he drew it free. Dropped its covering. Raised it over his head in both hands.\n\n\"I'm ready,\" he gasped. \"Do it!\"\n\nWith actions as plain as language, Horrim Carabal chose agony. Any maiming was better than possession. In an instant, the monster stopped fighting itself. With a ponderous heave of its possessed tentacle, it extended the boundary between itself and _turiya_ Herem's mastery higher and then higher; away from the corrosive waters; closer to Covenant's elevation.\n\nAs if Covenant were an axe, the lurker swung him at a section of the massive arm which _turiya_ had not yet claimed.\n\nIn every limb, Horrim Carabal had the strength of half a dozen Giants. It struck with the force of frenzy. Covenant whipped forward like the crack of a flail. When his blade bit flesh, any ordinary weapon would have been ripped from his clutch. But wild magic whetted the edges of Loric's _krill_. Spitting flames, the dagger cut. Covenant hardly felt the impact.\n\nHis blow sliced partway through the tentacle. Vile blood fountained from the wound. It stank like distilled corruption. The whole of the Sarangrave seemed to erupt in an excruciated howl as if every leaf and stem and bog, every current, every swath of scum gave voice to the lurker's pain: a howl so vast that it effaced the thin shrieking of the Feroce.\n\nBut the tentacle was not severed. It was far too thick to be lopped off by a single slash. Through the gush of blood and the yowling, Covenant felt _turiya_ hesitate in alarm; draw back. In another moment, however, the Raver would surely control his fear. He would rush to pass beyond the cut deeper into Horrim Carabal.\n\n\"Again!\" Covenant rasped, although he could not hope to be heard. He could not hear himself. He needed the lurker to understand that if it did not ignore its hurt\u2014\n\nLike the Raver, the monster hesitated.\n\nThen it recovered its fury. Still howling like myriad ghouls, like the immeasurable torment of the damned, the lurker swung Covenant again.\n\nThe second slash cut through more of the appendage. Torrents of blood stained the waters, and were swallowed by shining. The lurker's roar seemed to batter Covenant's bones. Dazed by conflicting brightnesses, he could no longer see. The _krill_ 's heat ached in his wrists. Soon he would be too badly burned to hold on.\n\nBut now the monster did not hesitate. Savagely it swung yet again.\n\nFlopping like a doll in Horrim Carabal's coils, Covenant delivered a third cut.\n\nThe possessed arm was toppling. Still it had not been entirely severed. And while it fell, the Raver's lust to rule the lurker overcame his fear of Covenant's power. Vicious as a striking asp, _turiya_ Herem surged forward.\n\nAs if the monster's pain and rage had become his, Covenant thought, Over my dead body.\n\nIn a rush like delirium or exaltation, the Unbeliever and his ally hacked once more\u2014\n\n\u2014and the slain tentacle crashed down into the pool.\n\nStunned by howling and hot blood, Covenant struggled to retain his grip on the _krill_ ; his grip on himself. Cutting off the claimed limb was a temporary victory at best. The Raver had not been harmed. If Covenant did not strike again instantly\u2014if he did not force _turiya_ to defend against him\u2014Lord Foul's servant would escape. At need, the Raver could claim one or more of the Feroce. He might feel demeaned by their littleness, but he could conceal himself among them nonetheless. And if Covenant failed to locate him before he rallied his strength, he could make another attempt on the lurker.\n\nCovenant felt like a toy in the hands of an insane juggler, utterly disoriented, impotent with vertigo. Up and down had become the same thing. He could not distinguish any of his horizons. The violence of the monster's movements seemed to have dismembered him.\n\nStill he refused to accept a victory that might become defeat at any moment.\n\nThe lurker had done its part. The rest was Covenant's problem. He had to do something.\n\nNow or never.\n\nWith as much haste as Horrim Carabal's thrashing allowed, he tugged the chain holding Joan's ring over his head, clasped the hard circle in his left hand. Then he slapped the ring and the dagger's gem against each other.\n\nWithout transition, conflagration erupted in him as if his living flesh were tinder.\n\nSudden power anchored him. Disarticulated pieces of his surroundings were flung back into their natural relationships. But he did not care about his horizons, or his position in the air, or the lambent waters. The strange voice of the Feroce meant nothing to him. He needed\u2014\n\nThere, in the pummeled pool; in the corpse of the cut tentacle subsiding toward the depths: _turiya_ Herem. He felt the Raver's presence as if it were louder than the monster's roar.\n\n\u2014needed the lurker to drop him.\n\nHis fierce fire succeeded. It made the monster's coils flinch, loosen. Voluntarily or involuntarily, Horrim Carabal let go of him directly above his target; and he fell.\n\nFor an instant, he tumbled helplessly, out of control. But he was far from the waters when the lurker released him; and his fire made everything clear. Wild magic lit his nerves as if it were percipience. He had a sharp shard of time in which to master his limbs, twist his posture into a dive.\n\nStill holding white gold against Loric's gem, he struck the turbulence head first and plunged deep.\n\nAt the last moment, he remembered to shut his eyes. This water would blind him. It would scald his skin until it fell from his bones. But he was too frantic and furious to care. And here he did not need sight: there was nothing to see. He only had to sink faster than the tentacle. He had to reach it before _turiya_ could escape.\n\nHe sensed the Raver's terror. It filled the pool, as bright and bitter as the waters. But he also felt the slain appendage below him. It was close.\n\nAs he hit the still-squirming arm, he hammered the _krill_ into it and sent a blast of passion along its length, striving with his last breath, his last strength, to shred the Raver. If he accomplished nothing else with his life, he would at least give Linden the lurker of the Sarangrave as a potent ally rather than a lethal foe.\n\n_\u2014writ in water._\n\nDelirious and resolved, he poured out his heart until he felt _turiya_ Herem's spirit begin to fray.\n\nTorrents of wild magic ripped through the Raver. _Turiya_ was ancient and enduring, single-minded in his malevolence. He withstood more force than Covenant could have survived. But he was going to die.\n\nIf Covenant did not falter first.\n\nBadly burned, and dying for air, he grew weaker. He was human, after all, heir to every inadequacy that made life precious. No matter what his determination demanded of it, his body could not absorb unlimited quantities of damage. There were prices to be paid for the feats which he asked of himself. Collapse and unconsciousness were only the beginning.\n\nWithout the lore of forbidding\u2014\n\nBefore the end, however\u2014the Raver's end, or Covenant's\u2014the _krill_ was snatched away. Covenant almost dropped Joan's ring, but its chain was tangled in his fingers. Strong arms closed around him, bore him surging toward the surface. He had no time to remember that he was not done; that the Raver was still alive. His head was lifted into the air. Of its own volition, his defeated body fought for life.\n\nStentorian as a Giant, Branl shouted, \"These waters harm the Pure One! He must be relieved!\"\n\nThe Master supported Covenant with one arm. In his other hand, he clasped High Lord Loric's dagger.\n\nDeprived of theurgy, Covenant's head reeled. He could not understand what was happening, could not think, could hardly suffer the burns that ravaged his skin. Confused and thwarted, sick with vertigo, he did not recognize it when the tip of a tentacle slipped between him and Branl; when it curled around him and pulled him out of Branl's embrace. He only knew that now he hung in the air close to the seethe and lash of the pool. He did not know how or why.\n\nBelow him, Branl sculled as if he were waiting. In fragments of residual clarity, Covenant saw a fretwork of fine blisters on the Humbled's arms. The fabric of Branl's tunic appeared to be rotting on his shoulders. The gem of the _krill_ blazed with power that seemed purposeless, devoid of meaning.\n\nHellfire, Covenant groaned as his mind wandered among his defeats. Hell and blood. What have you done?\n\nThen he felt _turiya_ Herem rising. The viciousness of the Raver's aura pierced Covenant's bewilderment.\n\nWith the slow deliberation of a torturer, Clyme of the Humbled broke the surface in front of Branl. They were no more than two arm spans apart.\n\nAt the sight, Covenant's confusion became keening. That was not Clyme: it was _turiya_. The Raver's presence was too fierce to be mistaken for anything else.\n\nThe light of the acrid waters reflected in Clyme's eyes like the eagerness of depravity. The grin baring his teeth anticipated bloodshed and triumph.\n\nOh, hell. Hell and damnation. Clyme was possessed. _Turiya_ Herem had taken him.\n\nThat should have been impossible. Covenant had said as much. He knew it to be true. The _Haruchai_ could not be mastered by anything less than the concentrated evil of the Illearth Stone. They were too strong.\n\nNevertheless _turiya_ wore Clyme's body like a cloak. It was his to use or discard.\n\nCovenant's heart struck blows like knells inside his chest. His mind staggered, clutching at implications, inferences.\n\n_Turiya_ Herem could not have mastered Clyme. That was entirely impossible. It defied reality.\n\nTherefore\u2014\n\nGod in Heaven!\n\nTherefore\u2014\n\nCovenant wanted to wail.\n\nClyme must have _admitted_ the Raver. He _must_ have. No other explanation sufficed. Branl had interrupted Covenant, and Clyme had acquiesced to _turiya_ , so that the brother of _samadhi_ and _moksha_ would not perish.\n\nSo that Covenant would not sacrifice himself trying to destroy the Raver.\n\nSweet Christ! What have you _done_?\n\nIf Horrim Carabal had dropped Covenant again, he would have flung himself at Clyme in pure panic. But the lurker's coils held, and Covenant was too weak to break free.\n\nSwimming with his head and shoulders above the surface, Clyme glared delight at Covenant.\n\n\"Do you behold me, groveler?\" the Raver panted as if words were an unfamiliar exertion. \"You have attempted my end, yet you have not overcome me. Now your companion is mine.\n\n\"Will you slay him to assail me? I judge that you will not. Your heart is flawed. It cannot sustain such deeds.\"\n\nGroveler. That ancient epithet suited Covenant. He deserved it. He had become an avatar of abjection in the flagrant depths of the Sarangrave.\n\nBut _turiya_ Herem was not done. His malice demanded taunts which he spat out with extravagant glee. Only the effort, the obvious difficulty, with which he fought to speak hinted that his exultation was marred.\n\n\"The killing of your mate I acknowledge. There you surpassed my expectations. But her death bore the stench of mercy. That reek will not arise from the fate of Clyme _Haruchai_ , Master and Humbled. His execution at your hands will be purest murder.\" Clyme gnashed his teeth as if he were rending flesh. \"You lack the _belief_ necessary to the task.\"\n\nCovenant thought that he heard Branl say, \"Trust in us, ur-Lord.\" An echo of earlier promises. But he could not drag his attention away from _turiya_ 's scorn and Clyme's surrender. And the turmoil of the pool was loud. It masked every voice except the Raver's. Horrim Carabal's hurt and trepidation seemed to make no sound. Even the Feroce appeared to have fallen silent.\n\n\"Nonetheless,\" _turiya_ gasped savagely, \"I desire you to surpass yourself yet again. I crave the pleasure of your efforts to extinguish me. Should you discover within yourself the valor which you lack, you will learn its futility. Blithely I will disencumber myself of this mad _Haruchai_. While you expend your despair upon your companion's husk, I will possess myself of other lives\"\u2014he gestured around him\u2014\"which attend upon us in abundance. And if you seek me among these timorous wights, I will renew my mastery of their High God.\n\n\"Your death is thereby made certain. If I do not compel the lurker to slay you, the Sarangrave itself will do so. Already your passing has been too long delayed.\"\n\nClyme's grin stretched. He seemed to be screaming. Then he bit down on his lips until his teeth drew blood. The muscles at the corners of his jaw knotted like fists. For a moment, he squeezed the reflections out of his eyes. Anguish and resistance twisted across his visage like noisome creatures crawling under his skin. Blisters burst. They leaked dire fluids. His arms flailed.\n\nWhen he opened his eyes again, the light in them had changed. They caught the _krill_ 's radiance rather than the shining of the waters.\n\n\"This Raver lies.\" Clyme's voice was torment\u2014but it was _Clyme's_. \"He does not hold me. I hold him. I contain him as Grimmand Honninscrave once contained his brother. His mockery and struggles I disdain. He cannot flee. I will hold him while his ruin is achieved.\"\n\nAgain the Master's eyes were forced shut. In spite of _turiya_ 's opposition, however, he reopened them almost immediately. Ignoring the involuntary contortions which complicated his mien, he made his purpose clear.\n\n\"But his end must come swiftly. Though I am _Haruchai_ withal, and potent in my fashion, his malice undermines me.\n\n\"I will hold him.\" He looked, not at Covenant, but at Branl. \"The _krill_ must accomplish his death.\"\n\nAnd Branl did not hesitate. His people did not forgive. Because they did not mourn, they did not know mercy. Nor did they count the cost.\n\nOne swimming stroke took him close enough. Without a heartbeat's pause, he plunged the dagger into Clyme's chest.\n\n_Turiya_ 's shriek exceeded hearing. It scaled higher as though it had the power to make the whole of the Sarangrave tremble. The sound ripped along Covenant's nerves until they seemed to bleed.\n\nClyme's features looked like they were being torn apart. Still he retained the iron intransigence of the _Haruchai_. At the end of his life, he lifted his head to Covenant. While blood gushed from his mouth, he pronounced distinctly, \"Thus I answer the objurgations of the _ak-Haru_.\"\n\nBranl disagreed\u2014or his approval was so great that he could not contain it. Clyme's affirmation unleashed a kind of madness. Violence which had simmered beneath the impassivity of the _Haruchai_ for millennia exploded in the last of the Humbled.\n\nGripping Clyme's shoulder with one hand, Branl cut open the whole of Clyme's torso in a single slash. When the _krill_ found the friable barrier of bone between Clyme's hips, Branl dragged the blade in a circle through the Master's abdomen, disemboweling him. Then Covenant's companion drew back the dagger and began to hack\u2014\n\nCovenant tried to look away. In that attempt also, he failed.\n\nFlesh was soft to the _krill_ 's keenness. Bone meant nothing. In a convulsion of movements so swift that no part of Clyme had time to sink, Branl severed his comrade piece from piece until only gobbets and shards remained. Then finally they drifted away like stains upon the water; and the pool fed on them like a beast devouring tidbits. Moments after Branl ceased his butchery, they were gone, all of them.\n\nOh, Clyme! Is this what you think Brinn wanted?\n\nWhen he was done, Branl swam below Covenant, squinting upward with galled eyes.\n\n\"Are you content, ur-Lord?\" Grief clenched his visage. \" _Turiya_ Raver is unmade. Naught of him endures.\"\n\nBut the same was true of Clyme.\n\nCovenant had no answer. He wanted to weep; but he was in too much pain for tears. The Feroce called him the Pure One. They had asked him to _believe_. But he had not redeemed them, just as he not redeemed their distant ancestors, the _jheherrin_.\n\nThe Humbled had proven themselves. Nevertheless the difference between Saltheart Foamfollower's example and that of Branl and Clyme was more than Covenant knew how to bear.\n\n## 5.\n\nComing\n\nFury and thrashing were gone from the Sarangrave. By increments, the astringent light subsided from the pool. Breathing became marginally easier. With elaborate care, the lurker lifted Thomas Covenant high into the air. Another tentacle arose to bear Branl of the Humbled and High Lord Loric's _krill_.\n\nStately as a procession, at once celebratory and funereal, Horrim Carabal carried its saviors eastward above the writhen trees of the Flat.\n\nScores of the Feroce accompanied them. Scurrying around copses, sinking and then rising in quagmires, drifting like mist across streams and backwaters, the creatures went ahead of their High God's allies. And as they moved, they kept their emerald fires bright in their hands. Like the Wraiths of Andelain, the Feroce thronged forward in homage, escorting Covenant and Branl through the contortions and perils of the lurker's demesne.\n\nBut Covenant ignored the monster's acolytes. With the last of his scant endurance, he clung to Joan's ring and tried to stifle images of butchery. The manner in which Branl had destroyed Clyme burned in his mind. The sight seemed acid-etched inside his lids: whenever he closed his eyes, he saw it. The world had become a visceral dismay that refused utterance.\n\nAround him the fires of the Feroce shed little insight: a gleam of green across scum and mirkweed here, a brief flash on scrub and branches there. But the _krill_ still shone, casting its spectral light through the Sarangrave. The waters had destroyed the dagger's protective fabric covering. The haft's heat must have hurt Branl's hand; but if it did, he gave no sign. His true wounds ran deeper. His countenance was a fist which he could not unclench, and he did not glance at Covenant.\n\nIn the gem's echo of wild magic, tree limbs and marsh reeds as ghostly as spirits bobbed as if they were bowing. Harsh grasses swayed from side to side in consternation or awe.\n\nThen the tentacles paused above a small pond as clear and dark as the ravaged heavens: an eyot of starker blackness in the crowding mass of the Flat. There the damp voice of the Feroce rose. \"Our High God loathes the touch of such water,\" the creatures intoned. \"You will fall. But we have caused the water to recall its ancient purity. It will soothe you while we prepare a more worthy consolation.\"\n\nSoothe you, Covenant thought dully. That would be nice. His body was covered in blisters that stung like the tears which he could not shed. Anything cool\u2014anything that was not gall and bitter lamentation\u2014\n\nThe arms of the lurker sank close to the lightless pond. Briefly they hovered as if they were considering their options. Then they uncoiled.\n\nWith Branl beside him, Covenant dropped into cleanliness that resembled bliss.\n\nThe Feroce had spoken truly. Their magicks had made this water pure. He could drink from it, and drink, without any aftertaste of the seepages and rot which polluted the wetland. Nevertheless it did not heal. It was not Glimmermere. It did not wash away hurts or cleanse souls.\n\nHe needed something more. Untenable weeping filled his chest. He could not shut his mind's eyes against the brutal slash of the _krill_ in Branl's hand.\n\nThe _Haruchai_ swam at Covenant's back, supporting him. That was well. Covenant was too weak to move. And he did not want to look at Clyme's killer.\n\nPerhaps to ease his burned hands, Branl held Loric's knife underwater. That, too, was well. Darkness was another kind of balm. It eased Covenant's aggrieved nerves.\n\nAfter a time, he remembered to replace the chain of Joan's ring around his neck. Then he asked the dusk, \"Did you have to do that? Couldn't you just kill him and be done with it?\"\n\nHe had seen _Haruchai_ fight on any number of occasions, but he had never seen such an abandoned frenzy of violence.\n\nBranl's answer ached across the water. \"It was agreed between us. We remember Grimmand Honninscrave, and the Sandgorgon Nom, and _samadhi_ Sheol. By Grimmand Honninscrave's death, Nom rent the Raver. Yet shreds of that dark spirit endured within the Sandgorgon. They endure still, and cling to malice.\n\n\"We knew no other means by which _turiya_ Herem might be altogether unmade.\"\n\nCovenant nodded to himself. He accepted Branl's justification. What choice did he have? The Humbled had argued against pursuing _turiya_ , or considering the lurker's plight\u2014and still they had accomplished something that Covenant could not have achieved alone.\n\nLater he suggested like an offer of forgiveness, although he did not know how to forgive anything that had occurred, \"Then maybe you'd better explain how you did it. I told the Feroce to leave you behind.\"\n\nSilence held the gloaming for a while before Branl replied, \"It was not difficult to persuade the Feroce that you would have need of us.\" He sounded like the stars, forlorn and doomed. \"Our lives are memory. The creatures have no power to disturb or alter us. And their fear for their High God was extreme. Regardless of your command, they could not reject any form of aid. They summoned the arms of the lurker, that we might follow behind you.\n\n\"Thereafter Clyme and I determined our course together. I chose the task of your life, deeming that purpose paramount. Freely Clyme assumed the burden of the Raver.\n\n\"The _ak-Haru_ spoke of simony. We are\"\u2014his sudden pause had the force of a stab\u2014\"we were the Humbled. We could descry no other means by which we might correct our fault. How otherwise might we have become worthy of the Guardian, and of ourselves?\"\n\nIn a voice thick with woe, he concluded, \"I must believe that good may be gained by evil means.\"\n\nAnd now you're alone, Covenant sighed. This far from any of your people, you're cut off from everything that makes you who you are.\n\nAs isolated as a leper.\n\n_Simony_ , by hell! Covenant breathed faint curses to himself. Branl's people had never been as open-hearted as the Giants. But they had always been generous with their lives.\n\nEventually Covenant began to think that forgiveness might be possible after all.\n\nThen a shiver of anticipation or effort ran through the burning green around the pond. Sharing one voice, the Feroce announced, \"Consolation has been made ready. We are the Feroce. Our High God speaks in us. But you must remove yourselves from the water. To sustain its purity demands much of us, and our High God will not touch it.\"\n\nWith Covenant's consent, Branl swam toward the pond's edge. And when they were able to stand in the muck of the bottom, two tentacles snaked out of the surrounding marsh. As before, the lurker's arms closed carefully around Covenant and Branl, and lifted them high to avoid the trees.\n\nAgain the _krill_ shone silver in all directions, but its light revealed nothing that might be _consolation_.\n\nSide by side, Covenant and Branl arced upward, still moving eastward, into the accumulated dark of night in a sunless world.\n\nHorrim Carabal bore Covenant and his companion so lightly that he had no sense of duration or distance. He only knew that he was moving because the Sarangrave squirmed below him and the air felt like a rasp on his raw skin.\n\nSoon, however, the tentacles descended again. Then the lurker halted once more. This time, the monster held Covenant and Branl over a vaguely shimmering swath of dampness like a pit of quicksand eight or ten paces wide. Here, also, Feroce surrounded the lurker's destination. But now their numbers had become a multitude. Hundreds of the creatures waved their small fires, making the wetland garish, and chanted like worshippers in the presence of divinity.\n\nHorrim Carabal poised Covenant and Branl over the center of the quag, but did not drop them. The Feroce did not speak.\n\n\"Ur-Lord.\" Branl's tone changed. Surprise\u2014or something more than surprise\u2014penetrated his distress. \"Here is a great wonder. I would have avowed that such a\u2014I have no name for it\u2014that such astonishment could not exist in Sarangrave Flat. Surely it is precluded by the manifold illnesses and evils of the lurker's demesne. Yet it is unmistakable. It is\u2014\"\n\nHe stopped as though what he beheld had sealed his throat.\n\nCovenant peered downward, but he saw nothing that did not resemble quicksand or some other mire. He smelled only the cloying scents of rancid plants and putrefaction. The tumid exudation of the lurker's presence made breathing difficult.\n\n\"What is it?\" he murmured. \"What do you see?\"\n\nThe Humbled appeared to wrestle words past an obstruction. \"Ur-Lord, it is hurtloam. _Here_ , where no clean thing grows, and no health flourishes. It cannot be, yet it is.\"\n\n_Hurtloam_. The word sent conflicted squalls through Covenant in spite of his near-prostration and his complex pains. Hurtloam would heal his wounds; but it might also cure his leprosy. It had done so before. It could restore his crippled health-sense. It could make him potent and capable in ways which were denied to lepers.\n\nIt was life and ruin. It would rescue and damn him\u2014\n\n\u2014because his illness was essential to him. _I don't expect you to understand_ , he had told Linden's company in Andelain. _But I_ need _this_. _I need to be numb_. He had believed it then: he believed it now. _It doesn't just make me who I am_. _It makes me who I_ can _be_.\n\nHis leprosy was all that enabled him to hold the _krill_. In some sense, it was a defense against the Ravers. And he was not done. He had to remain as he was until the end.\n\nAnd yet he wanted to be healed. Oh, he _wanted_ it. He had become so much less than he needed to be. Wounds and weakness made him useless. He had nothing left to offer Linden. He would not be able to fight for the Land.\n\nInadvertently cruel, the Feroce and their High God proffered a gift which might also be a curse.\n\nAnd while hurtloam healed him, it would make him sleep. He would miss his chance to redefine his alliance with the lurker; perhaps his only chance. After everything that he and the Humbled had done to secure the terms of the bargain\u2014\n\nFearing the worst, he croaked, \"Wait!\" If the tentacle dropped him now\u2014\"Hellfire! Just wait!\"\n\nAt once, the Feroce stilled their chanting. Horrim Carabal did not let go.\n\nTogether the creatures spoke. \"Memory is a potent magic. We are the Feroce. We serve our High God. We have caused this small portion of his vast realm to remember what it was. The task has been arduous. We have expended much to complete it. But we are unworthy of the majesty which we worship. We have prepared this consolation because our High God has commanded it, and because we have failed in our service.\"\n\nImpassive now, Branl asked, \"How have you failed?\"\n\nA shudder passed through the throng. Emerald guttered in every hand. But the Feroce did not refuse to answer.\n\n\"We hazarded much, fearing the Pure One's wrath. Yet we are the Feroce. We serve our High God. For his life, we strove to awaken recall in the Pure One.\"\n\nWith those words, the small creatures drew Covenant's attention away from the conundrum of hurtloam.\n\n\"Our High God has not forgotten,\" they explained. \"He is vast in all things. He recalls a time when a strange force forbade the horror which you have slain from venturing beyond the great cliff in the west. We cannot conceive such might. But the Pure One knows forbidding. He has forgotten it.\n\n\"For our High God's sake, we sought to awaken memory. Forbidding would have served him better. It would have inflicted less agony. He would not have suffered abhorred metal and fire.\n\n\"Alas, the Pure One has sealed himself against recall. We could not elicit his knowledge. In that, we failed our High God. Our shame is great.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Covenant demanded again. \"You mean you weren't fighting for your High God? You were trying to make me remember?\"\n\nThat accounted for his wasted regret that he had no lore to forbid _turiya_ Herem.\n\nThe creatures wailed. They cowered. \"Now you are wroth. Forgive, Pure One. Our High God is himself, great in wonder and sovereignty. He has no need of our small magicks. If you will not forgive our attempt, forgive our failure.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Covenant insisted for the third time. \"You don't need my forgiveness. That's not important. But forbidding\u2014\"\n\nHe could not think. A fretwork of blisters covered his whole body. They seemed to cover his mind. Pain burst and bled wherever he turned. Whether or not he accepted hurtloam and healing, the Feroce were right: he had sealed himself against recall. For him, the strength of the Colossus was lost; irrecoverable.\n\nBut Linden\u2014\n\nShe was capable of surprises that appalled and delighted him. She might\u2014\n\nStruggling to articulate ideas as they formed, he said urgently, \"A message. I need you to carry a message for me. As fast as you can. To Lin\"\u2014he stumbled momentarily\u2014\"to the woman with the stick of power. The woman you tried to hurt. Tell her to remember forbidding.\n\n\"We're going to need it.\" _Without forbidding, there is too little time_. \"And she has resources we don't. If nothing else, she's met Caerroil Wildwood. He knows a thing or two about forbidding.\" In an ancient age, he had participated in the formation of the Colossus as an interdict against the Ravers. \"Why else did he give her those runes?\"\n\n_The end must be opposed by the truth of stone and wood,_ orcrest _and refusal._\n\n\" _Tell_ her,\" Covenant ordered; pleaded. \"Remember forbidding. Promise me you'll tell her.\"\n\nNow the Feroce appeared to grow stronger. They stood straighter. Their fires burned more brightly. \"It is done,\" they announced. \"Be assured, Pure One. Even now, your words hasten. We are little, but we are also many. We inhabit our High God's realm from verge to verge. Your command will be fulfilled.\"\n\nLike a sigh made flesh, Covenant sagged in Horrim Carabal's coils. He had done what he could. Now there was only one dilemma left to consider. One intolerable choice to make.\n\n_\u2014save or damn\u2014_\n\nHis frailty blurred such distinctions. The Lords had misremembered their prophecy about the wielder of white gold; or they had misunderstood it. The words should have been \"save _and_ damn.\" If he let himself die now, his end would be wasted. And if he let himself be healed, his life would be wasted later.\n\nTherefore he ought to choose life. While he lived, he could hope that something might change, for good or ill. _And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us_. Preferring death when life was offered was just despair by another name.\n\nBut, God, he was tired! He had already endured too much. In his present state, he imagined that the final darkness would be a kinder fate than hurtloam and more striving.\n\nAnd he was a leper. For a man like him, nothing undermined his foundations more than being cured. Because he was who he was, he did not know how to bear the moral contradiction of being spared.\n\nLike the _Haruchai_ \u2014\n\nBy that reasoning, he should have refused Brinn's succor.\n\nBut he had always been weak. Time and again, he had turned away from the strictures of his illness because he loved the Land. And Linden. In his own way, he also loved being human.\n\nAnd he had always needed help.\n\nUnder the right circumstances, weakness was a form of strength.\n\nWhile he wandered in his personal gyre, circling its edges like trapped flotsam, the Feroce renewed their thetic chant. The arms of the lurker held firm, waiting. But Branl grew restive. He, too, was in pain. The damage to his body he would doubtless survive. Certainly he would ignore it. The damage to his spirit was another matter.\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" he said at last. \"Hurtloam awaits you. Will you not accept its benison? Alone, I cannot preserve your life. The lurker and the Feroce cannot. Kevin's Dirt will make corruption of your scalds until no recovery is possible.\n\n\"It was not for this that the _ak-Haru_ healed your earlier hurts. That he saw worth in the lurker's preservation does not entail that he desired your death.\"\n\nCovenant lifted his head, stared at the Humbled. With two words, Branl had shown him a way out of his confusion: Kevin's Dirt. Hurtloam would heal him as completely as his various maimings permitted. But it had never altered his essential nature. And some of its effects might be transient. His illness might thrive again under the bale of Kevin's Dirt.\n\nWas that not the underlying purpose of Kastenessen's curse? To thwart the deepest needs of those who loved the Land? In Linden's case, to limit her access to Earthpower? In Covenant's, to deny his fitness to be loved in return?\n\nSave and damn.\n\nFinally he faced the last of the Humbled. So that he would not be misunderstood, he told Branl, \"Only if you join me.\"\n\nOnce before, he had required the Master to accept healing. Now Branl needed it as much as he did, if for different reasons.\n\nHe had no idea what he would do if Branl refused. But the Humbled did not. Nodding once, Branl said, \"If that is your wish. I have traveled too far from myself to gainsay you.\"\n\nThen he announced to the Feroce, \"The Pure One has prepared himself. We accept your consolation, deeming it well-meant.\"\n\nIn response, the chant of the creatures became a shout. Green that shed too little light flared and danced on all sides. The arms of the lurker let go.\n\nWhen Covenant fell into the mud, his whole world became spangles of gold like the rising of little suns.\n\nater Branl drew him out of the hurtloam. Tentacles lifted Covenant and the Master again; carried them away. At the eastern edge of the Sarangrave, the lurker lowered them onto a swath of grass on a hillside unspoiled by ancient wars or poisons. Then the arms withdrew, leaving only a few of the Feroce to watch and wait.\n\nBut Covenant knew none of this. He was deeply asleep, resting as though he had received an act of grace.\n\nhen he awoke, he came from the depths of dreams which he did not know how to interpret. He had sojourned among the Dead: they had given him obscure counsel. But they had stood, not in Andelain, but on the friable span of the Hazard, speaking of doom while below them raved the many maws of She Who Must Not Be Named, as ruinous as the Worm. Behind them, Branl had slain Clyme again and again; but the Dead had paid no heed. With infinite relish, the bane had devoured Elena and Linden and the future of the Forestals, making them participants in an eternal scream.\n\nIn dreams, time blurred and ran, as chaotic and rife with death as the mingled perils of the Sarangrave.\n\nForbidding, the Dead had urged. Forgotten truths.\n\nThe Chosen's son.\n\nKastenessen.\n\nA-Jeroth of the Seven Hells, who desires all things unmade.\n\nRepeatedly Branl hacked at Clyme and _turiya_ until only gobbets and blood remained.\n\nBaffled and thwarted, Thomas Covenant opened his eyes to the grey murk of dawn in a world where the sun did not rise.\n\nBut his own condition seemed to repudiate Branl's ferocity and Clyme's death. He had slept deeply and long. God, he had _slept_. On this open grass, he had slept the sleep of renewed health, fathomless as the growing gaps between the stars. It was an anodyne that he had not expected, as salvific as hurtloam, and as necessary.\n\nNo doubt he had slept too long. Every hour counted against him. But he could not regret losing the night.\n\nWhen he opened his eyes and looked at the sky, he saw the stars clearly. Those that remained were as bright as gems of Time, and as disconsolate as condemned children. One after another, they went on dying.\n\nTheir slow plight grieved him. Yet it was countered by the sheer freshness of his physical sensations. Every burn and blister had been replaced by a tingling that resembled eagerness. His heart beat with a vigor which he did not recognize, as though it had been unshackled after a lifetime of imprisonment. His fingers flexed as if they had never known excruciation. Potential smiles twitched in the muscles of his face. And his feet\u2014By hell! He could feel his toes, actually _feel his toes_. They told him that his socks and boots were still sodden.\n\nHurtloam was a miracle: there was no other word for it.\n\nAnd like his body, his health-sense had become stronger. It assured him that his new life would be temporary. Kevin's Dirt shrouded the region, wreaking its incremental havoc; working against his restoration. Nevertheless he was grateful for any reprieve. The strange alchemy of hurtloam made even Clyme's death seem less bitter. At least for a little while, the future did not look as bleak as this day, the second without true sunlight. When numbness returned to his fingers and toes\u2014when his sight began to fail again\u2014he would be able to bear it.\n\nPropping his elbows on the thick grass of his bed, he raised his head and shoulders to gauge his circumstances.\n\nHe lay on a gradual slope that he did not remember, cushioned by turf like luxuriance. Therefore he was somewhere north of Lord Foul's many battlefields; somewhere in the long wedge of hale ground between Sarangrave Flat and the Sunbirth Sea. The lurker must have carried him here.\n\nShaking his head in surprise at such consideration, he regarded his companion standing like a sentinel a score of paces past his feet. Branl appeared to be keeping watch on the rank mass of the wetland. Or he may have been\u2014\n\nBeyond the _Haruchai_ , Covenant finally noticed a small cluster of emerald fires burning in the hands of four, no, five Feroce. They waited a few steps outside the border of their native waters. Branl may have been guarding Covenant against them; refusing them in some fashion.\n\nApparently their High God was not done with the Pure One.\n\nCovenant was reluctant to face them. He did not want to recall Horrim Carabal's peril, or to think about what the Humbled had sacrificed. But time was precious\u2014and the Feroce had blessed him with hurtloam. They had promised to speak to Linden for him. They had earned his attention.\n\nSighing at the ache of memories as cruel as Joan's suffering, Covenant pushed himself to stand.\n\nAround him, murk veiled every feature of the landscape, turned hills and grass and marsh and sky to an indeterminate, irredeemable smudge. Only the wavering fires of the Feroce contradicted the universal twilight; and they cast too little illumination.\n\nAwkwardly, as if he had forgotten how to walk, he went to join Branl.\n\nLike him, the Master still wore a second skin of mud. A trivial concern: it would flake away as it dried; and in the meantime, it provided a measure of protection against the increasing coolness of the air. But under the mud, Branl's tunic hung in tatters, eaten by the Flat's corrosive waters. Indeed, Covenant's own clothes were badly damaged. His jeans looked like they had been mauled, and his T-shirt was little more than scraps. Yet that, too, was trivial. Ruined attire suited the Unbeliever and his guardian.\n\nLooking more closely, Covenant was relieved to find that Branl also had been healed. In more ways than one\u2014A portion of the distress clenched and hidden behind his _Haruchai_ stoicism had been eased. He looked like a man who had finally come to terms with an amputation, or with some other old wound.\n\nResting his halfhand on the Master's shoulder, Covenant said, \"I'm sorry.\" Perhaps he would learn how to forgive Branl if he first asked forgiveness for himself. \"I can only guess what killing that Raver cost you. But I regret it. I wish I hadn't needed you to save me.\"\n\nAgain.\n\nBranl's gaze did not waver. \"You sought to spare us, ur-Lord,\" he replied as though every human tone had been hammered out of his voice. \"That you have ever done, though you have long known that no _Haruchai_ wishes to be spared. To be denied the outcome of our deeds implies a judgment of unworth. Yet you are the ur-Lord, the Unbeliever. As we are known to you, so you are known to us. By long travail, we have learned that your choices are indeed a judgment of unworth. But it is yourself that you judge, yourself and no other. Therefore we found no insult in your wish to confront _turiya_ Herem alone.\"\n\nInvoluntarily Covenant winced. The Humbled certainly knew him too well. But he did not like to think of his personal strictures in such terms.\n\nSighing again, he changed the subject. \"Do you still have the _krill_?\"\n\nBranl nodded. From the remains of his tunic, he drew out a bundle of broad leaves. \"Do you require its light, ur-Lord? I have covered it to appease the timidity of these Feroce.\" After a moment, he added, \"They crave speech with you yet again. For that reason, they have awaited your return from slumber.\"\n\nCovenant dropped his hand. \"Never mind. They're already scared enough. They've waited this long for me. I can wait a little longer to see where I'm going.\"\n\nHe had decisions to make, but he was not ready for them. He wanted Linden's forgiveness more than Branl's\u2014or his own.\n\nStanding at his companion's side as if he and the Humbled carried the same stigma, he addressed the Feroce.\n\n\"So far, you've honored your part of our agreement.\" That the lurker wanted something else from him made him brusque. \"I expect your High God to keep doing that. We've done more than I promised. You should do the same.\"\n\nThe Feroce flinched. Their flames guttered and spat. \"You are the Pure One,\" they answered, quavering, \"though you deny yourself. So it was at the time of the _jheherrin_. So it remains.\n\n\"You have exceeded the terms. This our High God acknowledges. The alliance is sealed.\"\n\nCovenant nodded; but he did not relax. \"And my message? Did you deliver it?\"\n\n\"We are the Feroce,\" the creatures replied. Their single voice sounded like mire forced to assume the shapes of language. \"We serve our High God in every pond and stream and quag of his glory. Your words have been conveyed. Their import we have striven to convey also.\"\n\nCovenant bowed his head in relief. Linden would understand. He had to believe that she would understand. And she would know what to do. _Something unexpected_. Something that he could not imagine.\n\nBut the Feroce were still speaking. \"If we have failed,\" they said, \"or if we are not heeded, our High God commands contrition. Our lives are forfeit. Should you wish to slay us, still the alliance is sealed. It will not be unsealed.\"\n\nThen the creatures stood and waited as if they were resisting an impulse to cower.\n\nTheir unrelenting fears troubled Covenant. \"Well, gosh,\" he drawled to disguise his dismay. \"That's magnanimous of him. Is everybody in this bloody mess trying to make amends for sins they haven't committed?\"\n\nThe fires of the Feroce quailed. Their large eyes reflected emerald alarm. They had tried to help him remember _forbidding_ \u2014they had given him hurtloam\u2014and still they expected to be punished.\n\nSwearing to himself, Covenant tried to soften the edges of his voice. \"You did what you could. If we exceeded the terms, so did you. What happens next isn't your fault.\"\n\nHe meant, You don't need to be afraid of me.\n\n\"So what does your High God want now?\" he continued. \"He's already sacrificed enough of you for my sake. I don't want more. What does _he_ want?\"\n\n\"He is our High God,\" the descendants of the soft ones replied. \"His greatness commands us. We do not refuse. We\u2014\"\n\nAbruptly they flinched like children at the first touch of a flail. Facing each other, they crowded closer together. Their flames seemed to gibber.\n\nFrom their circle of fire and fear, their voice arose like muffled wailing. \"Our High God commands. The alliance is sealed. It will not be unsealed. But he asks\u2014\"\n\nFor a moment, they appeared to lose control of themselves. Their green faded to flickers in their palms. Their voice became a thin cry like an echo of their earlier shrieking. Their bodies jerked as if they were appalled by what they had to say.\n\nBut then they mastered themselves\u2014or they were mastered. Their fires sprang back to life. The flames strained upward, striving toward the heavens. Garish emerald glared like malevolence on their weak features. Their wailing became words.\n\n\"Our High God craves a boon.\"\n\nCovenant stared at their chagrin. He required a moment to grasp that the Feroce were distressed by the notion that their High God had needs which could not be met by commands or alliances or raw power; that the lurker's tremendous size and strength could be reduced to pleading. In effect, Horrim Carabal had confessed an inadequacy that struck at the roots of their devotion.\n\nShaken on their behalf, Covenant said, \"You don't need to be afraid. There's no harm in asking. I'm not offended. Just say it. What does your High God want me to do?\"\n\nHe could not tell whether the Feroce understood him. They did not unclench their circle, or lower their fires, or cease their wounded cries. After a moment, however, their wailing became speech again.\n\n\"You are the Pure One. The Pure One redeems. Now havoc comes, a great and terrible hunger. It draws near. It is death. Utter death. Our High God cannot stand against it. He does not know what he must do. Will you heed him? Will you answer?\n\n\"Our High God must not perish!\"\n\nAh. Covenant nodded again. The lurker wanted to survive, and it did not know how.\n\nBut he was loath to suggest a course of action. \"That depends,\" he said carefully. He could not guess what the implications might be. \"I don't know exactly what you're asking. First tell me this. The havoc is coming. That's a fact. But _where_? Where is it coming?\"\n\nWould it head straight toward _Melenkurion_ Skyweir? Was it ready to end the world? Or did it want more food? More _Elohim_? Or something else\u2014?\n\nThe possibility that the Worm was hungry for _something else_ made Covenant's stomach twist.\n\n\"You are the Pure One,\" the Feroce replied in consternation. \"Do you not know that the havoc nears the heart of our High God's realm, the deepest waters? How is it that you do not know?\"\n\nThe deepest waters? Covenant frowned. That must mean Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp: the delta of the Defiles Course. He groaned at the idea. The ground on which he stood seemed to cant as if realities were shifting. Hellfire! The Worm was approaching Lifeswallower.\n\nBut it could have no interest in the lurker's demesne. It would find no sustenance in that polluted swampland. And certainly the Worm had no appetite for a monster like Horrim Carabal, a living corruption of Earthpower. Which meant\u2014\n\nCovenant dragged his hands through his hair, trying to steady his thoughts.\n\n\u2014that Lifeswallower was simply in the way. The Worm would merely pass through it. The instrument of the world's end had a different goal.\n\nPerhaps the Worm was coming from the north. Perhaps its path toward _Melenkurion_ Skyweir ran through the Great Swamp by chance.\n\nOr\u2014\n\nDamnation!\n\n\u2014it was going toward Mount Thunder.\n\nTo Kastenessen. Or to She Who Must Not Be Named.\n\nHell and _blood_!\n\nBoth explanations seemed plausible. Kastenessen was _Elohim_. He might be the nearest source of food. But he was tainted. He had merged a portion of himself with the _skurj_. Their sulfurous scent might make him unpalatable. In his own fashion, he was as corrupted as the lurker.\n\nShe Who Must Not Be Named was another matter. She was\u2014Covenant had no apt language for Her\u2014a gaoled god. She was not Earthpower. Nevertheless She was _power_. If the Worm sought to feed on Her\u2014\n\nThe battle between such beings would stagger the Arch of Time to its foundations. It might accomplish the purpose for which the Worm had been created.\n\nLord Foul had planned well. Oh, he had planned well! Here was another conceivable reason why Roger had hidden Jeremiah in the Lost Deep. To conceal the boy, of course. To preserve him for Roger's use\u2014and for the Despiser's. But also to arouse She Who Must Not Be Named if Linden discovered Jeremiah's covert.\n\n_It boots nothing to avoid his snares, for they are ever beset with other snares\u2014_\n\n\"You are the Pure One,\" repeated the Feroce in trepidation. \"Will you not answer?\"\n\nWith an effort, Covenant shook aside a whirl of sickening speculations. \"Oh, I'll answer.\" He did not know what he would say until he heard himself say it. \"But you still haven't told me what your High God wants. He can't believe _I'm_ going to stop the Worm. That havoc, as you call it, will swat me like I'm nothing. What does your High God think I _can_ do?\"\n\nStraining to respond, the voice of the Feroce scaled higher. The lurker's reply was naked supplication. \"Will you counsel?\" they asked as if they wanted to weep and had no tears. \"Will you reveal what must be done? For the alliance? For our High God's life?\"\n\n\" _Damn_ it,\" Covenant muttered to himself. His impulse to speculate was too strong. His mind wheeled. \"I can't.\" Even if the Worm hunted only Kastenessen, it was certain to encounter She Who Must Not Be Named. \"Not until I know where it's going.\"\n\nBefore the lurker's servants could muster more words, Covenant turned to Branl. \"What do you think? Maybe coming to Lifeswallower is an accident. Maybe the Worm is just passing through. But maybe it's aiming for Mount Thunder. Don't we have to know?\"\n\nThe gloom masked Branl's features; but the Humbled faced Covenant with a firmness that resembled certainty. \"Ur-Lord, hear me. You contemplate a journey to the last boundary of hills between Lifeswallower and the Sunbirth Sea. Such a quest will bear us many leagues farther from our companions, wherever they may be.\"\n\nCovenant braced himself to argue; but Branl was not done.\n\n\"Understand, ur-Lord, that I do not protest. Your task is mine. I am alone and have no path other than my chosen service. Yet I must observe that our need for an end to Kevin's Dirt is absolute. Your straits confirm this. Already your illness regains its force. The Worm in Mount Thunder may perchance bring about the cessation of Kevin's Dirt. Perchance it may not. Is it not therefore plain that our surest road to Kastenessen's defeat lies toward Linden Avery and her company? Your powers and hers together are more certain of success than any chance or mischance of the Worm.\"\n\nCovenant shook his head. Studying Branl while memories of Clyme's end scarified his thoughts, he said slowly, feeling his way, \"That makes sense, as far as it goes. But what if the Worm runs into She Who Must Not Be Named?\"\n\nRealizations seemed to swarm in Branl's gaze. Apparently he had not considered the bane. \"That outcome,\" he said slowly, \"must be prevented.\" Then he asked, \"Yet how can it be forestalled?\"\n\nCovenant grimaced. \"That's the problem. We have to know where the Worm is going. We might need the lurker against it.\"\n\nWhen his companion acquiesced, Covenant turned back to the Feroce.\n\nSwallowing a clot of apprehension, he said, \"Tell your High God this. I want him alive. I'll give him counsel, if I can think of anything. But not until I know more.\n\n\"I have to see this havoc for myself. Then we'll talk.\"\n\nThe idea that he would be moving farther from Linden made him ache; but he ignored that pang as well as he could.\n\nThe creatures fluttered their fires in alarm, but they did not protest. For a moment longer, they crowded together, mewling wordlessly while their theurgy pulsed in the twilight. Then they answered, \"You are the Pure One. The Feroce will await you. Our High God commands us. The alliance is sealed.\"\n\nAt once, they broke away from each other and hastened toward the wetland. As soon as their feet entered the waters of the Sarangrave, their flames went out. Covenant lost sight of them as if the marsh had swallowed them whole.\n\nHis mouth was suddenly dry, and his heart pumped dread. The enormity of what he meant to do seemed to thicken the murk. It made the air difficult to breathe. He had no real comprehension of the Worm's puissance. For all he knew, its power was too destructive to be gazed upon. The sight alone might scald his eyes in their sockets.\n\nFiercely he told himself, Or it might not. He would learn nothing if he did not take the risk.\n\nStop dithering. Just do it.\n\nThere was no other way to earn the necessary knowledge.\n\n\"We need the horses,\" he muttered to Branl. He would probably never see Hooryl again. He had to hope that Rallyn would be able to command Mishio Massima without help. \"And food. Water. From here on, everything is only going to get harder. I don't doubt that you can hang on indefinitely, but I have to keep up my strength.\"\n\nThe Humbled nodded. He did not speak of trust in the Ranyhyn, or in himself.\n\nThat was well. Memories of _turiya_ and butchery clung to Covenant. When the _Haruchai_ invoked _trust_ , the word meant too much. Long centuries ago, Covenant had asked the ancestors of the Humbled to preserve Revelstone. Clyme's death was only one of the results.\n\nut trust was still trust. It was earned, or it was not. As faithful as the _Haruchai_ , who remembered everything, Rallyn cantered out of the dusk in Naybahn's place, answering Branl's summons. And the palomino stallion brought the Ardent's mulish beast with him. When the Humbled had checked Mishio Massima's tack, he announced that the horses were ready.\n\nWith leaves to protect his hands, Covenant uncovered the _krill_. Then he removed Joan's ring from around his neck. As he had done before, he pushed the ring onto the stub-end of the last finger of his left hand; closed his fist around the chain to secure the band. As before, he struck the dagger's gem with the ring until his body blazed with wild magic. After that, he concentrated on pressing the point of the blade into the grass while Branl carried him around Rallyn and Mishio Massima.\n\nWhen Branl lifted him into his saddle, he nearly fell off the far side. A second Humbled should have been there to catch him. But he managed to steady himself on the saddle horn.\n\nWhile his line of silver lingered in the turf, the horses surged into motion, bearing him farther from his heart's desire.\n\nfter a blink of darkness which seemed to deny any possible passage, either through time or across distance, Covenant and Branl arrived galloping in a region that looked indistinguishable from the place which they had left. The hillside may have leaned at a slightly different angle. The slope ahead may have been less even. Conceivably Sarangrave Flat had receded to the west. But Covenant could not be sure. Beyond the _krill_ 's reach, the unnatural dusk masked details, and his vision was fading.\n\nBranl took Loric's dagger and covered it, giving Covenant's eyes a chance to adjust to the universal grey. The horses ran on as if they were determined to reach the edge of the world.\n\nBefore Covenant could swallow enough of his vertigo to frame a question, the Humbled pointed ahead. After a few moments, Covenant made out a deeper gloom like a clump of shadows in the rumpled ground: a small copse in a hollow. Soon he caught the faint glint of water. A stream purled over the contours of the hillside, hastening in the direction of the Sarangrave.\n\nAs the horses slowed, Branl stated with quiet satisfaction, \"The Land is provident\u2014as is Rallyn. Here we will find both water and sustenance. Corruption's wars did not extend into this region. Nor do the blights of Sarangrave Flat.\"\n\nCovenant did not doubt his companion, but he had other concerns. While he scrambled for balance, he asked, \"How far have we come?\"\n\n\"A score of leagues, ur-Lord. Perhaps somewhat more.\"\n\nCovenant winced. Only a score?\n\n\"Did we lose much time?\"\n\n\"No other mount could have borne us so swiftly,\" Branl replied with uncharacteristic asperity. He seemed to hear a complaint in Covenant's tone. But then he continued more flatly, \"Yet it is plain that our passages are not immediate. Though the sun no longer measures the day, I gauge that mid-morning is nigh.\"\n\nCovenant frowned, thinking hard. To some extent, at least, the distances that he and Branl could cover appeared to be controlled as much by Rallyn's instincts as by the size or even the precision of his argent enclosures. Nevertheless the abilities of the Ranyhyn clearly had limits. Otherwise they would not have needed two attempts to reach the Sarangrave the previous day.\n\nStill he was losing chunks of time. Where did the hours go? Where\u2014if anywhere\u2014did he and Branl and their horses exist during the interval?\n\nThe lag may have been inherent to his specific use of wild magic; or it may have been an outcome of his relationship with Joan's ring, a ring which was not his. After all, Linden had experienced something similar. When she had saved herself and Anele from the collapse of Kevin's Watch, she had done more than pass from one place to another. She had also moved through time: in effect, she had fallen more slowly than the broken remains of the Watch.\n\nAs soon as the horses halted near the stream, Mishio Massima jerked the reins away from Covenant and began cropping grass. Branl slid down from Rallyn's back; offered to help Covenant. But Covenant dismounted on his own. For a few moments, he braced himself against the Ardent's steed while the last sensations of vertigo faded, giving himself a chance to accept the returning numbness of his feet and the loss of sensation in his finger-tips. Kevin's damn Dirt\u2014Then he left the beast's side.\n\nWith Branl, he considered the nearby trees.\n\nThey were wattle, fast-growing and resilient. In sunlight, they would have been a verdant green, fresh and promising. Now they resembled shadows cast by a different version of reality, although they swayed in the tumble of a growing breeze. Certainly they appeared to offer nothing that Covenant could eat.\n\nNevertheless the Humbled seemed sure of his own perceptions. Firmly he beckoned Covenant to accompany him among the trees.\n\nThe copse was thick. Pushing his way between the trunks, Covenant soon tripped. When he looked down, he found that he had caught one of his boots on the thick stem of a vine.\n\nIn fact, vines twisted all over the ground among the trees. The whole stand was tangled with them.\n\n\"Do you recall this, ur-Lord?\" Branl sounded subtly amused. \"You were once familiar with it.\"\n\n\"Huh?\" Covenant had lost ages of memories, but he was sure that he had never heard one of the _Haruchai_ sound amused. \"When?\"\n\n\"During the time of the Sunbane,\" answered Branl, \"it provided nourishment when Corruption's evil spawned no edible growth, and _aliantha_ were scarce. It is _ussusimiel_.\"\n\nFor a moment, Covenant groped inwardly. Then he spotted the darker knob of a melon in the gloom; and he remembered. Long ago under a desert sun, Sunder had invoked vines and their fruit from parched, barren dirt. _At need it will sustain life_ \u2014\n\nIt did not taste as piquant as treasure-berries. And it lacked their extraordinary vitality. But it would be enough.\n\n\"Well, damn,\" Covenant muttered. \"If that isn't providence, I don't know what is.\" He felt unexpectedly cheered, as if an old friend had taken him by surprise. \"Hell, I don't even know what the word means.\"\n\n\"Then, ur-Lord\"\u2014Branl held up the wrapped _krill_ \u2014\"if you do not deem it an incondign use, I will harvest melons. While you break your fast, I will weave a net of smaller vines to carry a supply of the fruit.\"\n\nCovenant found that he was too hungry to argue. \"Do it. Somehow I'm sure Loric wouldn't object, even if he did spend damn decades sweating over that knife.\"\n\nBut he did not stay to watch Branl work. Instead he turned away, sparing his eyes the stab of the gem's shining. Lit by slashes of silver, he withdrew from the copse and went to the stream to drink.\n\nProvidence in all sooth. Even here, so many leagues away from the wonders of the Land that he had known in life, there were still gifts\u2014\n\nNow he prayed that food and water would sustain him well enough for what lay ahead.\n\nsecond self-contained violation of time or space took him and Branl nearly thirty leagues closer to their destination. As Rallyn and Mishio Massima galloped out of theurgy onto a long facet of exposed rock, Covenant clung frantically to his saddle horn, straining to contain a gyre of dizziness. But Branl rode as though he and Rallyn were more dependable than stone. Over one shoulder, the Humbled carried a net sack filled with enough melons to keep Covenant fed for a day or two.\n\nA wind out of the east buffeted the riders like the presage of a gale, but it was useless to Covenant. It did not stop the spin that sickened him, or lessen the blurring of his sight.\n\nAccording to Branl, one more passage of comparable length would convey them to the bluffs between the Sunbirth Sea and Lifeswallower, the headland which bordered the delta of the Great Swamp. From that vantage, they would be able to watch for the Worm without precluding contact with the Feroce.\n\nUnfortunately noon had already passed. Each translation by wild magic washed away time as well as balance. In some sense, the linear certainty of causality and sequence formed the ground on which Covenant's mind stood. His thoughts were moments; bits of bedrock. When he blinked from one location to the next, the change staggered him as if every nerve in his body had misfired.\n\nFor that reason, and because each exertion of Joan's ring drained him, he had to rest in spite of an accumulating sense of urgency. When the horses had slowed to a halt, he half fell out of Mishio Massima's saddle and lurched away like a wounded animal looking for a place to hide.\n\nHe yearned to be alone, at least for a little while; to soothe his vulnerability in isolation. But Branl followed him. After a silence, the Humbled pronounced, \"This frailty is an effect of Kevin's Dirt, ur-Lord.\"\n\nInstead of speaking, Covenant gritted his teeth and waited.\n\nInflexibly Branl added, \"The distress which results will fade more readily if I am permitted to hold High Lord Loric's _krill_.\"\n\nCovenant blinked at the knife bright in his grasp. Damnation. It's getting worse. Like the encroaching deadness of leprosy, vertigo was tightening its noose around him. In his confusion, the injured whirl of disorientation, he had not realized that he was still holding the dagger. He had not felt its heat\u2014\n\nWith a jerk of his arm, he surrendered the _krill_.\n\nAs Branl covered the gem, dusk flooded over the region. Under other circumstances, the sun's absence would have galled Covenant. Now, however, it felt like an act of kindness. Twilight was a kind of privacy. He needed it to recover his balance.\n\nThe lurker wanted counsel, but he had no idea what he could possibly say. If the Worm caught Kastenessen's scent, it would head toward Mount Thunder\u2014and toward She Who Must Not Be Named. Nothing would survive that encounter.\n\nTo prevent that outcome, Covenant might have to ask Horrim Carabal to sacrifice itself. But the monster would surely refuse. No alliance would persuade it to surrender its life voluntarily.\n\nHe had to hope that the Worm's approach to Lifeswallower was a coincidence; that it would ignore Mount Thunder. Otherwise he would have to think of a better answer for the lurker.\n\nHampered by Kevin's Dirt and vertigo, he could hardly think at all.\n\nortunately a third passage brought him to the headland. His mount hammered up a slope of saw-edged grass between bare juts of granite and basalt: a narrowing wedge of rising ground. To the north stood the bluffs which restricted the spread of Lifeswallower. In the east were the low cliffs bordering the Sunbirth Sea. Beyond the gap-toothed horizon ahead was nothing except grey sky and stars. They seemed to mark the edge of existence.\n\nThis time, the wind hit Covenant hard. Heavy as a torrent, it knocked him askew. When he tried to dismount, he toppled backward; landed on the grass with a jolt that stopped his breathing. The ground tilted from side to side, forward and back, in a sequence devoid of reason, as unpredictable and dangerous as dreaming. Gusts swept past him, sucking air out of his mouth. Blots marred his vision like the mottling of disease.\n\nBut then Branl took the _krill_. With a suddenness that resembled fainting, Covenant began to breathe again.\n\nWhile the stains faded from his sight, and the canting of the horizons eased, he was content to lie still and let the impact of his fall ebb. The troubled labor of his heart suggested that he had undergone an obscure ordeal. Nevertheless it reassured him. It confirmed that time endured, unbroken; that one thing led to another. The Law that constrained and enabled life held true.\n\nWhen he felt ready, he rolled onto one side, forced his arms and knees under him, pushed himself upright.\n\nGod, the wind\u2014He could barely stand against it; had to squint at the sting of tears. Without Branl's support, he might not have been able to move.\n\nBlinking, he scanned his surroundings. He had the visceral impression that he was standing on the highest peak of the world. But of course that was nonsense: this was not a mountain. Rather he had arrived downhill from the wedge-tip of the headland. To the east, the sea thrashed at the Land's last rock. He smelled salt on the blast. If he could find the vantage he sought, he would be able to see the surge of waves.\n\nAround him, the headland was a jumble of protruding stone, granite and basalt weathered smooth; gnawed across the millennia into shapes that resembled anguish and intransigence. Some of the rocks wore fringes of moss in the lee of the wind. Others had acquired threadbare cloaks of lichen.\n\nPeering behind him, he thought at first that the slope sank lower indefinitely. But when he squeezed the wind from his eyes and looked harder, he realized that the westward hillside was cut off by a line of darkness in the distance. There lay the Great Swamp, sweeping around the headland toward the sea. He could not smell Lifeswallower. The wind tore away the swampland's complex fetors. But below him the waters of the delta reflected a faint shimmer.\n\nAfter a moment, he spotted the horses. They were cantering down the slope, keeping their distance from the wetland as they descended. Apparently Rallyn believed that the riders had no immediate need of their mounts. And naturally both Rallyn and Mishio Massima wanted water as well as forage.\n\nThen Covenant noticed the emerald fires, small as dots, ascending slowly toward him.\n\nHe watched the creatures briefly. But they were still far away; and he had nothing to say to them. Turning back toward the tip of the promontory, he went upward with Branl's aid until he glimpsed the darker grey of the sea beyond the headland's rim. There he stopped.\n\nThe waves heaved frantically against their own weight, hacking across each other, rising into sudden breakers, erupting in spume. Some mighty pressure disrupted the normal scend and recession of tides. The seas were flung in frenzy at the cliffs, where they rebounded, smashed together, became chaos. The wind assailed Covenant's ears with their clamor as if the headland were under siege.\n\nGripping his companion's arm, he asked, \"Can you see anything?\"\n\nBranl studied the sea. \"I do not doubt that the Worm comes, as the Feroce have declared. In turmoil, the waves contradict themselves. Some cataclysm goads these waters. But its source is too distant for my discernment.\"\n\n\"How much time did we lose?\"\n\nA slight frown of concentration or surprise disturbed Branl's mien. After a moment, he replied, \"It appears that our final passage was prolonged. Mayhap the Worm's approach misleads my senses. Nonetheless I gauge that evening is nigh. Ere long, this dusk will turn toward true night.\"\n\nThe coming of night after a second sunless day felt like a bad omen. Covenant had no power against the World's End.\n\nNonetheless he had made promises\u2014\n\n\"In that case,\" he told Branl, \"I need to get out of this wind. Can you find a place where I can watch the sea and Lifeswallower? A place with some shelter?\"\n\nNodding, Branl drew him toward the stones which cluttered the corner of the headland. In the lee of a blunted fang as tall as Covenant, the Humbled urged him to sit and rest. Then Branl left. Still bearing his net of melons as well as Loric's _krill_ , he disappeared among the twisted shapes of basalt and granite, the motley of lichen and moss.\n\nCovenant sagged against the fang; rubbed his stiff cheeks with his insensate fingers; wiped away residual tears. Reflexively he confirmed that Joan's ring still hung under his T-shirt. The wind moaned miserably past the rocks, a raw sound like keening, but he tried to ignore it. Tried to think. Wind was only air in motion, he told himself. It merely reacted to forces beyond its control. If he heard lamentation in it, or auguries of havoc, he was misleading himself. The world did not _care_ : the natural order of things did not grieve or grow glad. Only the sentient beings who inhabited time wept and struggled and loved.\n\nThere was a kind of comfort in the notion that the Earth neither understood nor feared its own peril. Its life was not a reflection of himself. But such consolation was too abstract to touch him\u2014or his dying nerves did not feel it. Ultimately nothing ever mattered, except to the people who cared about it. To them, however, the import of the stakes was absolute.\n\nCovenant grimaced ruefully at his thoughts. Long ago, he had insisted that the Land did not exist, except as a form of self-contained delirium. In that sense, it _was_ a reflection of himself. And he was powerless in it because he could not change his own image in the mirror: it only showed him who he was. Therefore he could not be blamed for his actions; or for the Land's fate. Now he found himself arguing that the world was really nothing more than an impersonal mechanism inhabited by self-referential beings. Therefore no failure, here or anywhere, could be held against him.\n\nAfter so many years, he had changed very little. He was still looking for a way to forgive himself for being human and afraid.\n\nBut in fact he did not believe that the Land and its world were simply parts of a mechanism. They formed a living creation. And like all living things, they yearned for continuance. If he failed them, the world's woe would be as vast as the heavens.\n\nWhile it lasted.\n\nThere were hints of travail in the wind; suggestions of iniquity. But he did not know how to interpret them\u2014or he was not ready.\n\nHe was still wrestling with himself when Branl returned, no longer carrying his supply of _ussusimiel_.\n\n\"By good fortune, ur-Lord,\" the Humbled announced, \"there is a covert which I deem apt for your purpose. The wind is obstructed, yet views to the east and north are accessible. Will you accompany me?\"\n\nBriefly Covenant considered what he could see of his companion. Then he muttered, \"Well, hell. Why else are we here?\" Extending his arm, he asked for help.\n\nTrue to his commitments, the Master lifted Covenant upright. And he kept his hand on Covenant's arm for support and guidance. His grasp may have been meant as reassurance.\n\nCovenant glanced downhill to check on the progress of the Feroce. Their noxious fires shone more clearly now; but they were still no more than halfway up the slope. Trusting their uncanny ability to find him wherever he was, he turned away.\n\nAs Branl drew him among the stones, the Humbled asked, \"Ur-Lord, have you determined how you will counsel the lurker?\"\n\nBracing himself on contorted plinths and tall slabs, Covenant picked his way forward. \"It's like I said. I need to know where the Worm is headed. If it comes from the north, or the northeast, and doesn't turn, it's probably going straight for _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. In that case, the lurker isn't in danger. It doesn't need advice. But if the Worm comes from anywhere south of us, it's ignoring its direct line to the EarthBlood. That means it wants Kastenessen\u2014or She Who Must Not Be Named. Then I'll have to tell Horrim Carabal _some_ thing.\"\n\n\"To what purpose?\" countered Branl. \"That you desire to determine the Worm's immediate path, I comprehend. But what will any counsel avail? The lurker will not hazard its life at your word.\"\n\nCovenant stumbled to the left around one thrust of basalt, to the right past another. The cry of the wind was louder here. It pummeled him in forlorn gusts. But as he went farther among the stones, he was spared more and more of the wind's force.\n\n\"I'm still thinking,\" he answered through his teeth. \"There has to be something we can do.\" To accomplish what? Slow the Worm? _Stop_ it? He told himself not to be absurd. \"I just don't know what it is.\"\n\nThe Humbled may have shrugged. He did not argue.\n\nHis path twisted like a maze. It seemed long. But eventually Covenant came to a small patch of grass just wide enough to sit in. Branl's net of melons rested there in a notch between stones the size of Giants. Standing in the center of the grass, Covenant found that he had a clear line of sight northward. Through a gap in the jumble, he could see the rim of the bluffs perhaps ten paces away. And beyond the precipice\u2014\n\nThere the Sunbirth Sea assailed Lifeswallower with the mindless fury of a berserker.\n\nAt one time, perhaps only a few hours earlier, the waters of the Great Swamp had drained eastward in ramified channels like the branches of an immense tree. Among them had stood islands of unpalatable grass, tormented eyots of brush, clusters of hoary cypresses and other marsh-trees like sentinels watching over a sargasso. But such things were gone now. Indeed, every feature of the delta had been inundated or swept away. The mounting seas flailed in all directions, tearing apart or dragging under everything that defined this region of Horrim Carabal's realm. The portion of Lifeswallower that Covenant could see had become indistinguishable from the ocean's violence.\n\nThe sight made him shiver as if vertigo had already wrapped its cold fingers around his heart. Grinding his teeth, he turned to the east.\n\nAt first, he could not gain a view of the sea. Too many protruding rocks rose too high. But when he leaned to one side of his covert, he found an opening. There ages of wind and weather had scalloped the sides of several stones. And one slab of basalt had lost a substantial section of its center: it resembled a cripple hunching over a collapsed chest. The result was a window like an oriel, a gap that revealed an arc of the Sunbirth Sea.\n\nThrough the window came flicks and slaps of wind, occasional stings of spray; but Covenant was able to endure them for a few moments at a time.\n\nAt that distance, he could not discern any specific swell or cross-current. The whole ocean looked like a darker and more troubled iteration of the sunless sky. Even the horizon was no more than a smear of grey. If the Worm were coming from that direction, he saw no sign of it.\n\nBlinking hard, he moved back into shelter. With a gesture, he asked Branl to watch for him. Then he lowered himself to the grass and tried to believe that he had not come so far for nothing: that when the Worm arrived, he would know what to say.\n\nBranl scrutinized the east for a while; turned his attention briefly to the ruined delta in the north. Then he shook his head.\n\n\"Ur-Lord, I judge that the Worm is not imminent. I know nothing of its speed, but I will believe that a span of time remains to us. We are granted a respite.\" He removed the _krill_ from his tunic. \"Should you wish it, I will prepare _ussusimiel_.\"\n\nCovenant nodded. \"Sure. Why not?\" He needed strength. When the Worm came, he would have to flee, whatever happened. If he and Branl died here, their lives would be truly wasted.\n\nUncovering only the dagger's blade, the Humbled deftly took a melon, sliced it into sections, cut out the seeds. The pieces he handed to Covenant one at a time.\n\nCovenant ate until only rinds remained; but he did not notice the taste, or attend to what he was doing. He was listening to the unsteady ululation of the wind, trying to decipher its oblique message. Its salt tang and its keening were auguries that he did not know how to interpret.\n\nBranl offered to prepare another melon. Vaguely Covenant declined. He was not conscious of hunger; or he was not hungry for that kind of sustenance. He wanted the richer nourishment of an _answer_.\n\nAfter cleaning the blade, Branl put the _krill_ away and resumed his study of the east.\n\nWind and salt. The ravage of the delta. The Worm of the World's End. Kastenessen. She Who Must Not Be Named.\n\nAnd Linden, who was so far away that only Rallyn would know how to find her. The thought that he might not see her again before the end made Covenant's chest ache like a wound to the heart.\n\nBranl stepped back to gaze around the stones. After a moment, he said, \"Attend, ur-Lord. The Feroce approach.\"\n\nJerking up his head, Covenant spotted glints of emerald on the rocks. Fires guttered; flared more brightly; receded. Soon two of the creatures brought their flames and their timidity to the border of the grass. Two or three more Feroce followed behind them. Their eyes cast echoes of their theurgy into his shelter.\n\nIn their damp, squeezed voice, they asked, \"Pure One?\"\n\nCovenant faced them until he was sure that they did not mean to say more; that the two words of their question sufficed for them. Then he looked at Branl. \"What time is it?\"\n\nThe Humbled was a thicker shadow in the gathering murk. \"Evening becomes night,\" he answered. Responding to Covenant's underlying query, he added, \"I do not yet descry the Worm. Though its coming is plain, it remains beyond my discernment.\"\n\nAnd mine, Covenant sighed. Tightening his grip on himself, he turned back to the Feroce. \"Is the havoc close? The Worm? Do you know? Can your High God feel it?\"\n\nThe creatures replied with a thin wail, quickly cut off. Almost gibbering, they forced themselves to say, \"It is near. How do you not know that it is near? Our High God asks what he must do. He asks with desperation. His alarm is terrible.\"\n\nNear? Covenant muttered to himself. Hellfire!\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he told the Feroce gruffly. \"You'll just have to wait. I won't know what to say until I see it.\" Almost at once, he went on, \"And I won't see anything until you get rid of those fires.\" They blinded him to everything else; cast a pall of memories over his mind. He remembered the Illearth Stone too well. \"If you can't survive without them outside the Sarangrave, hide them somewhere. I won't abandon you. I'll tell you as soon as I have something.\"\n\nThe creatures quailed. They moaned like the wind. But they did not protest. One by one, they retreated among the stones. For a while, their emerald lingered on rims of granite and basalt. Then Covenant lost sight of them.\n\n\"Branl?\" he asked anxiously. \"Anything?\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" replied the Humbled. \"I am uncertain.\"\n\nCursing, Covenant surged to his feet. The wind seemed to blow darkness into his covert. Branl was little more than an outline against the rocks.\n\nIf the Master's acute senses were uncertain, Covenant would be effectively eyeless; but he had to look. Pressing himself against his companion, he stared through the eastward oriel until the strain of trying to see made his forehead throb as if he had bruised it. Still he found nothing.\n\nOr something.\n\nA hint of light at the boundary between sea and sky.\n\n\"There.\" He pointed. \"Did you see it?\"\n\nAt first, he thought that it was heat-lightning: a storm brewing. Almost immediately, however, he realized that he was wrong. The light did not flicker and glare. Instead it appeared to float on the distant turmoil of the seas.\n\nWind lashed at his eyes. It had become a gale.\n\n\"It resembles fog.\" The last of the Humbled sounded utterly dispassionate. \"A luminous fog, lit from within. Storms which arise nowhere else clash within it.\" After a moment, he remarked, \"The fog and its storms shroud an immense power. It brings havoc in all sooth, such havoc as no _Haruchai_ has ever witnessed. Yet the power does not harm the seas. It merely disturbs them.\"\n\nWaves hammered harder at the base of the cliffs. In spite of his numbness, Covenant felt the ground under his boots trembling.\n\nHell and blood. \"That's the Worm?\"\n\nComing from the east? Straight for the Great Swamp?\n\n\"I deem that it is. And it is swift. Yet the fog\u2014and indeed the storms\u2014run some distance ahead of their source.\" Branl turned to Covenant. \"Ur-Lord, I must speak of this. Time remains to us. If you wish it, we may flee in safety. Wild magic will enable us to traverse many leagues ere this peril achieves landfall.\"\n\nCovenant clenched his teeth until his jaws ached. \"Who do you think you're kidding? We can't leave now. Not until we see what that thing does.\"\n\nThe eerie glow expanded on the horizon. Already it was distinct even to his marred vision. He felt its force in the wind on his face. Its teeth seemed to gnash at his cheeks. The luminescence did indeed resemble fog, vapor filled with lightning. But the lightning did not waver or strike: it _endured_ , a convulsion of bolts without beginning and without end.\n\nAnd the fog did not flow toward the southwest. Rather it sent tendrils like arms ahead of the storms, questing over an area as wide as the delta. Soon, however, even the most distant streamers began curving inward, reaching for Lifeswallower.\n\nReaching as if they had found the spoor of the Worm's prey.\n\nOh, bloody hell!\n\nBands of fog drifted over the seas. They drew closer with every harsh thud of Covenant's heart. Wild winds hurt his eyes, but he could not look away. Now he saw that the actinic glare within the brume was not truly constant. Instead of jumping and crackling, it swelled and receded incrementally, a slow seethe which belied the speed of its advance; a gradual rhythm like the undulating heave of a tremendous body. And every surge flung the vehemence of the waves harder against the cliffs. Collisions and crashes sounded like thunder; like the blare of steerhorns announcing ruin.\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" Branl stated, \"we must not delay. These forces threaten the headland. We cannot withstand them.\"\n\n_Damn_ it! The wind was trying to tell Covenant something. It urged him to _think_ \u2014\n\nThe inundation of Lifeswallower's delta. The bitter lash of salt.\n\nIf he judged only by smell, he would believe that the whole of the Great Swamp had already been ripped out of existence. Uncounted millennia of poisons no longer reeked; no longer spread their nauseating odors into the air. The fury of wind and water effaced every other perception.\n\nSurely that _meant_ something?\n\nStreamers full of fatal light swept closer, riding the blasts. One of them poured up the precipice in front of Covenant and Branl. Squirming like a serpent of moisture, it writhed among the stones. A ribbon as luminous as the enchanted stone of the Lost Deep brushed Covenant's cheek before he could jump back. For an instant like a heartbeat, it appeared to curl around Branl. Its touch was damp and gelid, bitterly cold, as fierce as the caress of a _caesure_. But the fog did not react to Covenant and his companion; to Joan's ring or Loric's _krill_. Oblivious to anything that was not food for the Worm, it ran on along the wind, gusting westward.\n\nNow Covenant saw a shape within the hermetic mass of the storms, a dark form limned by the heavy rise and fall of the lightning. Infelice had described the Worm as _no more than a range of hills_ in size. _An earthquake might swallow it_. But to him, it looked more like a chain of mountains breasting inexorably through the seas. Its power was staggering: he was barely able to keep his feet. Perhaps his appalled senses exaggerated the Worm's physical bulk; but nothing could measure its sheer _force_. He was too human to look at it for more than a moment at a time.\n\nBy comparison, the lurker was trivial in spite of its polluted mass. It could do nothing to thwart the Worm's passage. It could only die.\n\nAnd the World's End was definitely heading west. Toward Mount Thunder.\n\nHellfire! Hell and damnation! Covenant was thinking about the problem backward. The wind carried away the rancid effluviums of Lifeswallower and the Sarangrave. Of course it did. But considered from a different perspective, the gale _blocked_ the fetor.\n\nAnd how did the Worm find its prey? How did it locate the _Elohim_ in their myriad hiding places? By scent. It smelled them out. Not in any ordinary sense, no. They did not emit a mundane aroma. But their magicks, the mystical essence of who they were: _that_ the Worm could detect.\n\nIf those emanations could be detected, perhaps they could also be blocked. By a different kind of power. A force that was inherently _wrong_ for the Worm, antithetical to its appetites.\n\nMore urgently, Branl insisted, \"Ur-Lord.\"\n\nThe Worm's puissance had become explicit, even to Covenant's blunted nerves. Its might shone through the rigid rocks of the headland as if they were transparent.\n\nHe guessed that it was still two or three leagues out to sea. But at that speed\u2014He had no time to doubt himself. Practically reeling, he wheeled away from the oriel; away from the heedless band of fog.\n\nAnd as he moved, he yelled, \"Feroce! I need you!\"\n\nGlints of green showed in the jumble. They were too far away.\n\n\"I need your High God! I need him _now_!\"\n\nThe wind snatched words from his mouth. They disappeared among the stones, meaningless. Nevertheless the fires came closer. Gleams flashed from place to place, apparently running.\n\nAs the first creature emerged from the maze, the voice of the Feroce moaned urgently, \"Pure One? What must our High God do? He must not perish!\"\n\nStreamers searched the turmoil of the delta. Lightning pulsed with every heave of the Worm's bulk. Seas hurled chaos at the cliffs. The silent shout of storms constrained by the Worm's aura made the ground under Covenant lurch as if the foundations of the promontory were in spasm.\n\n_An earthquake might swallow it_. Under the right circumstances, Linden could trigger an earthquake. She and the Staff of Law had that kind of strength. Covenant did not: not with Joan's ring.\n\nHaste and frenzy gripped him. \"Listen fast.\" He was hardly coherent. \"Try to understand. I don't want your High God dead. He can't fight the Worm. But he has to _act_ like he's going to fight. He has to rear up. Make himself as big as he can. Right _there_.\" Covenant pointed at the drowned stretch of Lifeswallower to the north. \"I need him to block the way,\" confuse the Worm's instincts, fill the Worm's senses with corrupt emanations; mask the powers hidden in Mount Thunder.\n\n\" _Ur-Lord_ ,\" protested Branl.\n\n\"Pure One?\" The voice of the Feroce was a cry, a groan, a prayer. Their fires shuddered like the cliffs' bedrock. \"We are little. Our minds are small. We do not\u2014\"\n\nCovenant cut them off. \"Just _tell_ him!\" He wanted to tear his hair. \"I can't explain. I don't have time. I need him to _do it_. Rear up. Make himself _huge_. Pretend he's a barrier.\"\n\nIf the lurker did not panic\u2014if the monster kept its word\u2014\n\nFrantically Covenant strove to impose comprehension on Horrim Carabal's acolytes. \"The Worm doesn't want him. If he doesn't fight, it won't hurt him. But he has to look _big_ enough to fight.\n\n\" _Tell_ him! He can get out of the way if the Worm doesn't stop. But first he has to try to make it _pause_! He has to make it look somewhere else for food!\"\n\nWould that work? Of course not. Or not for long. But it might distract the Worm for a while. Slow it down. Buy a little time. Until the World's End found a different scent.\n\nThe Feroce could do what he asked of them. They could communicate swiftly enough. And the deeper waters of Lifeswallower were the lurker's true home. The core of the monster's mass and muscle lived there. If Horrim Carabal chose to do so, it could respond immediately.\n\nAlready the Worm had seethed a league closer.\n\nWind scattered the wailing of the Feroce among the stones. Their fires rose like screams. The gale did not touch their emerald theurgy, but the mounting convulsions beneath them did. The Worm's hunger made the flames flinch and bend.\n\nInstead of answering, they turned and fled.\n\n\"Ur-Lord!\" Branl demanded. He stood in the path of a glowing tendril, but it flowed around him as if he were nothing more than granite or basalt. \"We must depart!\"\n\nShaking his head, Covenant turned to peer down at the delta. \"I just need a minute! I have to see if this is going to work!\"\n\nPlease, God damn it! he begged the lurker. I almost killed myself against _turiya_. Clyme died for you. I know you're terrified. But you made a promise.\n\nWhy would Horrim Carabal comply? Covenant was asking the monster to dare its own extinction.\n\nThe lash of seas over Lifeswallower had become an undifferentiated flood. Incoming waters tried to withdraw and could not: the imponderable forces of the Worm's approach drove them farther into the Great Swamp. Night had overtaken the Lower Land, but it changed nothing. The fog shed its own light. Its radiance made the hard stone of the headland seem as insubstantial as dreams. Through obstructions of rock, Covenant felt every rise and dip of the Worm's heaving. The rhythm of its undulations was slow. It seemed almost casual. Or perhaps it was sluggish yet. Nevertheless its speed\u2014or its power\u2014filled him with dismay. His chest felt ready to burst.\n\nDesperately he stared past the rim of precipice, praying.\n\nBranl put a hand on his shoulder. \"Rallyn comes. We must ride.\"\n\nThe Humbled could have coerced Covenant; but Covenant ignored his companion. \"Look!\" Flailing one arm, he indicated the delta. \" _Look!_ Tell me what you see!\"\n\nInstead of pulling Covenant away, Branl moved to stand at the Unbeliever's side. _Your task is mine_. Leaning forward, he studied the thrash and clash of the flood. _I am alone and have no path other than my chosen service_. For a moment, he did not speak. Then he announced through the gale, \"Ur-Lord, you are answered.\"\n\nAnswered?\n\n\"The lurker gathers beneath the waters. Its bulk is immense. I cannot gauge its full extent. At present, it does not rise. It merely gathers. Yet I deem that it will heed your wishes. Its presence serves no purpose else.\"\n\n\"Tell me,\" Covenant panted. \"Tell me when it moves.\" The growing might of the Worm's aura snatched the air from his lungs. He struggled for every breath. \"I can't _see_.\"\n\nLuminescence shone through the stones, but it did not affect the Humbled. He seemed impervious to fog and catastrophe. He sounded more stolid than granite.\n\n\"Ur-Lord, there is more.\"\n\n\"More?\" Hellfire! \"Tell me!\"\n\nThe Worm was coming closer. In all the world, only a few moments remained; a handful of heartbeats. If the Worm passed the lurker toward Mount Thunder, nothing would stop it.\n\n\"The lurker begins its rise,\" reported Branl impassively. \"It is not alone.\"\n\nCovenant fought to see; fought to breathe. At first, he could only discern the tumultuous scourge and moil of seas, the accumulating pressure of the Worm's advance. But then he thought that he saw darkness swell near the boundary between the delta and the ocean. The waters there piled higher as if they were surmounting an obstacle.\n\n\"Do you descry them, ur-Lord? They cling to the lurker's sides.\"\n\nCovenant shook his head. He was sure of the monster now. In the center of his vista, it burst above the waves. Like a tectonic plate thrusting upward, the lurker jutted into the air. Breakers slammed against Horrim Carabal and were flung aside. Brandishing scores of tentacles like threats, it stretched higher, taller than any Giantship. Its central mass was a match for the Worm's. And it spread itself wide, wider than the coming catastrophe: a barricade against havoc. Clearly the monster understood its task.\n\nBut _them_? Clinging to the lurker anywhere? No. His eyes were too weak.\n\nThe lurker was too weak as well. In spite of its size and muscle, its emanations did not reach Covenant. He felt every surge of the Worm's approach; felt the harsh chill of the fog and the static charge of lightnings. But Horrim Carabal was nothing more than a shape in the distance, scarcely visible: too mortal to hinder the World's End.\n\nNevertheless the Worm slowed. Apparently it could sense the lurker's presence, although Covenant could not. A wall of malign toxins had arisen from the waters. The Worm slackened its haste as if it had become uncertain.\n\nThem?\n\nCovenant tried to plead for an explanation, but he had no air and no words.\n\nYet clearly Branl had not forgotten the effects of Kevin's Dirt on Covenant. The Humbled answered Covenant's soundless query. \"Ur-Lord, they are ur-viles. They are Waynhim.\"\n\nCovenant stared, and panted, and could not think. Ur-viles and Waynhim? Here?\n\nWhy?\n\nBranl pitched his voice to pierce the blast's lurid wail. \"I gauge that every surviving creation of the Demondim has come to oppose the Worm. Holding to the lurker's flesh, they wield their lore. Black theurgies with the appearance of corrosion spread from hand to hand among them. These magicks are not liquid. Rather they resemble strands of incantation. As they expand, they take the form of a web.\"\n\nCovenant cursed his inadequate sight. He ignored the shudders rising through the headland. Fervently he concentrated on Branl; listened as if he were counting every word.\n\n\"This web the creatures extend across the monster where it fronts the Worm. The sorcery of the web is fierce and bitter, rife with the unnatural fury of the Demondim, and of the Viles. I do not doubt that Linden Avery would name it _wrongness_. Yet the lurker takes no notice. Clearly the web does not pain the High God of the Feroce.\"\n\nCovenant groaned and swore because he could not _see_ it. He recognized only Horrim Carabal's bulk rising like midnight in the Worm's path. If the glow of the Worm's lurid aura glistened on the lurker's exposed flesh, or on the weird theurgy of the ur-viles and Waynhim, those sights lay beyond his reach.\n\nLike the world at the mercy of its own death, he was mostly helpless, yet not helpless enough to be spared the burden of bearing witness. And he was not blind to the Worm. Its power shone, vivid as etch-work, through every crouched or yearning menhir around him. It shone through the flesh of his arms and chest, lit every bone. He was as vague to himself as mist. Without Branl's solidity at his side, Branl's uncompromising substance, he might have been torn apart and scattered by the gale.\n\nIf he could not see the lurker distinctly\u2014and could not see the creatures or their lore at all\u2014he could still watch the approach of the World's End.\n\n\"It appears,\" Branl said, \"that your ploy may accomplish its intent. The lurker and the Demondim-spawn present a barricade of ill and evil, of ancient poisons and unnatural knowledge. It does not bar wind and storm and seas, though the lurker's form does so. Yet it disturbs perception. It would offend Linden Avery's percipience. It defies my efforts to name its essence.\"\n\nAnd it was working. Covenant felt that in every nerve of his disease-ridden body. It was _working_.\n\nLike the lurker itself, the strange theurgy of the web confused the Worm's senses. In spite of their fluid shapes and their arrogance, the _Elohim_ were beings of Law. They existed in accordance with the strictures of the Earth's creation. But Horrim Carabal was a perversion of Law. And the weird powers and comprehensions which the ur-viles and Waynhim had inherited or gleaned from their makers seemed to render Law meaningless. Together, the monster and the Demondim-spawn masked the scent of food.\n\nBaffled, the Worm slowed again. Gradually it heaved to a halt.\n\nA small tsunami pounded against the lurker, slashed at the web of sorcery. From border to border, the delta convulsed as if its foundations were vomiting. But Horrim Carabal withstood the assault. And the Demondim-spawn knew what they were doing. Their lore did not falter.\n\nThe Worm's storms and streamers searched to one side, explored the other. But the lurker had made itself _wide_. And the net of dark magicks covered Horrim Carabal from edge to edge. The webbing throbbed with acrid implications. The Worm's hunger hunted\u2014and did not find.\n\nThis eerie equipoise between ruin and darkness would not last: Covenant knew that. The Worm was too powerful to be stymied indefinitely. The lurker or the Demondim-spawn might flinch at any moment. They might all die. But they were holding _now_. If they could stand until the Worm detected the spoor of some other _Elohim_ \u2014or until its primal needs urged it toward _Melenkurion_ Skyweir\u2014\n\nA turn in the direction of the EarthBlood would bring the Worm straight at Covenant and Branl.\n\nClutching his companion, Covenant gasped, \"Let's go! While we still can!\"\n\nHis unlikely allies had achieved a tenuous pause. If the Land needed more time, Linden or some other power would have to provide it. Thomas Covenant had come to the end of what he could attempt as he was.\n\n## 6.\n\nPromises Old and New\n\nThe twilight did not change as Linden's company rode. A harsh grey held the landscape, a half-light without the softening of dawn or the soothing after sunset. It might have been the gloom before the onslaught of a storm, but there were no clouds. Despite the intrusion of Kevin's Dirt, the sky remained clear, fretted with doom, drawing the bright plaint of the stars closer, etching their deaths vividly against the fathomless abyss of their firmament. Linden could have believed that the Arch already trembled on the verge of collapse; but her health-sense insisted otherwise. The long strides of the Ranyhyn and the hoarse panting of the Giants insisted. Even in the absence of natural day, her pulse continued to measure out her life. And the blurred terrain continued to modulate around the company: a sign of movement that was also an affirmation that Time endured.\n\nRiding with the Staff of Law and Covenant's white gold ring into the last dusk of the world, Linden tried to think of the unrisen sun in terms that did not terrify her. After all, the sun was simply another star. The Worm's power to affect or even extinguish it made a kind of sense. And did not the gloom itself assert that the sun was not altogether destroyed? The final dark had not yet claimed the Earth. Even in this crepuscular blight, hope might be possible.\n\nKevin's Dirt asserted the contrary. Indeed, it seemed stronger here than it had on the Upper Land. Even now, no more than an hour or two after the failed dawn, the vile fug had begun leeching the sensitivity from Linden's nerves, blunting her ability to discern the conditions of her companions and even the nature of the terrain; promising failure.\n\nAccentuated by the dull light, the bloodstains that darkened the bottoms of Jeremiah's pajamas seemed to creep higher, opening like jaws to swallow him.\n\nBut the Ranyhyn ignored Kevin's Dirt. Running at a canter that accommodated the ragged endurance of the Giants, the horses had left behind the mounds surrounding the gully and the stream. Now they measured out the leagues across a hammered plain that appeared to stretch endlessly into an obscured future. Gloaming effaced the details of the landscape, rendered it effectively featureless in every direction. Still the eaten chart of the stars and Linden's tarnished health-sense confirmed that the horses had not altered their heading. They reached for the northeast with every stride, never hesitating.\n\nYet they did not neglect the needs of the Giants or their riders. In spite of Jeremiah's impatience, they paused at every clump of _aliantha_ , every thin rill and brackish pool. At such times, the boy refused to dismount. Instead he sat chafing until the company was ready to run again.\n\nBy mute agreement, Linden, Stave, and Mahrtiir drank little and ate none of the treasure-berries, leaving them for Coldspray and her comrades. Nonetheless it was clear that the Swordmainnir were suffering. Linden heard an ominous wheeze in Latebirth's respiration, and in Cirrus Kindwind's, and occasionally in Stormpast Galesend's. The others heaved for breath against the weight of their armor and weapons. Their faces were grey with exertion.\n\nAt a time that should have been mid-morning, Manethrall Mahrtiir brought Narunal to Hyn's side. \"Ringthane,\" he called over the clatter of hooves, \"we must consider what we do. If we do not soon gain our aim, the Giants will be too weary to aid your son. That they have come so far at such a pace bespeaks both great strength and great valor. Yet they are mortal withal. Ere long, even they must falter.\"\n\n\"What do you suggest?\" Linden could sustain the Swordmainnir with Earthpower for a while. But repeated infusions of imposed energy would exact a price. The women might well be left utterly prostrate when her assistance finally lost its efficacy. Earthpower and Law were only Earthpower and Law: they could not counteract the organic need for food and water and rest indefinitely. And Linden was reluctant for other reasons as well. Speed might be Jeremiah's only defense. \"Of course they need rest. We all do. But the Worm is coming. You said it yourself. We have to hurry.\"\n\nMahrtiir faced her with disgust in his mien, but it was not directed at her. \"For that reason, Ringthane, I deem that we must part again. While you accompany your son with Stave, I will remain to guide the Giants at a slower pace. Their aid may be much delayed, but they will rejoin you _capable_ of aid.\"\n\nAs if he expected Linden to demur, he added harshly, \"I serve no other purpose in this company. But I am able to ride brave Narunal, and to obey him\u2014aye, and also to comprehend his wishes. Therefore I await your consent.\"\n\nLinden saw that Jeremiah was listening; felt protests rise in him. She phrased her reply for his sake as much as for Mahrtiir's.\n\n\"That makes sense. Exhaustion won't help any of us.\" She forced a wry smile. \"And if anyone can convince Coldspray to be reasonable, you can. Maybe Stave and I can help Jeremiah make a start without you.\"\n\nJeremiah brandished a fist in approval.\n\nBut Mahrtiir hesitated. \"Then I crave a boon of you, Ringthane,\" he said after a moment. \"Restore my discernment to its fullest, that my use to the Swordmainnir may be prolonged. It will not endure. Of that I am aware. But I yearn to postpone the return of complete futility.\"\n\nIn spite of herself, Linden was loath to comply. She did not want to raise black fire in a lightless world. The prospect felt like a violation. Yet she could not refuse the Manethrall. Had her fears been his, he would have faced them at once, eager for struggle and combat.\n\nAdjusting her grip on the Staff of Law, she reached for Earthpower.\n\nAs she had expected or dreaded, her flames were barely visible. Their force was palpable enough, and to an extent comforting. But they were the hue of Jeremiah's fouled pajamas, the color of deepest night, and they seemed to thicken the gloom around them.\n\nNevertheless her magic was an expression of Law. Its inherent beneficence had not been altered. She had turned the wood to ebony in battle under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. In the graveyard of Jeremiah's mind, she had become a form of blackness herself. If her power disturbed her now, it did so because it told the truth about her.\n\nAs if she were abasing herself, she covered first Mahrtiir and then herself in cleansing theurgy. And when her senses had recovered their acuity, she extended fire to the Giants, gifting them with all of the vitality that she could provide.\n\nThen Linden quenched her Staff. Slumping on Hyn's back, she told Mahrtiir weakly, \"Be safe. Catch up with us when you can. We'll need you.\"\n\nClarion as a whinny, the Manethrall replied, \"Fear nothing, Ringthane. We will come.\" Then he drew Narunal back from Linden's side so that he could speak to Rime Coldspray.\n\nHyn, Hynyn, and Khelen seemed to understand what had been decided without any word from Linden or Mahrtiir\u2014or indeed from Stave. Running like water on a smooth slope, they extended their strides into a full gallop. In the lead, Jeremiah yelled his excitement at the heavens. Then he settled himself along Khelen's neck as if he sought to increase the young stallion's speed.\n\nIn moments, the Giants were no longer visible behind Linden. For a short time, she continued to feel their presence. Then the Ranyhyn outran the range of her health-sense, and she was alone with Stave and Jeremiah once again.\n\nrom the plain, the riders entered a region of jagged stones piled against each other like the detritus of a mountain broken by earthquake or cataclysm. Some of them resembled the riven limbs and torsos of megalithic titans. Others were towers about to topple, or raw chunks of granite and obsidian the size of Giantships, or splinters as sharp as spears. Among them, the footing was treacherous, and the horses were compelled to pick their way at a gait little quicker than a trot. As if in compensation, however, springs and streams became more plentiful. Most were too thick with minerals and old rot to drink; but a fair number were merely brackish, and a few ran clear, gurgling untainted from some buried source. As before, Linden and her companions had left all of their supplies with the Giants and Mahrtiir; but they found more than enough good water to appease their thirst.\n\nPausing at a stream where the Ranyhyn drank as though they did not expect to discover more water for a long time, Linden asked Stave where they were. Sure of himself, he replied that they were approaching a region like an isthmus of the Spoiled Plains between Sarangrave Flat to the north and the Shattered Hills in the southeast. She had guessed as much; but she was relieved to hear that the marge-land was ten leagues wide or more, and that beyond it the Spoiled Plains expanded to fill the Lower Land between the Sarangrave and the Sunbirth Sea. If the horses kept to their present heading, they would have nothing to fear from the lurker.\n\n\"Come on,\" Jeremiah muttered. \"Come _on_.\" Then he sighed. \"I'm hungry. I hope we find _aliantha_ soon.\"\n\nSternly Stave remarked, \"In the ages of the Lords, there were no _aliantha_ on the Lower Land to the south of Lifeswallower. We are fortunate that they have taken root here during more recent millennia, sparse though they may be. But we cannot know how they were spread, or by whom. If we have ridden beyond their extent, we have no redress for their absence.\"\n\n\"That's easy for you to say,\" Jeremiah retorted; but he sounded impatient rather than irked. \"You're _Haruchai_. I'm not. If we don't find treasure-berries, I hope you can think of something else for us to eat.\"\n\nStave's only reply was a shrug.\n\nSoon the Ranyhyn were in motion again; and shortly after midday, they left that wrecked region behind. Now they ran, fleet as coursers, along a comparative flatland that lay at the foot of a long incline like the rim of a tectonic upheaval. There the running was easy, and the strides of the horses overcame distance as though the leagues were trivial.\n\nStill the stars died overhead. Like Jeremiah, Linden was hungry. But in addition, she was beginning to share his frustration. A part of her did not want to discover malachite. It did not. Her reluctance was a thin whimper in the background of every thought. More would be required of her than she could bear to contemplate. Nevertheless the plight of the stars\u2014and of the _Elohim_ \u2014infected her with urgency. The prospect of a lightless sky appalled her. Much as she disliked or even loathed the _Elohim_ , their peril seemed more important than her personal fears.\n\nThe grey gloom wore on her like an old sore, immedicable, weeping vital fluids. While Hyn's muscles flexed under her, and the mare's sweat soaked into her jeans, irritating her legs, Linden began to wonder whether night would ever come again\u2014and if it did, whether the Ranyhyn would allow themselves and their riders to rest. If Time remained essentially intact, surely some form of circadian cycle continued to rule the world? What would it mean if night did not come?\n\nHer private dread seemed to grow more petty with every surmounted league, every troubled thought. Now she wondered how anyone could refuse to take the innominate risks that lay ahead of her. How could she? If she ever hoped to hold up her head in front of Jeremiah and Covenant again?\n\nGradually the incline swung away, surrendering to erosion. Beyond it, Stave called Linden's attention to the fact that the Ranyhyn were adjusting their course. \"The northeast remains accessible,\" he informed her, \"yet now our path tends toward the Sarangrave.\"\n\n\"Do you know why?\" Memories of the marshland's fetor and the lurker's malevolence ached in her guts. She never wanted to approach the Flat again.\n\n\"I do not. _Haruchai_ cannot commune with Ranyhyn as the Ramen do. However, I surmise that the horses require fodder. Among the wetlands on the verges of Sarangrave Flat, they may find grasses to sustain them.\"\n\n\"Can't the lurker reach them if they do that?\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" Stave acknowledged. \"Yet sustenance they must have, and there is none in this region. Nearer to the coastline, the devastation of Corruption's wars and workings eases. There forage may be found. But the distance is too great, even for the endurance of the Ranyhyn. If they would continue to run as they do, they must dare their ancient foe.\"\n\nOh, good, Linden muttered to herself. Perfect. Just what we need. Another fight with that monster. But she could feel a new trembling in Hyn's muscles, hear hints of frenzy in Hyn's respiration. Stave was probably right.\n\n\"Then we'll have to protect them.\" She meant herself. Her companions could not oppose the lurker\u2014and the monster craved her Staff.\n\n\"Maybe we'll find _aliantha_ ,\" called Jeremiah. \"If the ground grows other plants, it can grow treasure-berries.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" Linden conceded. To Stave, she added, \"If I get in trouble,\" if the Feroce cast their glamour over her mind again, \"take the Staff. I don't care if you have to hit me to get it. Just don't let that monster have it.\"\n\n\"I hear you, Chosen.\" The former Master sounded as passionless as marble.\n\nShe trusted him. Nevertheless he eased none of her trepidations.\n\ntill Khelen, Hynyn, and Hyn ran, defying their tangible exhaustion: the froth on their nostrils, the sweat on their coats, the ominous rattle in their mighty chests. At intervals, Linden refreshed them with brief blooms of Earthpower. But she did not use magic to extend her percipience. She did not want to know how near the Sarangrave might be.\n\nHeading more north than east, the riders rushed down into a wide lowland like an ancient caldera. There the Ranyhyn found a few patches of scrannel grass, only a few mouthfuls apiece, hardly enough to blunt the keenest edges of their need. Then they resumed their stubborn race against the reaving of stars. Laboring painfully, they pounded up the slight slope at the far rim of the lowland; and still they ran.\n\nIn this direction, they would certainly encounter the Sarangrave. Linden tried to tell herself that they might find what they sought at any time; that their ordeal might end beyond the next rise, or somewhere in the next shallow vale. But she did not believe it.\n\nAgain and again, she came back to _trust_. She had given the Ranyhyn the only gift that was hers to grant; but neither she nor they could afford to rely upon it. She would have to simply trust that they could accomplish what they had asked of themselves.\n\nA long time later, when her bestowed Earthpower had drained out of the horses entirely, the twilight began to thicken, become more viscid. A tumid dark crept out of the east to mask the contours of the landscape, deepen the bitter doom of the heavens. For a while, the dull light faded by minor increments, barely detectible: then it was gone altogether. Linden could not imagine how the Ranyhyn knew where to set their hooves. Nevertheless they did not falter. Perhaps they saw or felt the stars as clearly as she did. Perhaps they could hear the undefended lights pleading for redemption.\n\nAbsorbed by worries, she was slow to notice that she could smell water. It was dank and stagnant enough to be Sarangrave Flat, pervasive enough, fraught with implications of rot and dire corpses\u2014but it was water nonetheless. And where there was water, there might be provender for the Ranyhyn.\n\nAs if to answer her, Khelen whickered weakly; and Stave said, \"The Sarangrave is nigh, Chosen. It is shallow in this region. A fool who did not fear bogs and quags might wade for a league without encountering deeper streams. Yet I do not doubt that we are now within the ambit of the lurker's awareness.\"\n\nHe paused to let Linden respond. When she found nothing to say, he asked, \"Will you now surrender the Staff? I cannot wield it. Yet its absence from your hands may serve to ward you.\"\n\n\"Not yet.\" She was shivering at the cooler air as though she shared the extremity of the horses. Her memories of the Feroce and the lurker were too recent. And yet the Ranyhyn appeared to be on the verge of stumbling to their knees. They had to have food and rest. \"Not until we see the Feroce. They're the real danger.\" The theurgy of green fires cupped like instances of the Illearth Stone in their palms enabled them to enter her mind. They could erase the distinction between reality and memory. \"The lurker can't reach us if we don't get too close.\"\n\n\"I don't care about that,\" Jeremiah put in. His voice seemed to come from the bottom of an abyss. \"The Ranyhyn are desperate.\n\n\"I don't think I have the kind of power that's good for fighting. But I can be a distraction. I mean, since the lurker is so hungry for Earthpower. Maybe I can get its attention.\"\n\n\"Then stay back,\" Linden ordered hoarsely. \"If you're going to distract anything, do it from a safe distance. Let Stave and me protect you.\"\n\nAs she spoke, Hyn's strides began to slow. Just for an instant, Linden thought that the mare had come to the end of her endurance. But the smell of water was so thick that it hurt Linden's sinuses; and she recognized almost at once that Hyn was slackening her gait deliberately.\n\nStave responded by urging Linden to dismount. \"The littoral of the marsh is nigh. We must remain beyond the lurker's reach.\"\n\nWhen Linden nodded her consent, Hyn staggered to a halt. While Linden slid to the ground, Stave sprang down from Hynyn's back. Lurching, Khelen brought Jeremiah to Linden's side. In spite of his impatience, Jeremiah did not complain as he dismounted. Instead he patted Khelen's neck, muttering, \"Don't worry about me. I'll be all right.\"\n\nThe young stallion whickered thinly. Shambling into the darkness with Hyn and Hynyn, he headed toward water and forage.\n\nWhile Linden watched the horses, Stave spoke again. \"Await me, Chosen. I will attempt to discover _aliantha_. If I discern water which we may drink without harm, I will guide you to it.\"\n\nAt once, he followed the Ranyhyn. Like them, he disappeared as if he had been swallowed by the tenebrous air.\n\nHe may conceivably have wished to let Linden talk to Jeremiah alone. Beneath his _Haruchai_ dispassion lay a familiar capacity for solicitude.\n\nBut what could she say to her son? In certain respects, she understood him too well. Trapped deep within him, a terrible storm was brewing. He needed his defenses, his urgent focus on a vital task, to contain the violence of his refused memories. And he was altogether too young for his years. Lost in dissociation, he had not had time to learn how to live with himself.\n\nAs gently as she could, she murmured, \"You told Khelen not to worry, but I can't help it.\" Feeling him stiffen, she continued, \"Oh, I'm not worried about the waiting. You can do that when you have to. You've had plenty of practice.\n\n\"No, it's what you want to do for the _Elohim_ that scares me. A door like that\u2014You'll have to make it so _big_. It's going to take time. And when you're done, it's going to be vulnerable. If we can't protect it\u2014\"\n\nShe would need help. She could no longer ignore that truth. More help than any of her friends could supply. Covenant himself had said it. _We're too weak the way we are_. _We need power_. More power than Loric's _krill_ could summon, or the Staff of Law diminished by Kevin's Dirt, or a woman who was not a rightful white gold wielder.\n\nAt her side, Jeremiah relaxed a bit. \"I know,\" he admitted grimly. \"If we go through all that\u2014I mean, if we find enough malachite, and the Giants help me build what I want, and it pulls the _Elohim_ in, at least all the ones who're left\u2014and then the Worm just swallows my door\u2014\" He shuddered. \"That'll be worse than anything.\"\n\nHearing him reminded Linden of Kevin Landwaster and her own despair. Before she could respond, however, he said, \"But, Mom.\" He sounded as harsh as the night. \"I have to try. I don't know what else to do.\"\n\nThat, too, she understood. \"Then listen to me,\" she returned more sharply than she intended. \"Building your door\u2014That's your part. And it's enough. It's _enough_. The rest is up to us.\" It was up to her. \"We'll figure out a way to protect it. And if we can't, you'll just have to keep reminding yourself that _you did your part_. You aren't responsible for what happens after that.\"\n\n\"But it'll all be wasted!\" he protested. \"They'll all die.\"\n\nHigh Lord Kevin must have felt the same before the Ritual of Desecration. Nevertheless his ancestors among the Dead had forgiven him. And Linden had missed her chance to take pity on Elena. From She Who Must Not Be Named, Linden had learned how much her self-absorption had cost Covenant's daughter.\n\n\"No,\" she replied carefully, \"it won't be wasted. I can only imagine how bad it might feel to see something that you built destroyed. Especially something like _that_. But _listen_ to me. In a way, I've only known you for a day and a half, and already I'm so proud of you that I don't have any words big enough for it. Now I understand what parents mean when they talk about their hearts bursting.\"\n\nShe gathered passion as she spoke. Her own parents had never felt that way about her. Not once. The bitter legacies of her childhood filled her voice. Trying to sway her son, she was pleading for herself.\n\n\"For all of those years when I was taking care of you, do you know how many times I wondered if it was all wasted?\" If she had opened her heart and lavished her love for nothing? \"I'll tell you. I _never_ wondered. It was always worth doing, all of it.\n\n\"Of _course_ I cared about what might happen. Of _course_ I wanted you to find your way out. I wanted you with me. But I didn't adopt you and love you because of what _might_ happen. I did it because you were _always_ precious to me, every minute of every day. You were enough. I didn't need to know the future to know that you were worth everything.\"\n\nShe felt frustration from him, a rising denial; but she over-rode it.\n\n\"So maybe you won't be able to build your door after all. Maybe we won't be able to protect it after you make it. Maybe the _Elohim_ and the stars and all of us are doomed. So what? Right here, right now, you want to do everything you can to help, and that's wonderful. If the Worm eats your door, and you feel so hurt and angry and useless that you can't stand it, remember that I'm _proud_ of you.\"\n\n\"Stop it, Mom.\" He was crying, and trying not to show it. \" _Nobody's_ proud of a failure.\"\n\n\"That's nonsense.\" Instinctively she responded as if he were a normal boy, able to hear her. \"Failure isn't something you _are_. It's something you _do_.\" She needed to hear what she was saying. With every word, she pleaded for an answer to her mute dread. \"Having the courage to escape your prison is who you are. Wanting to help the _Elohim_ because the world needs them is who you are. My son is who you are. Everything else is just making mistakes, or not having the right materials or enough help, or not knowing enough, or trying to do something that's actually impossible. It just _happens_. It isn't who you are.\"\n\nWith her whole heart, she asked, \"How do you suppose Covenant managed to save the world _twice_? It isn't because he's stronger or smarter or greater than Lord Foul. He's just stronger and smarter and greater than Lord Foul _thinks_ he is. He's had the right kind of help. And he isn't afraid to take the chance that he's going to fail.\"\n\n\"Mom.\" Jeremiah was crying openly now. \"Mom, stop. Please. I need\u2014I need\u2014\"\n\nShe understood that as well. Who would, if she did not? Remembering Anele\u2014remembering _Must_ and _Cannot_ and the old man's last valor, an act of self-confrontation that humbled her\u2014she dropped her Staff and swept her son into her arms. Hugging him tightly, she murmured his name to him as if it confirmed his worth.\n\nLike a young boy, he sobbed hard for a moment\u2014and like a teenager, he suppressed his pain quickly. For a heartbeat or two, he held his mother as she held him. Then he let go of her, stepped back from her clasp. Snuffling loudly, he rubbed his face with both hands, wiped his nose on his forearm. In a congested voice, he asked, \"What's taking Stave so long? The Flat is right over there.\" He gestured uselessly in the darkness. \"I'm hungry. He should be back by now.\"\n\nWell, he was a fifteen-year-old boy, embarrassed by what he considered a show of weakness. For his sake, Linden smiled ruefully. Her sigh of regret she kept to herself.\n\n\"I'm sure\u2014\" she began. But before she completed the sentence, she felt the former Master's severe aura returning.\n\n\"It's about time,\" Jeremiah muttered. Then he called to Stave, \"Did you find _aliantha_? Are we that lucky?\"\n\nAlmost immediately, Stave arrived, a darker shape condensed from the raw stuff of night. His hands were full of damp plants. \"I did not,\" he answered. \"However, I have discovered tubers which I deem edible. They resemble the roots from which the Ramen prepare _rhee_. Cooked, they will provide sustenance.\"\n\nLinden smiled again. As warmly as she could, she thanked the former Master. Then she asked her son, \"What do you think? Can you use your Earthpower for cooking?\" Had he gained that much control over his inheritance? She hoped so. He needed a chance to recover his sense of competence. \"I can do it, but I'm more likely to attract attention that we don't want.\"\n\nShe did not doubt that the lurker would devour Jeremiah avidly. But she also felt sure that the monster would find her Staff better suited to its particular hunger.\n\nEager to put aside his distress, Jeremiah extended his halfhand, accepted a root. \"I'll give it a try.\"\n\nAs he did so, Linden retrieved the Staff, braced herself on its possibilities. Then she turned every dimension of her remaining discernment toward Sarangrave Flat, searching for some sign of the lurker\u2014or of the Feroce.\n\nAfter a moment, she located the Ranyhyn. They stood along the verge of a stagnant pool, cropping bitter grasses and vaguely pernicious shrubs with apparent unconcern. Clearly no hint of the lurker disturbed them. Nor did what they ate.\n\nThe wetland beyond them looked shallow. Its waters ran in sluggish streams or sat in rancid ponds interrupted by small eyots of grass or twisted brush; by occasional trees gnarled and stunted in putrefying mud; by brief swaths of reeds that nodded back and forth like conspirators in the currents and the breeze. Everything within the range of Linden's percipience reeked of age and decomposition and ancient malice. Darkness covered the Flat, as funereal as a grave-cloth. Nevertheless nothing suggested the presence of the lurker or its acolytes.\n\nAt her back, she felt a short burst of fire. At once, it winked out. Jeremiah snorted in quick disgust, but his concentration did not waver.\n\nA moment later, she sensed heat. It flickered, shrank, threatened to die out, then swelled more strongly. \"Ha!\" Jeremiah panted. \"So _that's_ how\u2014\"\n\nSoon he was able to hold his magic steady. The smells of cooking joined the thick odors of the Sarangrave.\n\nSomewhere in the depths of the wetland, a night bird cried: a wail of fright. Linden heard a sharp splash, a sucking sound. She may have heard the clamp of teeth. The cry was cut off. More distant birds squalled as they took flight. From other directions came the rustle of disturbed roosting; the squirm of thick bodies in mud; the plash of creatures that may have been fish. After its fashion, Sarangrave Flat was thick with life.\n\nStill nothing resembled the lurker. Nothing warned of the Feroce.\n\nBefore long, Jeremiah let his Earthpower dissipate. \"Ow!\" he muttered cheerfully. \"That's hot.\" Then he bit into the tuber. Through a mouthful of crunching, he announced, \"Tastes like dirt.\" But he did not stop eating.\n\nBy degrees, Linden began to relax.\n\nJeremiah took another root from Stave, summoned fresh theurgy. \"Your turn, Mom,\" he murmured as he worked. \"It's actually pretty good, if you pretend you can't taste it.\"\n\n\"Stave?\" Linden asked over her shoulder.\n\n\"I keep watch, Chosen.\" The _Haruchai_ 's tone hinted at reproof. She should have known that he was always alert. \"Doubtless the Ranyhyn also will give warning at need. Eat while you may.\" A beat later, he added, \"I have yet to discover clean water.\"\n\nLinden hesitated to lower her guard. She had encountered the lurker more than once\u2014and once was too often. But hunger overcame her uncertainty. With an effort, she turned her back on the Sarangrave.\n\nJeremiah had nearly finished cooking a second tuber. He held it in his halfhand with his left cupped over it. A faint glow of heat radiated between his palms. When he judged that root was ready to eat, he handed it to Linden.\n\n\"Just remember. Pretend you can't taste it.\"\n\nStave was right, of course: when Linden studied the steaming tuber, she saw that it was safe to eat. More than that, it would strengthen her if she ate enough of it. Swallowing hard to clear the discomfiture from her throat, she took a bite.\n\n\"Dirt,\" she answered Jeremiah's expectant gaze. \"Just like dirt.\" In fact, the crisp plant was bland at first; but it had a sour after-taste that made her yearn for the cleanliness of _aliantha_. Nevertheless she ate it while Jeremiah cooked another root for himself. She had no choice. She was facing a future which might never contain another meal.\n\nfter Jeremiah had finished preparing all of the roots, and he and Linden had eaten as much as their stomachs could tolerate, Stave left again to search farther for water.\n\nHe was gone for what seemed like a long time. While he was absent, the Ranyhyn withdrew from the edge of the wetland, putting a little distance between themselves and the disturbing seethe of the waters. But they did not go far. Linden felt them clearly enough, resting between her and the Sarangrave.\n\nWhen the former Master returned, he announced that he had located safe water in an eddy cast by the turbid seethe of the Flat. It was admittedly brackish and tainted, but not so foul that it would make Linden and Jeremiah ill. There they were able to quench their thirst before the impulse to gag became too strong to suppress.\n\nReturning to the place where they had eaten, Linden urged her son to get some sleep while he could. Then she searched out a relatively level patch of ground for herself. With the Staff clasped across her chest, and her eyes closed against the dying of the stars, she tried to take her own advice.\n\nBut her fears nagged at her. They seemed to crawl over her skin under her clothes. Soon, she knew, events might compel her to forsake her son. She had it in her to imagine a source of malachite, and the aid of the Giants, and a portal which would summon the _Elohim_. Those ideas only asked her to believe in the Ranyhyn and her friends and Jeremiah. But guarding the portal against the Worm would require a miracle, and she had none to offer. Therefore\u2014\n\nAh, God. Therefore she would have to go in search of a power great enough to accomplish what she could not. She would have to leave Jeremiah to the care of her friends. If she did not, everything that he hoped to accomplish would indeed be wasted.\n\nThe fact that she lacked the courage was no longer relevant. Like Jeremiah, she would have to try.\n\nOnly Covenant's return might spare her. She yearned for that. But she could not suppose that he would come. The task which he had undertaken was too dangerous, and he was too far away. No, the burden of preserving Jeremiah's construct was hers to bear in spite of her weakness. She could not hope to be spared. The Worm of the World's End was coming. Nothing that lived would be spared.\n\nGradually she found a kind of resignation. It felt like defeat, but it allowed her to drift into a sleep too stunned and shallow for dreams.\n\nynyn's shrill whinny awakened her with the suddenness of a knife. Even before Stave said her name, she began drawing black fire from her Staff.\n\nReflexively she glanced at the sky to gauge the time. Dawn was near, although it did not promise a sunrise. Nevertheless a certain amount of light was coming. Without it, the air would have been colder. Soon the darkness would become gloaming.\n\nThen she felt the Ranyhyn running. Urgently they fled from the vicinity of the Sarangrave.\n\nWhy did they not pause for their riders? They could have taken her and her companions to safety.\n\nBut she had no time to think about such things. At Stave's command, she surged to her feet.\n\nJeremiah was ahead of her. He stood squinting in the direction of the Sarangrave. Before she could speak, he pointed.\n\n\"The Feroce. They're coming this way.\" A heartbeat later, he added, \"I can practically smell the lurker.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Chosen.\" Stave sounded as calm as a clear day. \"Now you must release the Staff of Law to me. I will ward it.\"\n\nLike her son, Linden stared at the crouching malevolence of the wetland. At first, she discerned nothing except the movement of small bodies. As they bobbed past obstructions, they appeared to fade in and out of existence. But then they passed the last islets of trees and brush, and emerald flames the precise hue of the Illearth Stone opened in the darkness. At the same time, the air became thicker: more humid, rank with moisture.\n\n\"How many?\" She wanted confirmation. She counted six flames, therefore only three Feroce. But somewhere behind them she felt the bitter aura of the lurker. Surely the monster would not challenge her without more support?\n\n\"Three,\" Stave stated as if he could not be mistaken. \"Also I sense but one tentacle. More may come, but the one lingers a stone's throw behind its minions.\"\n\n\"Mom?\" Jeremiah asked anxiously. \"Shouldn't you give Stave the Staff? You said those things can mess with your mind.\"\n\nLinden ignored him. \"This doesn't make sense,\" she muttered. \"The last time, there were a lot more. And now I'm braced for them. What does that monster think three Feroce can do?\"\n\n\"Who can declare the lurker's thoughts?\" Stave responded. \"Yet the peril remains. And it will be directed at you, Chosen. The monster covets the Staff of Law.\"\n\n\"Then be ready.\" Linden tightened her grip on the ebon wood. \"If they're going to say anything, I want to hear it while I can still defend myself.\"\n\n\"Mom!\" Jeremiah protested. But Stave did not remonstrate.\n\nLeaving the marsh, the creatures approached with an air of hesitation or timidity. They were still some distance away, but her nerves read them clearly. They were hairless and naked, apparently frail. In their large round eyes, green glints reflected like threats. Only their flames implied any force. But their magicks were strange to her, nameless and unrecognizable. The capering fires could have been desecrated Wraiths, captured and cruelly transformed. Or\u2014\n\nHell, they could have been anything.\n\nWhy had the Ranyhyn fled without their riders?\n\nThe question suggested possibilities that nearly staggered her. Perhaps it was deliberate. Perhaps the horses had taken her close to Sarangrave Flat once before precisely so that the lurker's acolytes could draw her into the monster's reach\u2014\n\nThe Ranyhyn feared the lurker: she knew that. Mahrtiir had accounted for their terror clearly enough. But she could not believe that they had betrayed their own devotion. So maybe they had risked attracting their ancient foe\u2014then and now\u2014for a reason. A reason that had nothing to do with shelter or weariness.\n\n_What_ reason? she asked herself wildly. Did they _want_ her to lose her Staff? Did they want the lurker to have it?\n\nThey were the _Ranyhyn_. They would not forsake their riders without a compelling reason.\n\nThe Feroce were drawing near, still timorously, but still coming\u2014and Linden was out of her depth; foundering.\n\n\"Chosen,\" Stave said like the night. \"If you do not attend, I must claim the Staff without your consent.\"\n\n\"Give it to him, Mom!\" Jeremiah demanded. \"Do it _now_. You aren't paying attention!\"\n\nShe gripped the Staff as though her life depended on it. She was paying attention to too many things at once.\n\nThe Feroce stopped ten paces away. Instead of spreading out, they stood close together. \"We are the Feroce,\" they announced as if Linden had never faced them before. They all spoke, yet they seemed to share one voice: a voice as moist and malleable as mud. But they did not continue. In silence, they awaited a response.\n\n\"What is it this time?\" retorted Linden. \"You've already attacked us once. Isn't that enough? What do you want now?\"\n\nThe creatures flinched. Their voice quavered. \"Our High God commands. We must speak.\"\n\nAgain they fell silent.\n\nLinden trembled with remembered distress and pain. Covenant's farmhouse erupting in flame around her. Recursive memories looping back on themselves, blocking her escape. She Who Must Not Be Named. \"Then speak,\" she snapped. \"But don't think that you can hurt me again. I know you now. I won't leave any of you alive.\"\n\nThe Feroce recoiled a step. They needed a moment to rally their resolve. When they replied, their voice was faint, squeezed out of them by pressures which they could not refuse.\n\n\"We speak for our High God. We bear a message from the Pure One.\"\n\nThe Pure One? Where had Linden heard that term before?\n\n\"I'm listening.\"\n\nHer manner must have appalled the creatures. They quailed as though they might dissolve at any moment.\n\n\"Our High God has offered an alliance with the Pure One. It has been accepted. No harm will come to you that our High God or the Feroce can prevent. You will be given aid at need.\"\n\nLinden stared, reeling inwardly. She could hardly understand what she heard. Who would form an alliance with the lurker? Who was that crazy?\n\nGiven aid\u2014?\n\nPanting at the viscid air, she asked involuntarily, \"The Pure One?\"\n\nIn a tone like a sheet of basalt, Stave said, \"The _sur-jheherrin_ spoke of the ur-Lord as the Pure One. They esteemed him by that title, though he deemed the Pure One to be Saltheart Foamfollower.\"\n\n\"Covenant!\" Jeremiah crowed. \"He must have done something to that monster. It's afraid of him!\"\n\nNow Linden remembered. In the Sarangrave with Covenant, Sunder, and Hollian. A few _Haruchai_. Her first meeting with the Giants. The lurker's attack. Then the rescue by the _sur-jheherrin_.\n\nThe Pure One.\n\nCovenant was alive? Alive?\n\nThe Feroce reacted as though Jeremiah had offended them. Their posture stiffened. The fires in their hands grew brighter, shedding green light like malice. Their voice gained strength.\n\n\"Afraid? Our High God fears the cruel metal. He does not fear the Pure One. Nor does he fear the wielder of the stick of power. Blades and burning he withstands. Yet a havoc which he cannot withstand approaches. He must live. Failing to obtain the stick of power, he sought alliance with the Pure One. The terms were agreed.\"\n\nThen the creatures appeared to remember that they were little and frightened. They shrank within themselves. Their tone suggested awe or dismay. It may have held gratitude.\n\n\"The Pure One has exceeded the terms. This our High God acknowledges. The alliance is sealed.\"\n\n\"All right!\" Jeremiah exulted. \"All _right_!\"\n\nCovenant was _alive_. He had to be. Linden clung to that. She had only encountered the Feroce two nights ago, and Covenant had turned away from her two days before that, rushing to meet the crisis of _caesures_ and _turiya_ Raver and Joan. But he had so far to go\u2014He must have met with the lurker, or the Feroce, after Linden did, but before he found his ex-wife. Indirectly Infelice had confirmed it. In Muirwin Delenoth, she had said that the lurker's minions were aiding him. Yet when could he have fulfilled\u2014exceeded\u2014his promises to the lurker? He would not have allowed any agreement to distract him from Joan. Therefore he must have sealed his incomprehensible alliance _after_ that confrontation. He must have survived it.\n\nBut Stave's demeanor did not soften. \"Continue,\" he said, implacable as a force of nature. \"You bear a message from the Pure One. When was it given to you? Where was it given?\"\n\nThe Feroce made placating gestures. \"The Pure One named his wishes in the early hours of this same night. Our High God was lost. Then he was redeemed. Far to the east, the Pure One made his desires known.\"\n\nThis same night? Covenant had stopped Joan. He had lived through the ordeal. There was no other explanation. Linden wanted to fling herself at the creatures; hug them in gratitude. Covenant had _redeemed_ the lurker? But she could not move. The extremity of her relief held her.\n\n_This_ was what the Ranyhyn had done to her. For her. For the Earth. They had exposed her to their worst nightmares and fled so that she might inspire an alliance with the evil which had slain great _Kelenbhrabanal_ , Father of Horses.\n\nFrom the first, they had _trusted_ her\u2014\n\n\"Then deliver his message,\" Stave commanded.\n\nBobbing and cowering, the creatures complied. \"The Pure One has exceeded the terms,\" they repeated. \"Therefore our High God commands us to convey words from the Pure One. They are meant for the wielder of the stick of power. The words are these.\"\n\nWaved flames left emerald cuts across the darkness. \"Remember forbidding.\"\n\nLike a sovereign enchantment, that utterance altered the conditions of Linden's existence. Realities veered around her or within her, effacing the tangible world where she gripped her Staff; transforming the causes and sequences which ruled her known life. The night and the Feroce vanished. Stave and Jeremiah were gone. Every vestige of Sarangrave Flat passed away.\n\nFor one sickening instant, she understood that the creatures had done it to her again. They had imposed their glamour on her memories. Her belief that she was ready to resist was an illusion.\n\nThen that knowledge was swept away in a moil of altered revelations. It was forgotten as if it had no meaning.\n\nWithout transition, she stood on a fan of obsidian marked like her jeans with green stains; with streaks of malachite crooked as veins. The light of Liand's _orcrest_ defined the stone. Utter darkness filled the rest of the world. Imponderable leagues of stone stretched overhead, held in place by their preserved recollections. Other figures clustered nearby, but she could not see them. Before her, Anele lay prone on the fan with his arms splayed as if in crucifixion. Grief and enduring pain marked every line of his emaciated form, the mute woe of Mount Thunder's foundations.\n\n\"It is here.\" The words were etched in Linden's mind. \"The wood of the world has forgotten. It cannot reclaim itself. It requires aid. Yet this stone remembers. There must be forbidding.\" His voice sounded harsh as rock. In Salva Gildenbourne, he had referred to _the necessary forbidding of evils_. Now he insisted, \"If it is not forbidden, it will have Earthpower. If it is not opposed by the forgotten truths of stone and wood, _orcrest_ and refusal, it will have life.\n\n\"When the Worm of the World's End drinks the Blood of the Earth, its puissance will consume the Arch of Time.\"\n\nThe forgotten truths? Linden wanted to ask. What truths? But Anele's distress kept her silent.\n\nThen he lifted his head, looked directly at her with his blind eyes. As if he were speaking for someone else, he said precisely, \"Everybody concentrates on stone, but that's not the whole story. Wood is important, too.\"\n\nForgotten, she thought. Forbidding.\n\nIt requires aid.\n\nLike an affirmation or a denial, reality veered again. In silence that battered her like the clamor of mighty bells, she was driven deeper, farther. Anele and stone vanished. Mount Thunder's betrayed sorrow evaporated as though it had never existed.\n\nLinden feared the bitterness of killing her mother, the horror of watching her father's suicide. Instead she felt the barren dirt of Gallows Howe under her feet, bereft by the knowledge of endless slaughter, and crowded with wrath; avid to repay the cost of so much death. She sensed recrimination and the long butchery of trees. Music had brought her here, the fraught melody of Caerroil Wildwood's singing. Again she was not alone, but she could not see her companion. She saw only the Forestal.\n\nHe stood beside the dead trunks of his gibbet with song streaming from his robe as if the fabric were woven from threnodies and dirges. The silver vivid in his eyes hinted at wild magic, although he had no white gold. His beard had the luster of age and vigor and unending travail.\n\n\"While humans and monsters remain to murder trees,\" he mused, angry and doleful, \"there can be no hope for any Forestal. Each death lessens me.\"\n\nShowing more restraint than Linden had any right to expect, he sang, \"I have granted boons, and may do so again. But you have not requested that which you most require. Therefore I will exact no recompense. Rather I ask only that you accept the burden of a question for which you have no answer.\"\n\nHe enthralled and terrified her. Her own anger was fresh from her failure to rescue Jeremiah; from the carnage of stone under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. Her heart was as hard as the mountain's, and as flawed.\n\n\"How may life endure in the Land,\" inquired Caerroil Wildwood, \"if the Forestals fail and perish, as they must, and naught remains to ward its most vulnerable treasures? Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" What else could she say?\n\nAnother voice, the voice of her companion, said, \"He does not require that which the lady cannot possess. He asks only that she seek out knowledge, for its lack torments him. The fear that no answer exists multiplies his long sorrow.\"\n\nAnd because she stood on Gallows Howe\u2014and because her spirit burned for Thomas Covenant after her failure to redeem her son\u2014and because Caerroil Wildwood could still wring her heart in spite of all that she had endured\u2014she made a promise that she did not know how to keep.\n\n\"I will.\"\n\nThen the Forestal took the Staff of Law, black as fuligin after her battle\u2014and she lay on her back on the hard ground with the night sky above her like the abyss that awaited all striving. A sensation of impact throbbed in her forehead, a shock too sudden to bring instant pain. The hurt would come later; soon. Her neck felt wrenched and torn. Dying stars filled her eyes, consumed one after another in slow sequence by the Worm's unappeasable hunger.\n\n\"Damn it, Stave!\" Jeremiah yelped. He plunged to his knees beside her. \"Did you have to hit her so hard?\"\n\nStave replied without inflection. \"She fell under the glamour of the Feroce. I could not scry what might transpire. And her grip on the Staff was urgent.\"\n\nLinden thought, You hit me?\n\nShe had told him to do so.\n\nShe could not look away from the ruin of the heavens; the inexorable depredations. Too many things had been made clear to her. The actions of the Ranyhyn were only the most immediate of her new insights\u2014and the least cruel.\n\n\"Mom!\" Jeremiah urged, tugging at her shoulders. \"Are you all right? Can you move? Stave is too strong.\"\n\nBecause he was her son, she dragged her gaze down from the sky. His face was a smear of darkness. Dawn was coming, but it did not ease the night. Without her health-sense, she would not have been able to trace the outlines of Jeremiah's alarm.\n\nWhat\u2014? she tried to ask; but she made no sound. Lingering comprehensions clogged her throat. And her neck was starting to ache. She might not be able to lift her head. The throb in her forehead became a rusty blade. Soon it would cut.\n\nSomehow she forced herself to ask aloud, \"What\u2014?\"\n\nQuick with concern, Jeremiah told her, \"The Feroce did\u2014whatever it was. You went blank. When you didn't come back, Stave hit you to take the Staff. I guess that broke you loose. Now they're leaving.\n\n\"But, Mom,\" he added, hurrying. \"The lurker\u2014You've got to see this. If you can stand. If Stave didn't break your neck.\"\n\nPercipience assured Linden that her neck was not broken. Raising her head would hurt; but it would only hurt.\n\n\"I,\" she breathed through a rising pulse of pain. \"Can. Try.\"\n\nIn one smooth motion, Stave scooped her from the ground. Cradling her neck, he held her in his arms for a moment. Then he lowered her legs gently. When her boots were settled on the dirt, he offered the Staff of Law to her weak grasp.\n\n\"It is yours, Chosen. I have no virtue to wield its healing, but you are able to relieve the harm of my blow.\"\n\nHer hands were numb. She could not feel the warm wood. Stave had hit her too hard. Nevertheless her Staff was there. She seemed to hear it murmuring to her, urging her to call on its benign strength.\n\nInstinctively she summoned black flames to lave her as if they were the waters of Glimmermere.\n\nHer heart seemed to stagger in its beat. Then Earthpower and Law took hold. Her shock and hurt began to ease. She recognized her surroundings more clearly, identified Jeremiah and Stave as if their substance had been affirmed by fire. In the distance, she discerned the Ranyhyn. They appeared to be waiting, watching; perhaps praying. When she turned her head hesitantly in the opposite direction, she saw Sarangrave Flat crouching along the horizon, a starker and more telic dark within the enshrouding night.\n\n\"Look, Mom,\" Jeremiah insisted. \"You won't believe it.\"\n\nNo proffered or sealed alliance could soften her fear of the lurker. But when she looked\u2014when she focused her health-sense as well as her inadequate sight\u2014she saw a single tentacle rising from the disturbed muck of the wetland. It stood taller than any Giant, far taller, and as erect as a sentinel. All of its many fingers, hundreds of them, were curled and clenched as though they feared an attack. Yet the lurker's arm did not flinch or waver.\n\nHorrim Carabal. The Ardent had told Linden the monster's name.\n\nShe gripped her Staff more tightly, absorbed more fire.\n\nWhen it was certain of her attention, the tentacle dipped as if in acknowledgment or homage.\n\n\"See that?\" Jeremiah breathed. \"Did you see that?\" He sounded proud. \"It bowed to you, Mom. The lurker _bowed_ to you.\"\n\nBefore Linden could reply, the tentacle slipped back into its fouled waters. At first, it appeared to leave no ripples in its domain. But then she saw the massive arm squirm away, a crooked seethe through the stagnant pools and mud. As it retreated, the air became easier to breathe. In moments, Horrim Carabal had withdrawn beyond the reach of her perceptions.\n\n\"Amazing,\" Jeremiah proclaimed more strongly. \"I don't know what Covenant did, but he sure got that thing's attention.\"\n\n\"Be wary, young Jeremiah,\" Stave advised. \"The lurker of the Sarangrave is malevolence incarnate. The actions of the Ranyhyn speak of this, if your own discernment does not.\"\n\nThen he turned to Linden. \"By your earlier account, Chosen, the glamour of the Feroce inspires you to relive events and perils belonging to your former world. We cannot interpret the lurker's intent until you speak of this new visitation.\"\n\nCarefully Linden leaned her head from side to side, tested the effects of Earthpower. Joints popped: stiffness lingered in her neck: pain still throbbed in her forehead. But she was essentially intact.\n\nAnd dawn was near. There was an unmistakable paling in the east.\n\n\"Well, I know one thing, anyway.\" Anele's prophecy and Gallows Howe left her hoarse. \"This is what the Ranyhyn were hoping for.\n\n\"The last time, they did it on purpose. They took us close enough to the Sarangrave for the Feroce to find us. They wanted us to meet the lurker and beat it so that it would know we were too strong for it. It already knew that it couldn't fight Covenant. Not when he has the _krill_.\" Clearly Horrim Carabal had not forgotten the agony of Covenant's power millennia ago. \"The Ranyhyn wanted it to understand that it can't fight us, either.\n\n\"After that, I'm guessing. But I think that the Feroce must have approached Covenant. Infelice said something\u2014\"\n\nStave would remember. Jeremiah might not. He had been absorbed in his construct.\n\n\"The Feroce must have talked to him about an alliance. Whatever he said, it must have satisfied them.\" And he had done more: that was obvious. She simply could not imagine what it might have been. \"In any case, the Ranyhyn brought us here tonight because\"\u2014she shrugged awkwardly\u2014\"well, because they needed fodder, of course. But they also wanted to know where the lurker stands now. Or they wanted us to know.\"\n\nAnd they had trusted both her companions to take care of her however the lurker reacted.\n\nWith a subtle air of satisfaction, Stave asserted, \"The Unbeliever has exceeded the terms, as is his wont. The alliance is sealed. It is my thought that the lurker fears the Worm. Therefore it craves power. And therefore it seeks allies.\n\n\"Yet, Chosen,\" he continued, \"you have said naught of your experience within this new glamour. Your interpretation of the Ranyhyn I accept. I have none better. Will you now speak of the visions imposed upon you?\"\n\nLinden did not want to reply. What she had learned or deduced was too great for her. She did not know where she would find the courage to bear it.\n\n_I will_. She had promised that she would seek out an answer for Caerroil Wildwood. An answer which she could not possibly possess. For that reason, and because her company did not suffice for its task, she would have to forsake her son.\n\n\"It wasn't like the last time,\" she said, striving for a steadiness that she could not feel. \"It wasn't terrifying. First I was down in the Lost Deep. Before we crossed the Hazard. I heard Anele reading that fan of obsidian and malachite. Then I was back on Gallows Howe with Caerroil Wildwood. The Feroce reminded me that I made a promise then. I told him that I would find out how the world could survive without Forestals.\"\n\nNow she felt certain that the world could not.\n\n\"But why?\" Jeremiah asked quickly. \"I mean, why did they want to remind you? It's not like you were ever going to forget things like that.\"\n\nLinden believed that she understood the point of Covenant's message. And she surmised that the Feroce had tried to ensure that she did not misinterpret it. But she did not say so. Instead she deflected Jeremiah's query.\n\n\"Maybe the lurker doesn't really understand alliances. It's used to having worshippers. Alliances are new. Sure, I was never going to forget. But the lurker can't know that. It's just choosing between powers that can hurt it. The Worm is going to destroy everything. The lurker is bargaining for its life.\"\n\nAfter a moment, Jeremiah conceded, \"That makes sense, I guess.\"\n\nStave regarded her with his customary lack of expression. Briefly he lifted his head as if he were scenting the air. Then he said, \"Dawn begins. It appears that the coming day will resemble the one past. And the Ranyhyn return. Doubtless they will feed again. Then we must hasten once more.\"\n\nLinden nodded to escape more inquiries. Unlike the horses, she was not hungry. The roots that she had eaten still lay in her stomach, a fibrous mass difficult to digest. At uncomfortable moments, its taste returned to the back of her throat. But water was a necessity.\n\n\"In that case,\" she told the _Haruchai_ , \"we should get something to drink while we still can.\"\n\nHe flicked a glance toward her, but did not demur. And Jeremiah agreed at once. Already he was eager again; impatient.\n\nIn the rising gloom of a new day\u2014the second since the sun had failed\u2014Linden and her son followed the former Master back to the eddy where they had risked the water the previous evening.\n\nThe possibility that they might not find the like again did not trouble her as much as the prospect of her own intentions. They were too much for her: one appalling risk piled on another until their sheer scale threatened to overwhelm her.\n\n## 7.\n\nTaking the Risk\n\nSoon Linden, Jeremiah, and Stave were mounted and running again, heading away from the Sarangrave directly into the northeast. Hyn's straining betrayed that the mare had not recovered her full strength. Both Hynyn and Khelen labored over the barren terrain. Still they had reserves of stamina. Linden understood their physical prowess no better than she comprehended their ability to find their way within _caesures_ , or their strange insight into the mind of Horrim Carabal. She knew only that Earthpower flowed richly in their veins. They seemed to draw their vitality from the Land itself, regardless of its blasted condition.\n\nKevin's Dirt loomed overhead, but she banished its effects almost reflexively. The threat of the lurker was behind her, and she no longer feared to exert her Staff.\n\nGradually the darker gloom of night became a kind of twilight over the region. Ahead of her, the ground undulated in slow dips and gradual rises toward its dulled horizons. Then the terrain became rougher\u2014the hollows deeper, the sides steeper\u2014until the horses appeared to traverse a protracted series of impact craters: the ancient outcome of fallen meteors, or of terrible bolts of theurgy. But the Ranyhyn were not daunted. Instead they seemed to gain fresh resolve from the difficulties, as if they were nearing their obscure destination.\n\nAnd eventually the terrain on Linden's right began rising. Along a line parallel to the path of the mounts, southwest to northeast, the stricken ground piled higher until it formed a ridge with a front as sheer as a cliff and a more gradual slope at its back. To her left were only more hollows or craters; but opposite them, the ridge jutted with its gutrock exposed as if a range of higher hills had been cleft.\n\nApproaching the highest point of the ridge, the Ranyhyn slowed. Rubble, boulders, and other detritus cluttered the base of the cliff, but did not extend far enough to obstruct the horses. Hyn, Hynyn, and Khelen had a different reason for easing their pace.\n\nIn the lead, Jeremiah rose on Khelen's back as if he were standing in stirrups. He punched his fists at the sky, defying the reaving of the stars. \"This is _it_!\" he shouted. \"Malachite! That cliff is _riddled_ with it!\"\n\nWhile Hyn jolted to a trot, Linden tried to spot what Jeremiah had seen.\n\nAt first, the profile of the ridge held her. From her perspective, it cut off perhaps a third of the heavens. Irrationally she hoped that she would not see more stars dying. But the slow carnage continued overhead. She could only spare herself that vista by lowering her gaze.\n\nEven then, she could not locate the source of Jeremiah's exultation.\n\nFortunately the Feroce had renewed her recollection of black rock elucidated by green veins. When she concentrated inward, tuned her senses to the hue and pitch and timbre of memory, and then studied the cliff-face once more, she began to discern flakes and small seams of the mineral she sought. They were difficult to detect, in part because they felt miniscule, too trivial for her son's needs, and in part because they were crowded among streaks of verdigris, knobs of blunt granite, porous patches of sandstone; masked by reflective facets of quartz, mica, feldspar, other crystalline stones. But there _was_ malachite.\n\nIt did not look like enough.\n\nYet Jeremiah's excitement was undaunted. As his mount halted, he vaulted to the ground; ran a few strides toward the ridge. \"There!\" he called as though he wanted the world to hear him. \"It isn't much. I mean, on the surface. But deeper\u2014! If we dig into the cliff far enough\"\u2014his hands sketched dimensions in the air\u2014\"some of it is practically pure!\"\n\nPointing, he indicated a section of the ridgefront a long stone's throw above his head.\n\nOh, God. Linden would have asked, How can we get at it? But a different problem had already occurred to her. Assuming that the cliff could be excavated, surely the stone above it would collapse? Anyone digging there would be crushed and buried.\n\nThe Ranyhyn had found what Jeremiah needed.\n\nIt was effectively inaccessible.\n\nHyn had stopped. Her breathing wheezed faintly as she waited for Linden to dismount. But Linden was too shaken to move.\n\nLike her, Stave remained mounted. His mien revealed nothing as he asked, \"Will not these boulders suffice, young Jeremiah?\" He nodded toward the debris at the foot of the cliff. \"They also contain portions of malachite.\"\n\nJeremiah turned to glare at the _Haruchai_. \"Sure,\" he snorted with the inadvertent disdain of a boy. \"If I wanted to build a door for mice. One that didn't go anywhere. But the _Elohim_ are bigger.\" He must have meant in personality and puissance. \"And the door has to take them someplace safe.\n\n\"No,\" he asserted. \"We need to get into that cliff.\"\n\n\"Then this is labor for Giants.\" Smoothly Stave slid down from Hynyn's back. \"While we await them, however, I will commence. Inform me when I have climbed to the place where you wish me to begin. I will discover what the strength of the _Haruchai_ can accomplish against such stone.\"\n\nIn response, Jeremiah laughed: delight, not derision. Flourishing his arms, he cast arcs of yellow flame across the gloom. \"I knew I could count on you. While you're doing that, I'll look at a few boulders. Maybe some of them have enough malachite. I'll need as much as I can find.\"\n\nStave nodded. Instead of approaching the ridge, however, he faced Linden. \"Chosen, you also must dismount. The Ranyhyn require rest. Indeed, they must depart in search of water and forage. And I will be unable to ward your son while I ascend the rock. That task falls to you.\" After a brief hesitation, he added, \"I do not dream that our foes have forgotten their craving for your son's gifts.\"\n\nRoger had an uncanny ability to appear out of nowhere. Distance was no obstacle to Kastenessen. And Lord Foul's powers\u2014even those of the Ravers\u2014were beyond estimation.\n\nFalls, Linden echoed; but she was not listening to Stave. Her mind followed other paths. The Masters called _caesures_ Falls. She could not conceive of any other way to keep her promises. But there were many kinds of falling. She could too easily imagine Stave crawling spider-like up the cliff\u2014until some hand- or toe-hold failed.\n\nWhat choice did he have? What choice did anyone have? Jeremiah needed malachite.\n\nShe shook her head, resisted an impulse to slap herself. She could not afford to sit on Hyn's back feeling stupid and defeated. Her son needed more than malachite. The whole Earth needed more.\n\n_When your deeds have come to doom_ \u2014\n\nShe had to think.\n\nStaring vacantly at the ridge, she told herself that the question was one of power. Surely it was a question of power? Even if Stave lived, what could he hope to achieve? And when the Giants came\u2014if they came\u2014they would be in as much danger as he, with as little chance of success.\n\nTherefore\u2014\n\nWell, obviously, the cliff would have to be broken open from a safe distance. What else? And that was a task for theurgy. Even if the stonewise Giants could devise an alternative, they were only eight\u2014and they were already weary. The work would take time. Not hours: days.\n\nPower was the only answer.\n\nBut what could she do? Fire she understood: black flame and burning. Yet merely scorching the face of the cliff would be a waste of effort. Heat alone would have no effect. In the Lost Deep as well as under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir, she had shattered stone; shaped it instinctively. If she could summon that form of strength or desperation again, she might be able to tear apart the ridgefront. But the malachite would be torn apart as well. Tons of mineral-seamed rock blasted to gravel would not serve Jeremiah's purposes.\n\nDoubtless the Staff of Law had other uses\u2014many of them\u2014but she was not lorewise enough to know what they were, or how they were done. And anything that she attempted with Covenant's ring would be worse. Wild magic resisted control. In that respect, it resembled the _caesures_ it created.\n\nHow could she open that ridge without risking lives?\n\n\"Chosen,\" said Stave more sharply. \"We cannot delay.\"\n\nBut then another possibility occurred to her. She had been given hints enough\u2014\n\n_Men commonly find their fates graven within the rock, but yours is written in water._\n\n_The lady's fate is writ in water._\n\n\"Wait.\" Scrambling to catch up her ideas, she slipped down from Hyn's back. \"Before you do anything rash. Do you know if there are any streams on the far side of this ridge? Any water at all?\"\n\n\"Mom,\" Jeremiah protested. \"We don't need water. We need to get started.\"\n\nShe and Stave ignored him. The _Haruchai_ met her gaze squarely. \"No, Chosen. This region is unknown to me. The Masters have found no cause to scout it. And I have discerned neither streams nor springs.\" After a flicker of thought, he said, \"Yet the Ranyhyn may discover what you desire. Doubtless their path lies toward water.\"\n\n\"Mom,\" Jeremiah objected again. \"What's so important about water?\"\n\nThe three mounts were already trotting back the way they had come. Eventually they would come to the place where the declining slope of the ridge met lower ground.\n\n\"I'm not sure yet,\" Linden answered. \"Maybe there isn't any. And if there is, I might not be able to use it.\"\n\nImpatiently Jeremiah came to join her and Stave. \"I don't get it. Sure, I'm thirsty, but it isn't bad yet. If you aren't going to drink it, what do you want it for?\"\n\nLife, Linden could have said. Hope. Fate. Doom. But she felt too uncertain to describe what she had in mind.\n\n\"Just wait,\" she urged her son. \"Watch the Ranyhyn. We'll know soon enough.\" To ease his frustration, she added, \"I don't want to risk Stave if we don't have to.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\" Jeremiah began, then clamped his mouth shut.\n\nDim as shadows, the Ranyhyn were only trotting. Nevertheless they appeared to cover distance rapidly. And as Linden watched, they began angling closer to the ridge.\n\nShe gripped the Staff hard; tried not to hold her breath.\n\nBefore long, the horses quickened their pace. Rushing at the slope, they ascended the dwindling silhouette of the ridge. For a moment, they labored upward. Then they gained the ridgeline and disappeared from sight.\n\nLinden sighed. She could assume that the Ranyhyn were seeking water; but that did not necessarily imply that it arose from a source within the ridge. The horses might have to search to the south or east beyond the thrust of the cliff.\n\nStill she could hope\u2014\n\n\"All right,\" she said finally. \"So maybe there's water. I won't know for sure until I find it.\"\n\nJeremiah had reached the end of his restraint. \"But _why_?\"\n\nImpelled by the pressure of yet another burden which she might not be able to carry, Linden started toward the ridge. \"The Lords,\" she replied over her shoulder, \"back when there were Lords\u2014They must have known how to do lots of things with a Staff of Law. But I can only guess what those things were. I don't know how to do any of them. I only know fire and healing.\" And brute force.\n\nWhile Jeremiah caught up with her, and Stave followed in silence, she continued, \"I can't heal anything here. But fire makes heat\u2014and heat makes water expand.\" Trapped water would be ideal, or water that could only rise to the surface in trickles. But buried springs and even pockets of moisture might conceivably suffice. \"Heat water fast enough and hard enough, and it explodes into steam. Maybe I can break part of the cliff.\"\n\nFor an instant, Jeremiah seemed stunned. Then he burst out, \"That's _brilliant_!\"\n\n\"It is a tenuous prospect,\" remarked Stave. \"The obstacles are many. I name only the site and quantity of water required, if indeed water exists within such a formation. Nonetheless the deed cannot succeed if it is not attempted.\"\n\nLinden was not listening. As she walked, she summoned Earthpower to sharpen her percipience, bathed her nerves in fire like condensed midnight. Then she began to explore the ridgefront. Concentrating on the section that Jeremiah had indicated, she felt her way inward, searching into and through multitudes of rock as if she were probing for wounds hidden deep within living flesh.\n\nAt the nearest obstruction, a boulder the size of a hut, she halted momentarily. But then she realized that she needed to be closer: close enough to study the face of the cliff with her hands. Cursing under her breath, she passed around the boulder and mounted a stretch of lesser rubble, the fallen residue of the cliff's severance. When she stumbled, she caught herself on the Staff and climbed higher.\n\nFinally she reached the main wall. From far above her, it loomed as if it were glowering in suppressed wrath. But she ignored its impending bulk, its ire, its enduring intractability. She needed nothing from it except water.\n\nIn one approximate location.\n\nIn sufficient quantity.\n\nAfter all, it was only a cliff. It was not the cunning subterfuge and malice of the Demondim, seething to mask the _caesure_ which gave them access to the Illearth Stone. Nor was it the recursive wards of the Viles, coiling themselves into a mad tangle to prevent intruders from entering the Lost Deep. It was only pieces and shards and spills and plates and torsos and veins and thews of the world's rock compressed by their own weight until they formed a front which had outlasted millennia. It had no defense against her health-sense.\n\nBut it was so _much_ rock. Of so many different kinds. In so many different shapes and structures. And it supported a mass which would have squeezed ironwood to pulp. Its secrets resisted discovery as if it had set its will against her.\n\nLeaning her Staff against her shoulder, Linden closed her eyes. Hesitantly at first, then more firmly, she placed her hands on the wall and began to insinuate her touch inward.\n\nStave had followed her as far as the rubble. There he kept watch. Jeremiah stood a bit behind her, but he did nothing to interrupt her concentration. At first, she felt his attention focused on her. Then she closed her mind. Deliberately she thought only about water.\n\nNow that she was not seeking them, she found streaks and facets of malachite everywhere. Crystalline deposits reflected her probing. Heavy granite ground against flows of basalt, reducing them to powder across the eons. Compacted dirt filled every crevice and crack. Schist blocked her search as though its memories and therefore its anger were more recent or more extreme than the rest of the rock.\n\nBut Jeremiah needed her. The _Elohim_ needed her. The Earth required its panoply of stars. And her friends would be at risk if she failed. They would have to hazard their lives if she could not open the cliff.\n\nWater, that was all she wanted: the most ordinary, necessary stuff of life. And it was everywhere in the created world. It rose from springs among the deepest roots of mountains. Beneath the desiccated purity of the Great Desert, it oozed and ran. The shores of every continent and island felt its surge and lash. From the sky it gave nourishment. And it could be violent. Oh, it could be violent! Linden had felt its force often enough to know what water could do with fury and turbulence.\n\nYet no Law required it to emerge where she could reach it.\n\nThen Jeremiah's halfhand clasped her shoulder; and for an instant, her concentration faltered. Almost immediately, however, she felt vitality flow into her from his touch. He was giving her Earthpower as the ur-viles had given her blood, so that she might be able to exceed herself.\n\nRiding the energy of his aid, she sensed a damp patch of dirt between a crumbling granite monolith and a writhen vein of sandstone.\n\nIt was small, little more than a suggestion of moisture; perhaps only a few drops. But it was water.\n\nGalvanized by hope and her son's support, she marked the dampness in her memory and pushed her senses farther.\n\nShe forgot hunger and thirst and weariness. Deeper in the ridgefront, higher, she found a second hint of water. By oblique implication, it led her to another pocket of moisture, and another. Another. There bits of damp marl and pumice were strung together like beads along a fissure between incompatible sheets of granite and obsidian. Linden marked them all, and followed them.\n\nThe detritus in the fissure became dense gravel. More water seeped in the gaps, fine droplets acrid with minerals. Carefully she extended her perceptions among them. The vein of gravel became a wedge, wetter and looser. Then it was plugged by schist. She stumbled within herself; leaned her forehead against the face of the cliff. That damn schist\u2014She did not understand how it obstructed her. But she could not spare the energy to study it. Insidiously, as if she sought to possess the rock without being noticed, she slipped her senses past the plug.\n\nBeyond it, she found what she sought.\n\nWater. A space like a bubble in the compressed flesh of the ridge. A cavity filled with water.\n\nIt was no larger than her head. And the water had not moved for an age of the Earth: it was cut off from its original source. But flaws packed with more gravel guided her to a pocket of water the size of her body. Farther in, she found a space big enough to hold a Giant's chest; then two more\u2014no, three\u2014each little more than a trapped fist; then, finally, a gap as large as the chamber where she and Anele had been imprisoned in Mithil Stonedown.\n\nAfter that, there was no more, or she had reached the limit of her reach, or her strength was failing.\n\nHad she located enough? Taken altogether, it was only a drop within the inland sea of the ridge. Nevertheless it would have to suffice. She would have to make it suffice.\n\nShe took moments or hours to ascertain that she could remember precisely where and what she had discovered. Then warily, as if she feared the cliff's animosity, she withdrew.\n\nGod, she could barely stand\u2014How had she become so tired?\n\nShe had no time for weakness. The marks in her memory would fray and fade. Reeling against Jeremiah, she took up the Staff again. His aid vanished, but she ignored its absence. Her eyes stared at nothing. She saw only the places that she needed to remember.\n\n\"Mom?\" he asked anxiously.\n\nShe staggered past him, nearly falling down the rubble toward Stave. When the _Haruchai_ caught her, she panted, \"Don't say anything. I have to concentrate. Just get me away.\"\n\nIf she succeeded, and they were too close\u2014\n\nStave seemed to understand. With an arm around her waist, he half carried her toward the hollows or craters in the northwest.\n\nHave mercy, she groaned as she stumbled along. I can't do this.\n\nShe had to do it.\n\nA long stone's throw from the ridge, Stave stopped; turned Linden to face the cliff. Jeremiah caught up with her there. He must have been able to see her fatigue. Standing behind her, he clasped her shoulders with both hands.\n\nFresh theurgy set fire to her blood. Flame ran in her veins. Her heartbeats were conflagration. Blackness bloomed from her Staff as if Jeremiah had invoked it without her volition. Fuligin etched everything that she saw and remembered against the tarnished grey daylight.\n\nShe told herself to start small. Begin with the tiniest bits of moisture. Try to force a few new cracks. Weaken the cliff.\n\nIf she could find them from this distance.\n\nA troubled wind out of the east tumbled over the ridgecrest, skirling in plumes and dust devils out across the wasteland of craters. It chilled the unnoticed sweat on her forehead, tugged loose a few strands of hair that were not matted to her cheeks and scalp. But it did not soothe her whetted senses; her urgency. In this season, the Land's prevailing winds were from the west.\n\nStraining, Linden Avery reached out to the cliff and tried to prove herself worthy.\n\nA damp patch between granite and sandstone. For a heartbeat or two, she focused her intentions there. Then she sent a dark burst of power to boil that small instance of moisture.\n\nShe almost felt the dampness swell; almost felt microfissures mar the surrounding rock. Almost. But she had expected nothing more. She was only trying to create a slight frailty.\n\nWith as much care as she could muster, she moved inward, upward.\n\nPieces of wet marl and pumice strung together like beads: a thin crack separating granite and obsidian: a more difficult challenge. If she failed to heat all of the beads at the same time, her efforts would lose some of their effect. Force would dissipate along the string.\n\nIt was too much for her.\n\nIt had to be done.\n\nGathering her resolve, she murmured the Seven Words. Her Staff became a scourge in her hands. Magic struck the string of moisture like a barbed flail. Black fire filled even the most miniscule hints of fluid with passion. For an instant, she thought that she heard the scream of over-heated water, the groan of stressed rock. Then the sound was gone.\n\nInvoluntarily she sagged as if she had been overcome. Blots swam and burst across her vision, stars and small suns, stains like abysms.\n\nBut Stave upheld her. Jeremiah gripped her shoulders, sharing the strength which Anele had concealed. Earthpower burned in her vessels and nerves, in the channels of her brain and the secret recesses of her heart.\n\nShe could not afford to fail.\n\nThe wind flicked grit into her eyes. She blinked rapidly, then shut them tight. Ordinary sight was a distraction. Looming huge and unmoved, the rock mocked her inadequacy. Only percipience would enable her to make her last attempt.\n\nShe had found six spaces filled with water. She meant to superheat all of them at once. Then larger cracks might join with minor flaws. They might trigger any inherent instability which the immense bulk of the cliff suppressed. They might cause seams and plates to slip\u2014\n\nIf one puny human being, exhausted and trembling, could induce something that size to shift.\n\nThe Staff shook in her hands as though it had become a burden too great for her to bear. Aching for puissance and accuracy, she invoked the Seven Words again. \" _Melenkurion abatha_.\" Her voice rose in desperation. \" _Duroc minas mill!_ \" The invocation became a wailing cry. \" _Harad KHABAAL!_ \"\n\nWhen she unleashed her fire, its blackness seemed to efface the world.\n\nIntense heat constricted by immutable mass created pressures which would have torn mere flesh to shreds. Pockets of water tried to expand. Granite and schist and a mountain's weight refused to move. The ridge had endured for millennia. Linden poured out power as if she were expending her soul. Given a voice, the stone would have laughed.\n\nThen it found a voice. Through the harsh beat of the Seven Words and her own gasping, she heard the cliff groan.\n\nA short sound, little more than a sigh; but it was enough to break her concentration. Unaware of herself, she dropped her Staff. Fighting a giddy swirl of phosphenes and oxygen deprivation, she opened her eyes; tried to see what was happening.\n\nIn two or three places across the ridgefront, dust puffed outward. Almost at once, wind dismissed the small exhalations as if they had never occurred.\n\nAfter that\u2014\n\n\u2014nothing. The cliff stood glowering in the gloom. It had not been touched, and did not care.\n\n\"Oh, Mom,\" Jeremiah moaned. \"No. That can't be right. I saw\u2014I felt\u2014\"\n\nLinden saw nothing. She felt nothing.\n\n\"Indeed,\" Stave pronounced. Abruptly he released Linden; left her to Jeremiah. Without explanation, the former Master strode toward the mountain.\n\nPerhaps he had decided to act on his original suggestion. Climb the ridge. Try to break loose pieces with his fingers.\n\nBut he stopped before he had crossed half the distance. From the ground, he picked up a rock. For a moment, he hefted it in his hand, tested its weight. Then, fluid as water, he flung it.\n\nIt struck the cliff-face above the places where Linden had seen puffs of dust. Three heartbeats passed. Four. Without her son's support, she would have collapsed.\n\nThen a grinding shriek appalled the air. The earth under her trembled. Tremors kicked up spouts of grit like gusts of pain everywhere between her and the ridge.\n\nWith the massive inevitability of a calving iceberg, a wide section of the wall shifted. For a moment, it seemed to hang on the edge of itself, clinging to its long stubbornness. But it could not hold against its own weight.\n\nWhen it fell in thunder, Linden fell with it. She had nothing left that might have enabled her to remain conscious.\n\nhe did not know how much time had passed when a glad halloo awakened her. Only moments, she thought at first. But her head felt too heavy to lift, burdened by sleep. And when she tried to gauge the condition of her surroundings, estimate the effects of plunging rock, she found that her reality had contracted. She recognized only the pressure of the hard ground against her body, the leaden weariness of her limbs, the ragged effort of her breathing, the parched ache of dust in her throat and lungs.\n\nEventually she realized that Kevin's Dirt had reclaimed her. Her health-sense was gone.\n\nNot moments, then. She must have slept for hours. Kevin's Dirt did not erode percipience so suddenly.\n\nWithout opening her eyes, she fumbled around her for the Staff of Law.\n\n\"It is here, Chosen,\" said Stave. The warm wood of the shaft was pressed into her hand. \"And now the Giants come. Manethrall Mahrtiir leads them. Soon the true labor of your son's purpose must begin.\"\n\nLinden hardly heard him. She had no attention to spare for anything except her Staff. Without her health-sense, she was less than useless.\n\nFortunately Liand\u2014lost Liand\u2014had taught her how to find the possibilities beneath the written surface of the wood, even when she had no enhanced discernment to guide her. He had given her more gifts than she could count. Pulling the Staff toward her, she held it close until its natural beneficence began to enlighten her nerves. After that, she was able to absorb Earthpower more quickly.\n\nStave had said something about the Giants\u2014and Mahrtiir\u2014\n\nSoftly through the dirt, she felt the tread of heavy feet: distant yet, but closing. Within that staggered beat, she detected the sharper impact of hooves. As her health-sense expanded, she identified Narunal.\n\nThen she located Jeremiah. He was closer than the Giants, but in a different direction. He must have been scrambling over the wreckage of the ridgefront; but now he stood waving his arms eagerly at the Swordmainnir.\n\nCoughing, Linden tasted the air. Between what should have been sunrise and sunset, the grey half-light remained uniform, undefined by any obvious passage. Nevertheless the flavor of the gloaming modulated incrementally, measuring time. Its faint savor told her that she had slept past midafternoon. A more natural twilight was only a few hours away.\n\nApparently Stave had kept watch over her for quite a while.\n\nNow the Giants and Mahrtiir had come. Soon she would have to face the fears which had harried her ever since Jeremiah had explained his intentions.\n\nShe did not need to raise her head to know that the stars were still going out one by one.\n\nPerhaps she should have been afraid; but she was too tired. She required more than mere sleep to restore her. She needed good food and drink, long rest\u2014and an easing of her ache for Thomas Covenant.\n\nInstead of thinking about what she meant to do, she turned to the question of keeping Jeremiah safe.\n\nIn spite of their shouted greetings, the Swordmainnir and the Manethrall did not hasten. Rime Coldspray and her comrades were profoundly weary. A little more time would pass before they came close enough to require Linden's attention.\n\nShe could at least try to talk to Stave.\n\nWith a muffled groan, she pulled her knees under her, pushed herself up with her arms. Her own fatigue felt as heavy as the ridge. She had to rest for a while before she shifted into a sitting position.\n\nMutely Stave extended his hand to help her rise.\n\nShe shook her head. She needed an entirely different form of aid from him\u2014and she had to talk to him about it alone. He deserved that.\n\n\"Stave,\" she said or coughed. Her throat was as dry as the wilderland. Deliberately she did not regard her son, or her approaching friends, or what she had done to the cliff. \"There's something that I want you to do for me.\"\n\nCruel days ago, the Mahdoubt had said of the former Master, _He has named his pain_. _By it he may be invoked_. That had been her last gift before she was lost to use and name and life. But Linden did not want to insist. She suspected that she would damage their friendship if she pressed him.\n\n\"Then speak of it, Chosen.\" His tone was uncharacteristically wry. \"Have you not learned that there need be no constraint between us?\"\n\nResponding to a question about Kevin Landwaster, he had once told her, _In your present state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you_. _It does not crowd at your back_. She knew now that he was right. Nonetheless she hoped that he was also wrong.\n\n\"All right.\" She tried to clear her throat. Then she gave up. Coughing intermittently, she said, \"I have to go away, and you can't come with me. I want you to stay with Jeremiah.\"\n\nStave's silence seemed louder than curses. Was he not her friend? Had he not endured the spurning of the Masters for her? Had he not stood by her in every crisis? The ferocity with which he could have protested, and did not, made her flinch.\n\n\"Covenant said it,\" she explained hoarsely. \"It's all about power. I have to assume that Jeremiah has enough malachite. If he does, the Giants will find a way to help him. He'll be able to build his door. And it will work. The _Elohim_ will come. I have to assume all of that.\n\n\"So he's going to draw the Worm. I have to assume that, too. And when he does, he'll be in danger. He has too many enemies. I might be able to hold off Roger, but I can't fight Kastenessen. No matter how careful we are, a Raver might slip past us.\" If _moksha_ Jehannum took possession of Jeremiah\u2014\"I can't even imagine what Lord Foul is going to do. And we don't have a prayer of resisting the Worm.\n\n\"We need more power.\" She was pleading. \"I'm going to go look for it. But I can't bear to do that if you don't stay here for Jeremiah.\"\n\nStave's flat mien concealed his reactions. His aura seemed to assert that he had no emotions. Yet Linden had seen him grieve over Galt. And she knew his concern as well as his fidelity. Surely he had other human feelings as well, in spite of his stoicism and his vast memories? Surely he could understand her?\n\nHe sounded as ungiving as schist as he asked, \"Where will you go?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you.\" She was done coughing. \"Everyone has to know.\" She no longer flinched. \"But I'm not brave enough to say it more than once. This part is between us. It doesn't involve anyone else.\"\n\nAgain Stave was silent. Linden folded her arms over the Staff, held it against her heart, and tried to match him.\n\nAfter some consideration, he said, \"Do not mistake me, Chosen.\" His tone was like the dusk, unrelieved from horizon to horizon. \"I await only some mention of the Mahdoubt\u2014or perhaps of the Vizard. Were you not offered the means to command me?\"\n\nClinging to her weariness as if it were courage, Linden replied, \"I won't do that. I'm just asking. I'll beg if that's what you want. If Covenant were here, things would be different. But he isn't. I'm the one who has to go. I'm the only one who can. If I know that you'll protect my son.\"\n\nStave's manner conceded nothing. Nevertheless his response seemed to imply that a concession was possible. \"Yet some companion you must have.\"\n\nIn Muirwin Delenoth, he had argued that the participation of _the natural inhabitants of the Earth_ was a necessary condition for the world's survival, just as the presence of _beings from beyond Time_ was essential to Lord Foul's designs. And Linden knew that she needed help.\n\n\"I'll take Hyn,\" she answered weakly. \"And Mahrtiir, if he's willing.\"\n\nHe, too, could not assist Jeremiah. Nor could he fight Roger or Kastenessen or Ravers or\u2014\n\n\"Then, Linden,\" Stave said as if he were merely offering to help her stand, \"I will do as you request.\" A heartbeat later, he added, \"But do not doubt that my heart is torn within me. I will know neither certainty nor peace until your return.\"\n\nLinden's eyes were too dry for tears, but a sob twisted in her chest. \"All right.\" Bracing herself on the Staff of Law, she climbed to her feet. Then she dropped the wood so that she could wrap her arms around the former Master. \"Thank you.\"\n\nHe called her by her name so rarely\u2014\n\nShe would not have been surprised if he had stood rigidly passive in her clasp. But he answered her hug with his own. Almost gently, he murmured, \"You will not fail. Come good or ill, boon or bane, you are Linden Avery the Chosen. You will suffice.\"\n\nWhen he let her go and stepped back, he had done enough. As he had from the first, he had given her more than she had any right to expect.\n\nShe offered him a wrenched smile. \"If you say so.\"\n\nIn spite of her weariness, she stooped to retrieve her Staff. Then she turned to face Jeremiah and the Giants and Mahrtiir and the meaning of her life.\n\nWhile her attention had been fixed on Stave, Jeremiah had descended from the rubble which she had gouged out of the ridge. Now he was running toward the Ironhand, Mahrtiir, and the rest of their companions. Rime Coldspray quickened her pace slightly to meet him; and Linden thought that he would leap into the Ironhand's arms. But at the last moment, he restrained himself. Stopping suddenly, he braced his fists on his hips.\n\n\"What kept you?\" he demanded cheerfully. \"We've been waiting for _ages_.\"\n\n\"Alas,\" the Ironhand replied with a wan smile, \"we are Giants and perforce laggardly. Yet at last we have come.\" She kept on walking. With the boy trotting at her side to match her strides, she asked more soberly, \"What are your tidings, young Jeremiah? Malachite we see. And we see that it has been but recently torn from the thrust of yon ridge. A prodigious feat, and unexpected. Your tale must be equally prodigious.\"\n\nStooping under her burdens, Linden moved to intercept her friends. The exhaustion of the Giants was plain at any distance. To arrive so promptly, they must have marched through the night. Nevertheless her heart was drawn to Manethrall Mahrtiir.\n\nHis condition seemed as explicit as iconography. Uselessness and the loss of his health-sense had marked his mien until he looked haggard, too downtrodden to endure more: as deprived as he had been in the Lost Deep. But there he had been almost continuously active, and occasional gifts of Earthpower had eased his sense of futility. Here he had received no relief from the grinding depression wrought by Kevin's Dirt. Now his misery ached like an unhealed wound.\n\nTo ease his plight, Linden uncurled tendrils of flame from her Staff and stretched them over him. It was the least that she could do.\n\nFortunately this effort was within her strength. When her fire touched the Manethrall, he reacted as if he had been struck. For an instant, his misery seemed to spread its wings and become joy. Almost at once, however, he reassumed the glower which had become habitual during the past few days. But now his scowl had recovered its familiar combativeness.\n\nWhile Linden wielded Earthpower, some of the Giants paused to stare at her. Others cheered for her sake, or for Mahrtiir's. And Frostheart Grueburn called, \"Prodigious tidings, in all sooth! Here surely is a tale worthy to be told at length, and to be heard with laughter!\"\n\n\"It was all Mom,\" said Jeremiah proudly. \"She was brilliant! She found pockets of water in the cliff and made them explode. Now we have malachite.\" Then he made a visible effort to contain his eagerness. \"We can get started when you've had a chance to rest.\"\n\nThrough the twilight, Linden studied the faces of the Swordmainnir. Like Mahrtiir, they needed the Staff's gifts. Yet she could see that rest and refreshment were not their primary concerns. They were hungry for some reason to believe that they had not expended themselves in a futile cause.\n\n\"Alas,\" repeated Rime Coldspray, speaking to Linden rather to Jeremiah, \"our small store of viands we have consumed, lest we falter in our trek. Now I find that I am grieved by our failure of foresight. Your need for sustenance is clear.\"\n\nLinden started to say, Don't worry about it, but the Ironhand continued without pausing, \"In truth, we knew not how to measure your need against our own. And we did not imagine that we would encounter no _aliantha_ along our course.\" Then she grinned grimly. \"However, great Narunal is provident. We do not lack for water.\"\n\nWearily Grueburn, Latebirth, and Onyx Stonemage held up bulging waterskins.\n\nLinden wanted to express her thanks, but her throat was too dry for speech.\n\n\"Well, all _right_!\" Jeremiah answered for her. \"We haven't eaten since we cooked some roots near the Sarangrave. But it was like chewing mud. My stomach still isn't happy. And you have no idea how bad water tastes there. I could drink a gallon.\"\n\nThe Giants exchanged quick glances. Stonemage promptly lowered a waterskin, untied its neck, and held it for Jeremiah.\n\nAt the same time, Coldspray faced Linden with danger in her eyes. \"Beyond question, there are tidings here. What mischance or peril guided you within the lurker's reach? At no time did our own course approach the noisome banes of Sarangrave Flat.\"\n\nStruggling to moisten her throat, Linden admitted in an awkward rasp, \"That's a story. We have a lot to talk about.\" She looked around. \"Maybe we can find a place to sit down. I'm thirsty too,\" and so tired that her knees quivered. \"I can try to explain while we're resting.\"\n\nColdspray agreed with a nod. Pointing toward an area where several large chunks of the ridge formed an arc with a clear space among them, she said, \"There we may sit at our ease. When you have relieved your thirst, we will hear your tale.\"\n\nLinden nodded in turn. That place would be as good as any. It was far enough from the scar to be safe from late-falling stones and slides. And she wanted something to lean against: support for her back, if not for her raw heart.\n\nSighing, she accompanied Rime Coldspray.\n\nThe rest of the Giants followed with Stave and Jeremiah; but Mahrtiir brought Narunal to Linden's side. Dismounting, he bowed his homage to the stallion; watched briefly as the Ranyhyn cantered away in the direction taken by Hyn, Hynyn, and Khelen. Then he turned to Linden.\n\n\"Ringthane,\" he began gruffly, \"I have no speech adequate to my gratitude\u2014aye, or to my bitterness. It is my greatest wish to prove worthy of this company, and of the peril of these times, yet Kevin's Dirt renders me effectless. Having naught of merit to say on such matters, I will not speak of them again. Know only that I am avid for use\u2014and that my thoughts are clamorous with concern for the Swordmainnir. Giants they are in good sooth. Yet they have walked without respite for nigh unto two days and a night, and now an immense labor awaits them. Some succor they must have.\n\n\"Ringthane, I ask this of you. When you have rested, extend to the Ironhand and her comrades the same benison which you have bestowed upon me. They will have need of it.\"\n\nOh, Mahrtiir. Linden dragged her free hand through her hair, tugging to untangle emotions as complex and self-referential as the wards which had guarded the Lost Deep. \"As soon as I get some rest,\" she assured him. \"After what they've been through, I'm surprised that they're still on their feet.\"\n\n\"That is well,\" the Manethrall replied more quietly.\n\nWatching him sidelong, Linden saw that his spirit required more substantial nourishment. But she was not ready to speak of that.\n\nHe would get his chance to be of use.\n\nAs she and her friends reached the stones that Coldspray had indicated, several of the Swordmainnir groaned with relief. Cirrus Kindwind, Cabledarm, and Halewhole Bluntfist began loosening their armor. Latebirth, Stonemage, and Galesend handed their water skins to Grueburn. Then they, too, unclasped their cataphracts. When they had shrugged the shaped stone off their shoulders, they slumped to the ground.\n\nBefore seating herself, Frostheart Grueburn handed a waterskin to Linden, and another to Mahrtiir. Stave she did not neglect in spite of his ability to convey the impression that he had no physical needs. Then she joined her comrades, leaving only Rime Coldspray upright.\n\nJeremiah was too excited to sit. With his thirst satisfied, he began to pace as if he were already measuring out the dimensions of his construct. And Stave remained on his feet. But Linden sank gratefully to rest against a rough curve of rock. Fumbling, she untied the neck of her waterskin, lifted it to her mouth. For a long moment, she let the simple bliss of untainted water pour down her throat.\n\nAs she drank, fresh beads of sweat gathered on her forehead and were cooled by ragged winds. Tears stung her eyes; but on this occasion, she was glad to be a woman who could weep. Briefly she paused to let her flesh absorb the blessing which the Giants had brought. Then she swallowed more water.\n\nMahrtiir studied her closely. When he was satisfied with what he saw, he seated himself cross-legged near Latebirth: a position that allowed him to face Linden directly.\n\nWhile she could, Linden unfurled her power and spread it around the company as Mahrtiir had requested, sharing her only resource. But she did not heed the reactions of the Giants. Whatever she did for them would not be enough.\n\nGrateful for any relief, Coldspray removed her own armor, placed it near her feet so that her stone glaive was within easy reach. Rolling her shoulders and neck, she loosened her sore muscles. Then she folded her arms across her chest and waited for Linden's tale.\n\nBefore long, Jeremiah's impatience overcame him. \"Mom,\" he prompted. \"You said we have a lot to talk about. And I want to get started. The sooner we can build my door, the more _Elohim_ we can save.\"\n\nLinden sighed; set her half-empty waterskin beside her. \"I know. This isn't easy to talk about. We could discuss it for a long time. But I'm going to keep it short. If you want to argue, you'll just be wasting effort. I've already made up my mind.\"\n\nEventually she would have to call upon the strength of the Staff for herself. But not yet. Later she would need all of the energy that she could impose on herself.\n\nAround the arc, her friends and her son waited, watching her as though they heard omens in her tone; tocsins of dismay.\n\n\"Going to the Sarangrave wasn't our idea,\" she began. Wind twisted around her. She smelled dust from the wilderland of craters; dust and old death from the wound that she had torn in the cliff. In the sun's absence, the air had acquired a chill edge. \"The Ranyhyn made that decision.\"\n\nIn a few words, she described what had happened just before dawn. She recited the message that the Feroce had delivered. Even more tersely, she outlined the memories which the lurker's worshippers had invoked. While her companions considered her tidings, she drew her conclusions.\n\n\"So now I think that the Ranyhyn got what they wanted. Somehow they gave the lurker a reason to form an alliance with Covenant. An alliance with us.\" _No harm will come to you_ \u2014\"What that means, I don't know\u2014except that Covenant is alive. And he wanted me to remember _forbidding_. He wanted to remind me that it's necessary.\n\n\"I've thought about it, and as far as I'm concerned, we can only get what we need from wood. I don't mean the Staff of Law. I mean the forests. From the One Forest. From a time when the Forestals knew how to _forbid_ Ravers.\"\n\nShe felt Mahrtiir's reverent awe at the motives which she ascribed to the Ranyhyn. In the eyes of the Giants, she saw speculations and chagrin. Stave's mien revealed nothing; but Jeremiah stared at her as though he did not know whether to feel amazed or appalled.\n\nThe wind was growing stronger. Unexpected gusts brought tears to Linden's eyes again. She let them fall, careless of the streaks of dust with which they marked her cheeks.\n\nResisting an impulse to hurry, she drank again. Then she continued.\n\n\"We need power.\" Her tone was steady. Fatigue had the effect of calm. \"You all know that. We aren't enough. I'm not a rightful white gold wielder, and Kevin's Dirt limits what I can do with Earthpower. If we have to fight off Roger and Kastenessen and God knows who else\u2014if we want to protect Jeremiah's door\u2014if we want to save the _Elohim_ and the stars\u2014we aren't enough.\" Not without Covenant. \"We have to have more power.\n\n\"So\u2014\" Briefly the consternation mounting in Jeremiah's gaze undermined her, and she faltered. But she had prepared herself for this. And she had done as much as she could for him. The time had come to confront other concerns.\n\nEverything would have been different if she had known how to help him. But his needs were too deep for her to reach\u2014and she had too little time.\n\n\"So,\" she began again, \"I'm going to open a _caesure_ and force my way into the past. Hyn can take me where I need to go. She won't get lost. And I have Caerroil Wildwood's runes. They should be good for something more than bringing Covenant back to life. Maybe they can guide me.\n\n\"I'm not just too weak the way I am. I'm too ignorant. I don't have any lore. All I have is emotion,\" despair and love, joy and grief and dread, \"and it isn't enough. I want to find the Forestals and get them to teach me _forbidding_. There's no one else I can ask\u2014except the _Elohim_ , and they won't tell me.\" They considered Jeremiah's purpose abominable. \"If I want an answer, I have to get it from the Forestals. Then maybe I can use that kind of magic to stop our enemies. Maybe I can even use it to keep the Worm away from Jeremiah's door.\"\n\n\"Mom!\" Jeremiah protested hotly. \"You _can't_. _Caesures_ are _dangerous_.\" In a smaller voice, he said, \"And I need you. I need help.\"\n\nLinden avoided looking at him. The sight might break her. Leaving him felt like committing a crime; but she could not make any other choice.\n\n\"You'll have help. You've always had help. But you can do what you have to do. I'm not worried about that.\"\n\nShe wanted to be able to say the same of herself.\n\nShe had expected vehement objections from the Giants and even Mahrtiir; indignation and arguments; angry pleading. What she received was harder to bear. Her friends were shocked: that was obvious. But they did not react like people who believed that she had proposed a Desecration. Their emotions were vivid to her health-sense.\n\nWhat they felt after the initial jolt was hope.\n\nFor a long moment, none of the Giants looked at her. Stave appeared to regard some private vista which was visible to no one else. Only Mahrtiir and Jeremiah kept their attention fixed on Linden. The Manethrall watched her as if he were probing her defenses, looking for an opening. Jeremiah stared with dismay gathering like stormclouds in his darkened gaze.\n\nFrostheart Grueburn was the first to speak. As if to herself, she mused, \"Extreme straits require extreme responses. It cannot be otherwise.\"\n\n\"No!\" Jeremiah snapped immediately. \"Mom, you can't _do_ this!\" He seemed to keep himself from howling by an effort of will that made Linden's heart quake. \"Maybe you can go away. Maybe you can make a _caesure_ do what you want.\" When he clenched his fists, flames dripped between his fingers like blood. \"But you won't be able to _get back_!\"\n\nAt that moment, he sounded unutterably forlorn.\n\nDust bit at Linden's eyes. She blinked furiously to clear them. Don't say that, she wanted to plead. Don't make this harder than it already is. But she demanded a sterner reply from herself. The Land required more from her. Jeremiah himself required more.\n\nGod, she was tired\u2014\n\nMeeting her son's gaze with wind and dust and tears in her sight, she said, \"I made a promise to Caerroil Wildwood. I don't know how else to keep it. I don't know how else to save any of us. I'll find a way to get back.\"\n\nStave had turned his unyielding gaze toward Jeremiah. Manethrall Mahrtiir appeared to be suppressing a desire to speak. Tension mounted among the Giants, as restless as the wind. But the Ironhand still stood with her head bowed, studying the ground at her feet, saying nothing.\n\n\"And I'm talking about moving through time,\" Linden added before Jeremiah could respond. \"Remember that. How long it takes for me won't have any effect on you. If I can do anything that even remotely resembles what I have in mind, there's no reason to think that I won't get back before the Worm comes.\"\n\n\"But you won't _get_ back,\" Jeremiah insisted. His voice shook. Nevertheless he made a palpable effort to reason cogently. \"You can make a _caesure_ now because the Law is already weak. I mean Time and Life and Death. It's all been damaged. But back _then_ , when there are still Forestals, everything is intact. How can you make another _caesure_ that long ago? Just trying, you'll change the Land's history. Even if that doesn't break the Arch, you'll hurt it.\"\n\nDesperately he finished, \"We'll never see you again.\"\n\nHis wounds were so close to the surface that Linden could almost name them.\n\nAnd she understood his objection. It was apt in more ways than he appeared to recognize. If she reached the Forestals, her arrival would inevitably afflict them with knowledge\u2014or at least questions\u2014which they should not possess. That alone might do irreparable harm to the Arch.\n\nYet she had an answer. \"Then I won't go back to the oldest Forestals. I'll try to reach Caer-Caveral.\" Hile Troy. \"He was the last. Meeting me won't affect any of the others. And in his time, the Law of Death was already broken. He's about to break the Law of Life himself. I won't change his history.\"\n\nSurely Hyn could find her way through a _caesure_ to Caer-Caveral?\n\n\"In any case,\" she said, \"what else do you want me to do? I'm useless here. I'm useless to you. I don't understand your talent, and I can't carry boulders. My only alternative is to supply the Giants with strength until they work themselves to death\u2014and _that_ I can't bear.\n\n\"I know it's dangerous,\" she concluded. She was running out of words. \"But I'll get back somehow. Hyn will bring me.\"\n\nNeither her manner nor her appeal comforted her son: she saw that. He felt threatened, rejected. Forsaken when he finally had a chance to prove himself. He no longer looked at his mother. One finger at a time, he unclosed his fists. Then he spread his hands to reveal small gusts of fire cupped in his palms.\n\n\"You can say what you want.\" In the gloom, the stains on his pajama bottoms seemed to devour his legs. \"Talking won't help. I have more important things to do.\"\n\nLit by Earthpower, he turned away.\n\nThe sight twisted a knife in Linden's heart. She needed the kind of courage that Thomas Covenant had tried to teach her. But she did not have it, and he was not here.\n\nGrueburn and the other Swordmainnir squirmed. Rime Coldspray scowled thunderous disapproval at the dirt. The Manethrall's bandaged attention did not leave Linden's face.\n\nLeaning against her boulder, she waited for their reactions. She had chosen this crisis for herself. Come good or ill\u2014\n\nHow often had she heard those words?\n\nThey were better than despair.\n\nFinally the Ironhand raised her head. Gloaming veiled her mien, but it did not conceal the set of her jaw or the lines of her shoulders. Without preamble, she asked, \"Swordmainnir, will you gainsay me?\"\n\nHer tone was like the edge of her glaive.\n\nAs if they knew her mind, Latebirth, Onyx Stonemage, and Halewhole Bluntfist muttered, \"Nay.\" The others shook their heads. With both fists, Frostheart Grueburn punched lightly at the earth to emphasize her answer.\n\n\"Then,\" Coldspray announced harshly, \"I say to you, Linden Avery, Giantfriend, that you are a wonderment. I speak with respect\u2014aye, and with admiration as well, though my manner belies the fullness of my heart. That your intent is foolhardy beyond all reckoning cannot be doubted. Indeed, it appears to be as extreme as a leap into the abyss of She Who Must Not Be Named. Nonetheless you raise my spirits. In such times, all deeds must be extreme. The Earth's need requires it.\n\n\"Therefore my word to you is this. My comrades will give of their utmost to aid young Jeremiah, for his purpose is likewise admirable. Stave of the _Haruchai_ and I will accompany you, doing what we may in your service.\"\n\nThe other Giants nodded their approbation. Some of them started to applaud. But Stave cut them off. Peremptory as a challenge, he stated, \"I will not. My place is with the Chosen-son. And he will have need of your aid, Rime Coldspray, your labor and stonelore. You cannot be spared.\"\n\nQuick protests gathered in the Swordmainnir. Before any of them could speak, Stave declared, \"Yet some companion she must have. Should she attempt this quest alone, she will not return. In the absence of High Lord Loric's _krill_ , she cannot wield white gold while she holds the Staff of Law. The conflict of such theurgies must prove fatal.\"\n\nAt once, Manethrall Mahrtiir surged like a shout to his feet. \"Then this task is mine. It was foretold for me by the Timewarden himself while his spirit remained within the Arch.\"\n\nLinden had not forgotten. _You'll have to go a long way to find your heart's desire. Just be sure you come back._\n\n\"In Andelain,\" the Manethrall continued, gathering force as he spoke, \"Covenant Timewarden avowed, 'There is no doom so black or deep that courage and clear sight may not find another truth beyond it.' For that reason, and in the name of prophecy, and because I must, I will accompany Linden Avery, Chosen and Ringthane, Wildwielder.\n\n\"In the endeavor which young Jeremiah contemplates, I have no part. Yet I am Ramen, attuned to the Ranyhyn, and also acquainted with the perils of passages within Falls. Where I am weak, _amanibhavam_ will sustain me. I will not fail the Ringthane.\"\n\nJaw jutting, he averred, \"I speak for my people. We must become more than we have been, lest we prove unworthy of the Ranyhyn. The tale of the Ramen is too small to justify the service which defines us.\"\n\nColdspray and her people studied him with darkness in their faces. Some of them still wished to protest, especially Latebirth, who had often carried the Manethrall. Others showed resignation or grief, or waited uncertainly for their Ironhand's reply. But Linden bowed her head and let new gratitude flow through her. Although she wanted Mahrtiir with her, she had been loath to ask so much of him. His unrequested willingness eased her reluctance.\n\nAfter a long moment, Rime Coldspray raised her voice into the twilight. \"Manethrall of the Ramen, I am abashed.\" Her tone was gentler now, and more sorrowful. \"I confess it, Giant though I am. Eyeless, your sight is clear where mine is clouded. We must accede to your counsel.\"\n\n\"Then,\" Mahrtiir returned, \"I bid you farewell for a time. May our absence be brief. For my part, I am certain of you. When you have set your hearts to any purpose, you will accomplish it. So it was said of the Unhomed, and so it is with you. But where their tale has grown dim with age, yours will shine out, illuminating the last days of the Earth.\"\n\nHurrying as if he feared that Linden might object, the Manethrall turned to her. While she sat with her head lowered and a dull ache in her chest, he asked, \"Ring-thane, shall we depart?\" An eagle's eagerness sharpened his voice. \"That you are sorely weary is plain. Yet delay will not restore you. Doubtless you desire to be reconciled with your son. Yet delay will not comfort him. He spoke thoughtlessly, and will recant when he is calmer. I do not doubt that he will greet your return with joy.\"\n\n\"All right.\" Linden did not raise her head. \"All right.\" Carefully she took a last drink from her waterskin. Then she rested her hands on the blackness of her Staff. \"We should go while I'm too tired to be terrified.\"\n\nStill without looking at her friends, she said, \"Coldspray, Grueburn, all of you\u2014I'm not worried about you.\" Instead of facing anyone, she studied Caerroil Wildwood's runes as if they might suddenly reveal their meaning. \"You're _Giants_. If it can be done, you'll do it.\"\n\nHer weakness and dread were a sickness in the pit of her stomach, a foretaste of nausea and hornets and gelid emptiness as cruel as a chasm. They seemed bottomless.\n\n\"But, Stave\u2014\" she added unnecessarily. \"Be sharp.\" She could not meet his gaze. \"At some point, someone is going to try to stop Jeremiah. I hope that Mahrtiir and I can come back before that happens. If we don't, Jeremiah and the Giants will need everything that you have in you.\"\n\nThe former Master regarded her with no expression that her nerves could interpret. \"Linden Avery, I have said that uncertainty is an abyss.\" His flat voice contradicted the gust and swirl of the wind; the plumes of dust. \"Nevertheless I do not fear it. Only your self-doubt troubles me. You esteem yourself too slightly. For that reason, you are prone to darkness\u2014and for that reason alone. Forget such concerns. You are not Kevin Landwaster. Remember, rather, that you are loved by those who know you well.\n\n\"Go blessed by the goodwill of your companions here, and by the stalwart aid of the Manethrall, and by the prowess of the Ranyhyn. It may chance that you will accomplish something other than your intent. Yet good will come of it ere the end.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Linden repeated. What else could she say? But still she did not lift her head or rise to her feet. Her mortality was too heavy for her to carry.\n\nShe felt Frostheart Grueburn moving toward her; but she did not know why until Grueburn scooped her from the ground. Clasping her under her arms, Grueburn held her high, extending her into the grey light as if she were the standard around which all of the Swordmainnir rallied; and as Grueburn did so, the other Giants called Linden's name softly, celebrating her with murmurs. Then Grueburn set Linden on her feet.\n\nThere Mahrtiir took her arm. Baring his teeth like a hunter who had finally found the spoor of his prey, he said, \"Come, Ringthane. Lean upon me while you may. In a moment, Stave will summon the Ranyhyn. To spare our companions, we must gain a wary distance ere you attempt the creation of a Fall. We will walk while we await great Narunal and valiant Hyn.\"\n\nLinden accompanied him because he drew her with him. Her attention was contracting. Already the Giants were becoming dim. Stave had begun to fade. Jeremiah was little more than a will-o'-the-wisp bobbing among the boulders and shards. But she was not growing faint with fatigue and fear; not sinking back into the blankness which had overcome her in front of She Who Must Not Be Named. Rather she was concentrating inward, seeking the private door, secret and familiar, that opened on wild magic; the learned impulse which allowed her to invoke rampant argent.\n\n_Its imperfection is the very paradox of which the Earth is made, and with it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing._ Kasreyn of the Gyre had said that. But he may have been wrong. And she was not a master.\n\nStill she persisted. In recent days, she had surrendered any number of things. The time had come to surrender hesitation and doubt. Like a derelict, she limped over the cratered ground. Step by step, the stains mapped into her jeans and the runes which defined her Staff led her away from her son. Without the Manethrall's help, she could have fallen.\n\nVaguely she heard Stave whistling. Soon the Ranyhyn would come: yet another reason for gratitude. It impelled her to turn her mind outward once more.\n\nResting on Mahrtiir's support, she asked, \"You do understand, don't you? You can let Hyn and Narunal know what we want?\"\n\n\"Aye, Ringthane,\" Mahrtiir answered steadily. \"I comprehend. And that which I comprehend, our mounts will grasp as well. Are they not Ranyhyn, the great horses of Ra, Tail of the Sky, Mane of the World? Their devoir will both serve and preserve us.\"\n\nLinden nodded, but she was not listening. He had said enough. Now she needed wild magic, and it did not come naturally.\n\nPerhaps she managed a hundred paces. The scuff of her boots cast small plumes of dust into the swirling wind, the increasing chill. Then she heard or felt the approach of hooves.\n\nGratitude, she thought. Maybe that was the answer. Gratitude and trust. Jeremiah was alive and free. So was Covenant, in spite of Joan. And Covenant had urged Linden to take this risk. Hyn and Narunal would make it possible. Maybe if she remembered to be grateful and have faith, she would be able to avoid High Lord Kevin's tragic arrogance.\n\nWhen the mare and the stallion joined her, Mahrtiir spent only a moment in homage. Then he boosted Linden onto Hyn's capable back. A heartbeat later, he mounted Narunal. In the half-light, he looked to Linden like all of the Land's bounty incarnated in one mere human as frail and fallible as herself.\n\nPrompted by Narunal's imperious whinny, Linden passed the Staff of Law to the Manethrall. Covenant's ring she lifted from its hiding place under her shirt. Pressing the wedding band between both of her hands, she brought forth silver flame as if she had the courage to defy the Earth's doom.\n\nAs if she believed that good could be accomplished by Desecration.\n\nIn the distance, Jeremiah seemed to call her name. Overhead Kevin's Dirt appeared to catch fire and burn, lit by wild magic. But she paid no heed. Taking the risk, she created a disruption of Time and history that might destroy the world.\n\n## 8.\n\nThe Right Materials\n\nJeremiah was only a boy, but in some ways he knew too much. In others, he knew too little.\n\nDissociation had denied him the normal processes of growing up; the gradually acquired experience of passions and denials, of joys and disappointments. Even in the most practical matters, his development\u2014his acquisition of earned knowledge\u2014had been stunted. At the age of fifteen, he had never so much as changed his own clothes. Certainly he had never learned the most mundane social interactions. In that respect, he was younger than his years; unfamiliar with himself.\n\nYet he had learned other lessons too well. The flames of Lord Foul's bonfire had taught him that some pains were unendurable. And the moral rape of possession\u2014the manner in which he had been used by the _croyel_ to betray Linden's trust\u2014had shown him that hating what was done to him both aided and harmed him. It gave him the desire to fight back\u2014and yet it also convinced him that he would not have been so hurt if he did not deserve it. Hate cut both ways. If he had not been such a coward\u2014if he had not hidden himself away to escape his wounds\u2014Lord Foul and the _croyel_ would not have been able to possess him, use him. He had brought his worst suffering on himself.\n\nHe did not understand why that was true. Nevertheless he yearned to _pay back_ what had happened to him. At the same time, he hated what he felt. He hated himself for feeling it.\n\nBut there had been other forces at work in him as well. His mother's love and devotion had kept him alive. With Tinkertoys and Legos, Lincoln Logs and racetrack sections, he had constructed a sense of possibility and worth that might have eluded a less abused youth. And during his visits to the Land, Covenant's spirit in the Arch had offered him a one-sided friendship, compassionate and respectful.\n\nThe result was a conflicting moil of emotions which he did not know how to manage.\n\nAnd now Linden had abandoned him; actually _abandoned_ him in order to enter a _caesure_ with Mahrtiir. The fact that she had explained her actions did not ease him. It did not muffle the beat of indignation and fear in his veins. He had _counted_ on her. She had _taught_ him to count on her.\n\nAnd yet, strangely, he could hardly contain his excitement. Right here, right now, he had a chance to make his whole life worthwhile. If he succeeded, he would save some of the _Elohim_ , some of the stars. He would prove that Lord Foul and the _croyel_ and his natural mother were wrong about him. From head to foot, he trembled with eagerness to begin.\n\nThat contradiction was confusing enough; but he had more.\n\nHe had inherited Anele's legacy of Earthpower. It belonged to him now: the Land's living energy had become as much a part of him as the blood in his veins. He was inured against the vagaries of heat and cold, wind and wet. His bare feet endured sharp rocks and the ancient shards of weapons or armor without discomfort. His health-sense sloughed off Kevin's Dirt. He could fuse bones to make marrowmeld sculptures. He could even summon fire from his hands. And there might be more possibilities.\n\nFor him, Earthpower had become a piercing pleasure. It had enabled him to rescue himself from his prison.\n\nBut he had received other things from Anele as well. The old man had given him inarticulate scraps of knowledge, and horrific vulnerabilities, and an instinct for moral dread. Much as he treasured Anele's gifts, their implications appalled him.\n\nAnd because he had never learned how to manage among his emotions, he tried to ignore the worst of them. Nevertheless they clung to him. He was like his pajamas. His mother had dressed him in them and tucked him lovingly into bed. The horses rearing across their faded blue might have been Ranyhyn. Now they were torn and tattered; soiled with grime and dirt; defined by bullets. From the waist down, their innocence bore the stains of Liand's death. The _croyel_ 's gore marked the shirt.\n\nSo he had turned his back on Linden when she had insisted on throwing her life away in the Land's past. What else could he have done? He did not know who he was without her. He hardly seemed to exist. When her _caesure_ collapsed into itself and vanished, taking her and Mahrtiir and their Ranyhyn to a place and time from which they might never return, Jeremiah dissociated them in his mind, buried them away. Then he chose the excitement of building. It was his only escape.\n\n\"Come on!\" he called down to the Giants and Stave. \"Let's get started. The longer we wait, the more _Elohim_ we'll lose.\"\n\n_Elohim_ and stars.\n\nThat was why he was here, after all: to save things that could not save themselves. To delay the Worm's feeding, slow its progress toward the Blood of the Earth. To buy time until somebody came up with a better answer.\n\nBut the Giants ignored his shout. None of them glanced up at him. Even Stave did not. With the Swordmainnir, the former Master watched the place where Linden and Mahrtiir had disappeared as if he hoped or feared that she would return almost immediately. They were all acting like there was no need to hurry. Like Jeremiah did not need them\u2014or like the _Elohim_ and the stars and the whole world did not need _him_.\n\nWind skirled like travail around him, tugged at his pajamas. It carried dust from the gouged cliff, the fallen debris. Perhaps it would have stung his eyes if he had not been so full of Earthpower. Somewhere inside him was a small boy who wanted to cry because his mother had left him. But he refused to be that boy. The structure that he wanted to make both goaded and protected him.\n\nSomehow he swallowed the impulse to yell at the Giants in frustration. Here was another aspect of his confusion, his inability to resolve his own contradictions. The Giants were ignoring him\u2014but they were _Giants_ , and he had loved them ever since he had first seen them. When he and Linden and Stave had ridden to rejoin the Ironhand and her comrades, his response to the sheer size and wonder of who and what the Swordmainnir were had opened like a flower in his heart. They were Giants in every sense: he had no other word for them. And he had seen the delight in their eyes when they had gazed at him, the relief and welcome. They had made him feel that he was capable of putting his past behind him. Of cutting it off entirely. Under their influence, he had believed that he could accomplish something wonderful.\n\nIf they rebuffed him now\u2014\n\nAbruptly his frustration became chagrin. His health-sense was precise: he could see that he had offended the Swordmainnir. There was anxiety in the slump of their shoulders, worries aggravated by a great weight of weariness. And they carried griefs which Jeremiah did not recognize. But there was also anger. Their refusal to acknowledge his call was deliberate.\n\nHe had to talk to them\u2014and he was afraid of what they would say.\n\nHesitating, he took a moment to scan his surroundings. Above him hung the gouge which his mother had made in the ridgefront. It and its slope of rubble faced the north, or a bit west of north. At odd intervals, chunks of rock and clumps of dirt still fell from the upper surfaces of the gouge; but they clattered harmlessly to the sides. Buffets of wind scattered the dust before it could settle.\n\nThe ridge filled that side of the landscape. In every other direction, an almost featureless plain stretched out to the horizons, a beaten flat pocked with hollows like craters left behind by a barrage of huge stones or heavy iron, or of bolts of magic. In the cloying dusk, these hollows or craters gave the terrain a mottled appearance, as if it were stippled with shadows or omens.\n\nAs far as Jeremiah could see, nothing grew or moved. Nothing lived at all. And no springs or streams nourished the plain. In this region, the foundations of the Lower Land wore only a thin mantle of dirt, soil so barren that it refused even _aliantha_.\n\nAnd over it all lay the pall of the sunless murk, an augury of the last dark. As Jeremiah gazed around, he noticed that the afternoon was waning. Evening was not far off. Then would come full darkness, the second night since the sun had failed.\n\nEven now, the stars were visible, as bright as cries overhead. He could have watched them wink out of existence, had he been willing to face them. But at night\u2014\n\nAt night, the Giants would have more difficulty doing what he wanted from them.\n\nThe situation was urgent\u2014and still the Swordmainnir rested against their boulders. They had promised to help him. Now they acted like they had changed their minds.\n\nHe had to talk to them.\n\nHis private turmoil made him awkward as he began to descend from the rubble. Whenever he was working on one of his constructs, he was deft and graceful, full of confidence. But when he felt stymied, his muscles forgot what they were doing. He fumbled at the rocks, jerked downward, lost his balance and caught himself like a child half his age.\n\nHe hated being clumsy. He hated himself when he was clumsy.\n\nThe curve of boulders where the Giants sat faced away from him. Like Stave, they were not affected by Kevin's Dirt: they must have been aware of Jeremiah. Still they did not look in his direction. Earlier they had shed their armor and swords. Now they all rested against thrusts of stone. Only Stave remained on his feet, still watching the place where Linden and Mahrtiir had disappeared.\n\nBiting his lower lip, Jeremiah resisted a desire to start protesting before he reached his companions. Fortunately Rime Coldspray turned toward him while he was still a short distance away. Although her disapproval was obvious, her gaze steadied him. Clearly she did not intend to keep ignoring him.\n\nTroubled gusts stirred up dust, carried it away. Clad in twilight, the Giants resembled shadows or stones. Like shadows or stones, they looked deaf to persuasion. Still Jeremiah walked closer until he stood near Coldspray at the edge of the arc.\n\nNone of the Giants spoke. Stave did not. But they were all looking at him now.\n\nFor a moment, Jeremiah clamped his teeth down on his lip. Then he tried to say something that would not make his mother's friends angrier.\n\n\"I know you're tired.\" He was whining: he heard it in his tone. That, too, he hated. \"I know you need rest. But I can't tell how long this is going to take\"\u2014he gestured at the slope of rocks\u2014\"or how much time we have, or how many _Elohim_ we can save. And it'll be harder at night.\n\n\"I want to get started. Why is that wrong?\"\n\nHe felt the attention of the Swordmainnir. Nevertheless they conveyed the impression that they wanted him to go away.\n\nThe Ironhand shifted her shoulder so that she faced Jeremiah more squarely. Even seated, she was taller than he was. She seemed to glare down at him in the gloom.\n\n\"Young Jeremiah,\" she sighed, \"we are Giants. Children are more than our joy and our delight. They are our future\u2014if the notion of any future has meaning in these fraught times. We are endlessly indulgent.\"\n\nBefore Jeremiah could ask, Then why are you mad at me? she said more sternly, \"But by the measure of your kind, you are not a child. Much has been given to you. Therefore much is expected in return.\"\n\nWincing, Jeremiah retorted, \"I know that.\" The sound of his own truculence disgusted him. It sharpened the vexation of the Giants. But he did not know how to control it.\n\n\"Do you, forsooth?\" drawled Frostheart Grueburn. \"You conceal your wisdom well.\"\n\nLatebirth and Cabledarm offered their own ripostes; but the Ironhand gestured them to silence. On their behalf, she asked Jeremiah, \"Do you indeed comprehend what Linden Giantfriend has done for love of you?\" Her tone was a bared blade. \"Your manner suggests that you do not.\n\n\"I do not speak of her search for you across many centuries and uncounted leagues. Other mothers have done as much, if in differing times by different means. Nor do I speak of her surrender to the machinations of the Harrow, or of her perilous descent into the Lost Deep, or of her many efforts to relieve your absent mind. These things might other mothers have done as well. We ourselves have done much in Lostson Longwrath's name, and we are not his mothers.\n\n\"Now, however, Linden Giantfriend has exceeded our conceptions of love and fidelity.\" Rime Coldspray's voice cut. \"She has surpassed the hearts of Giants. Knowing that you have need of her, she yet prizes your worth so highly that she has hazarded more than her own extinction. She has dared the end of all Time and life. This she has done for the Land's sake, aye, but also for yours, that your endeavors here may accomplish their intended purpose.\n\n\"Does her attempt not express her devotion? Does it not merit your esteem?\"\n\n_Remember that I'm proud of you._\n\nJeremiah's immediate reaction was a flare of anger. \"She _left_ me.\" But then tears burned his eyes, and he wanted to weep. He understood what his mother was trying to do\u2014and yet he had treated her courage like a betrayal. Winds swirled around him like misery. Abruptly he sank to the ground; sat cross-legged with his elbows braced on his thighs and his head down.\n\nCome on, he commanded himself bitterly. Don't be a baby. If you start crying now, I'll never forgive you.\n\nIn a small voice, he asked the scoured dirt, \"What do you want me to do?\"\n\nGradually the Ironhand's aura lost its irate flavor. \"Attempt patience, young Jeremiah,\" she replied as if she had exhausted her reprimands. \"Grant to us an hour of rest. Linden Giantfriend's fire is a rare gift, but it cannot efface the cost of all that we have endured. When we have rested, two of us will commence the labor which your purpose requires. The others will sleep while they may. When the two must pause, they will awaken two others in turn. By twos, we will achieve what we can until all have slept. With the return of day, we will arise together to serve you.\"\n\nAfter a moment, she added, \"If need compels you, make use of the night. Doubtless there are preparations which will serve to hasten the morrow's labors.\"\n\nAttempt patience? That seemed impossible to Jeremiah. Patience was for people who were incapable of anything else. He had spent ten passive years exhausting his ability to _wait_. But when Coldspray suggested preparations, his heart veered. That he understood: identifying his materials; setting them out so that he would not have to search for them when the time came to put them in place. And he knew that he would have to spend a lot of time searching for the right sizes and shapes and quantities of malachite. While he did that, two Giants might be able to give him as much help as he could use.\n\nThinking hard, he grew calmer.\n\nA flurry of gusts out of the northeast slapped at the company. They tumbled against the ridgefront, scurried out across the plain. To Jeremiah's nerves, they felt like the leading edge of a gale. But the forces driving the wind were still distant. The full strength of the blast might not reach so far.\n\nA part of his mind was making calculations: measuring the mass of rocks against their hidden seams of malachite; estimating sizes and dimensions and positions. But that part of him was instinctive. It did not require his conscious attention. Instead of focusing on it, he tried to think of a way to make amends.\n\nHe did love Giants.\n\nGroping, he said tentatively, \"You've talked about Longwrath before. Lostson Longwrath. I heard you\"\u2014in spite of himself, he winced\u2014\"when the _croyel_ had me. But I don't know who he is.\n\n\"What happened to him? Where is he?\"\n\nAt once, Jeremiah felt a pang spread among the Giants, and he feared that he had made a stupid mistake. They looked at each other or turned away; shifted uncomfortably where they sat; touched their weapons. But then he saw that he had not irritated them again. Instead he had reminded them of a pain which they did not know how to relieve.\n\n\"Ah, young Jeremiah.\" The Ironhand sighed once more. \"You request a tale\u2014\"\n\nAbruptly Frostheart Grueburn heaved herself to her feet. Towering against the dimming sky and the lucid stars, she announced to her comrades, \"It is a tale which need not delay young Jeremiah's task. If Latebirth will consent to join me, we two will be the first to aid him. And while we do so, we will speak of Longwrath.\n\n\"I have borne Linden Giantfriend across many arduous leagues. In her name, I will bear this burden also.\"\n\n\"You are harsh, Grueburn,\" Latebirth retorted. \"You ask much. Scend Wavegift's death clings unkindly to me. Should Longwrath appear before us here, I would wish both to embrace him and to strike him down.\"\n\n\"As would we all,\" muttered Coldspray. \"Nonetheless Frostheart Grueburn's offer is a gift. Should you prefer to rest, Latebirth, I will join her.\"\n\n\"Nay, Ironhand.\" Groaning lugubriously, Latebirth pushed herself upright. \"I merely complain, as is my wont. Grueburn's thought is worthy of her\u2014\"\n\n\"A jest of two edges,\" remarked Onyx Stonemage. \"It both gives and takes.\"\n\n\"\u2014and I will endeavor to prove worthy as well,\" Latebirth finished without pausing.\n\nDucking his head, Jeremiah mustered the grace to say, \"Thanks. I know this is hard. But I really can't do it without your help.\"\n\nGrueburn swung her hand at his shoulder, a comradely clap that nearly knocked him off his feet. \"Waste no heed on us, young Jeremiah. We are Giants. We revel in bewailing our lot.\n\n\"Come.\" Followed by Latebirth, she steered him back toward the sloping rockfall. \"You will describe what is required, and we will speak of Lostson Longwrath while we attempt your desires.\"\n\n\"In that case\"\u2014with a nudge of his shoulder, Jeremiah redirected her toward a stretch of open ground at the foot of the rubble\u2014\"let's start there.\" Within three steps, his distress became excitement again. Wind slapped grit and portents at his face, but he ignored it. The preparations for his construct seemed to spring into focus of their own volition. \"I'll show you where I want to build.\"\n\nGrueburn nodded her approval; and Latebirth said, \"That is well thought, young Jeremiah. In the absence of plain commands, we would doubtless cause ourselves much unnecessary labor.\"\n\n\"And we would moan,\" Grueburn stated, feigning pride. \"Even among Giants, I am prized for the purity and pathos of my moans.\"\n\n\"I don't believe you,\" snorted Jeremiah. Carried on a rise of anticipation, he tried to emulate his companions. With gibes, the Swordmainnir refreshed their spirits: he saw that. Now he wanted to participate. \"You've probably never moaned in your whole life.\"\n\n\"Latebirth has not,\" Grueburn asserted while the other Swordmain chuckled. \"She is entirely dour. But I am capable, I do assure you, of the most extravagant and heart-rending moans.\"\n\n\"Enough, I implore you!\" pleaded Latebirth. \"Young Jeremiah's ears will bleed if you proceed to a demonstration.\" More soberly, she added, \"And we have consented to speak of Longwrath.\"\n\n\"Yet time remains to us,\" Frostheart Grueburn countered. \"When I regard the approach of the Worm, the hours appear as brief as heartbeats. But when I contemplate the exertions before us, mere moments are protracted to the horizons and beyond. If we lack time sufficient to speak at leisure, we also lack time for our task. Haste will gain naught.\"\n\nLatebirth grunted glum acquiescence. In silence, the two Giants accompanied Jeremiah to the span of ground where he proposed to build.\n\n\"Here,\" he announced at the edge of his goal. With a gesture, he asked Grueburn and Latebirth to halt. \"I'll mark out dimensions. If we don't pile rocks inside that space, they won't be in the way later.\"\n\nLatebirth scanned the area, muttered something that he did not hear. His attention had shifted. Images flared in his mind, becoming more explicit as he estimated shapes and masses, ratios of malachite, necessary boundaries. Stooping, he selected a fragment of basalt with a sharp point. For a moment longer, he studied the ground. When he was sure, he began gouging lines in the dirt.\n\nFour paces for a Giant straight toward the ridgefront. Five parallel to the spill of rubble. Four more to form the third side of a precise rectangle. And a line along the northwest to close the space. There he interrupted his marks to suggest a gap. Eventually that gap would become an entryway.\n\nWhile Jeremiah outlined his construct, Frostheart Grueburn began.\n\n\"Speaking of Lostson Longwrath is hurtful to us,\" she said gruffly. \"The fault of his plight lies with our forebears. From them, we inherit a shame which we do not bear lightly. For that reason, and because your kind is born to brevity, and because we must conserve our strength, I will be concise.\"\n\n\"Concise, forsooth,\" scoffed Latebirth. \"Already you falter in your intent.\"\n\nGrueburn ignored her comrade. \"Young Jeremiah,\" she went on, \"Longwrath's plight shares much with your former state.\"\n\nJeremiah flicked a startled glance toward her. But his task held him, and he did not pause.\n\n\"He is possessed,\" she explained. \"Forces which he did not choose and could not refuse have deprived him of himself. In the name of a foolish and unheeding bargain with the _Elohim_ , he is ruled by a _geas_ both cruel and minatory. Where he was once a Swordmain honored among us, he has become a madman bent on murder.\n\n\"And he is lost in another sense as well.\" Grueburn's tone was as personal as a plea. \"Though we were his guardians and caretakers, he was separated from us. Now we know not where he wanders, or indeed whether he yet lives. Nor do we know what form his _geas_ has taken. He failed in his first compulsion. Has he now been released? Is some new atrocity required of him? It is possible that Infelice might have answered us, had we inquired of her in Andelain. But we were consumed by our shame\u2014aye, and also by our wrath. We did not think to inquire.\n\n\"Whatever the burden he now bears may be, he was consigned to it by our thoughtlessness as much as by the _Elohim_.\"\n\nJeremiah tried not to listen. Grueburn raised too many echoes. They were as insistent as the erratic buffeting of the wind. But unlike the wind, they did not hurry past him. Instead they squirmed like crimes in the background of his mind.\n\nHe should not have asked about Longwrath.\n\nNevertheless he surprised himself by demanding when he meant to remain silent, \"What's your point?\"\n\nSome denied part of him wanted an answer.\n\nHis companions regarded him gravely. After a moment, Grueburn replied, \"My point, young Jeremiah, is that Longwrath's madness and pain do not foretell your doom. There is this difference between you. You were taken. He was bartered in a witless exchange.\"\n\nJeremiah flinched. Before he could stop himself, he retorted, \"It's the same thing.\" He did not want to say this. The words were compelled from him by pressures which he yearned to defy. \"My mother gave us away.\" He remembered it vividly. The _croyel_ had delighted in raising such spectres from their graves. \"I mean my natural mother, not Mom. She must have thought she was getting something. She sacrificed my sisters and me when she handed herself to Lord Foul.\" The bonfire had cost him two fingers. If he had not hidden from them, eyes as hungry as fangs would have claimed him. \"We were too young to know what she was doing.\"\n\nBut he had not been too young to be terrified\u2014\n\nGrueburn's shoulders slumped. \"Then I will grieve for you. And I will hold out hope for Lostson Longwrath, that he may evade his _geas_ as you have foiled your imprisonment.\"\n\nJeremiah poked at his leg with the tip of his rock, trying to suppress a residue of agony. Dust had already begun to fill his lines. In any case, they were shrouded in twilight, almost imperceptible. Resisting the unspoken appeal in Grueburn's voice, he asked roughly, \"Can you still see where I want to build?\"\n\n\"We are Giants,\" Latebirth replied as if she were certain of herself. \"We will not forget.\"\n\n\"Good for you,\" Jeremiah muttered under his breath: a sour whisper. Then he turned toward the rubble. \"Come on. We've wasted enough time.\"\n\nAlmost immediately, however, he regretted his tone. It sounded too much like petulance, the whining of a boy who did not want to grow up. As an apology, he clenched his hands into fists, then opened them with cornflower flames in his palms.\n\nLighting the way, he led Frostheart Grueburn and Latebirth onto the rockfall to search for malachite.\n\nome of the stones with their secret deposits of minerals and hope were small enough that he could manage them without help. Those he ignored temporarily. Instead he probed the rubble until he located two or three rocks that required Giants. These he indicated to Grueburn and Latebirth. When they assured him that they would be able to wrestle the stones from the slope without causing it to shift, he quenched his fires. In darkness softened only by the half-light of evening, he returned to the smaller pieces of granite and basalt, and began hurrying them downward.\n\nHe was going to need a lot of them. And dozens or scores of bigger chunks. The proportions of malachite were meager. With purer, richer deposits, he could have contrived a structure no taller than himself, its walls closer together: little more than a shrine. But with these rocks, his construct would have to be the size of an impoverished temple, crudely raised by people too poor to afford a better place of worship. And even then, he could not be sure that he would find enough malachite for his purpose.\n\nThe right materials in the right amounts with the right shapes. If he succeeded, the _Elohim_ would come. They would have no choice. But if he failed to locate enough malachite\u2014or to build his temple before every _Elohim_ perished, or before the Worm came\u2014then everything would be wasted. His own life would have no meaning. Mom would have saved him and then left him for nothing.\n\nWhile he fretted, however, other facets of who he was made their preparations with a confidence that seemed almost autonomic. Hardly thinking about his choices, he set the stones he carried where they would be readily accessible. As Grueburn and Latebirth struggled down the slope, supporting between them a massive boulder, and gasping stertorously, he estimated its shape in relation to its freight of malachite, then directed them to place it like a cornerstone where two of his lines met. When they dropped it where he indicated, and leaned on it to ease their trembling, he instructed them to turn it slightly. And as soon as they complied to his satisfaction, he followed flurries of wind back onto the rockfall to retrieve more fragments of his intent.\n\nIn moments, he found a chunk of a size that threatened to exceed him. But before he could pry the rock out of the slope, he felt Stave coming toward him.\n\n\"Permit me,\" the former Master offered. \"There is little else that I can do to aid you. I lack the stonelore of Giants. Nor, it appears, do my senses equal yours. Yet strength I have.\n\n\"Also I am not needed to stand guard. In the absence of such glamour as the Unbeliever's son has wielded, any force potent to endanger Swordmainnir will be perceived at some distance.\" With a gesture, he indicated the open plain. \"So far from the foes gathered in the region of Mount Thunder, I deem that we are in no imminent peril of attack. And I do not doubt that Hynyn and Khelen watch over us in their fashion.\n\n\"Therefore permit me, Chosen-son. Carry lesser stones as you have need of them. Provide guidance to the Giants. Permit me to make use of my strength.\"\n\nStave's voice conveyed an oblique impression of appeal. He seemed to want more than he asked. Apparently being separated from Linden was hard on him. He needed distractions while he waited for her return.\n\nNodding, Jeremiah stepped aside. When he had remembered to say, \"Thanks,\" he added, \"I'll show you more as soon as you're ready.\" Then he turned away to check on the Giants.\n\nLatebirth had a lump in her arms that she could barely lift alone. Tortuous with caution, she picked her way downward. At the same time, Grueburn strained to loosen a boulder which was too heavy for her\u2014and which might let the rockfall above her slip. Sure of himself in at least this one respect, Jeremiah told her to leave it. \"I'll need it\"\u2014it was veined with too much green to ignore\u2014\"but we can move it later. For now, we should look higher up.\"\n\nGrueburn gasped a sigh as she straightened her back. For a moment, she raised her face to the stars, groaned unfamiliar curses. \"Even among Giants,\" she admitted, \"I am proven foolish. Clearly movement here will weaken the slope. This I should have discerned without your counsel.\"\n\nJeremiah felt her weariness. It slapped at him like the wind. But he could think of nothing reassuring to say except, \"We still have plenty to choose from.\"\n\nUnsteady as an invalid, she accompanied him upward.\n\nHe studied her sidelong for a moment, remembering his mother and the Staff of Law. Then he slapped his hands together, lifted fire into the night. His flames were more than light and warmth. They were Earthpower. He wanted to believe that their uses were not limited to fusing marrowmeld structures and cooking sour tubers; but he had no one to teach him. He could only learn by trying.\n\n\"When Mom does this,\" he said more to himself than to the Swordmain, \"it helps.\" Reaching out, he grasped Grueburn's forearm.\n\nWhile he concentrated, trying to send his inherited magic into her, she watched him with a glint of hope in her eyes. After a few heartbeats, however, she murmured, \"A worthy attempt, young Jeremiah. Alas, it is not the Staff of Law. It warms and soothes. It does not restore.\"\n\nAs if he were flinching, he let her go. His failure was obvious. He did not need to hear it named.\n\n_Failure isn't something you_ are. His mother had told him that. _It's something you_ do. She had said it as if she believed it. But it did not feel like the truth. His inability to help Grueburn felt like just another demonstration that he was not _good enough_ to deserve success.\n\nWithout warning, he saw Lord Foul's eyes in the bonfire that had maimed him. Unbidden and compulsory, the memory cut him like the flick of a lash. It cut deep enough to draw blood.\n\nIn that instant, he wanted to hit back. He needed a lash of his own. He saw the _croyel_ 's neck gripped in his strangling hands; saw himself pounding the Despiser's head to pulp with a stone. His eagerness to _hurt them_ was so swift and unexpected that he was unable to control it. It snatched a snarl past his teeth before he could restrain himself.\n\nAt once, he slapped his halfhand over his mouth. But he was too late. Frostheart Grueburn had heard him.\n\nShe studied him anxiously. For a while, she seemed to flounder, uncertain of her course. But then she summoned her frayed strength. With elaborate care, softly, she said, \"Heed me, young Jeremiah. Linden Giantfriend fears for you. She fears that both the _croyel_ and the Despiser have wrought untold harm. Now I discern that she has good cause. But I do not perceive the form or substance of your distress.\n\n\"Will you not reveal yourself to me? There is much to be gained by the setting aside of such concealments. And I remind you that I am a Giant. The burden of joy is mine. It belongs to the ears that hear, not to the mouth that speaks.\"\n\nI don't believe you, Jeremiah retorted in silence. Hear joy? That's not even possible. People judge. The _croyel_ taught me that. _Mom_ taught me that. She judges herself all the time.\n\nBut his secrets were too dark for him. They implied too much vulnerability, too much helplessness. They would reduce him to a whimpering child. They might send him back to the safety of graves.\n\nSeething, he filled his hands with fire again. Then he scrubbed it across his rough cheeks, ran flames through his tangled hair. While light like dishonesty shone in his eyes, he avoided Grueburn's gaze.\n\n\"I don't know what you're talking about.\" Deliberately he tried to sound callous. \"Look for malachite higher up.\" He waved a dismissal. \"Find a piece you can lift. I see a few rocks I can manage.\"\n\nBitterly he turned away. He told himself that he was angry at Frostheart Grueburn because she had tainted the pure excitement of his talents and his task, but that was not the truth.\n\nLike the wind, the truth thronged with omens.\n\nt intervals, Grueburn and Latebirth asked for Jeremiah's opinion of one ponderous fragment or another. Most of the time, they labored without him. And before long, Latebirth limped away to rejoin her resting comrades. After rolling one more boulder down the slope, Grueburn followed her. Eventually the Ironhand and Halewhole Bluntfist came to toil in their turn.\n\nStave needed more of Jeremiah's guidance, but he gave no sign that he required any respite. He worked steadily, moving chunks and slabs that would have tested the thick muscles of Giants.\n\nAnd Jeremiah also did not tire. He considered that he had already spent ten years effectively asleep. That was enough. In addition, Anele's gift of Earthpower provided reserves that seemed boundless. Occasionally he paused to measure his growing collection of fragments against his temple's requirements. From time to time, he asked Rime Coldspray and Bluntfist\u2014or, later, Cabledarm and Onyx Stonemage\u2014to position their burdens on one of his structure's boundary-lines. But those interruptions were brief. Between them, he moved up and down the rockfall with the assurance of inspiration. Hidden deposits and delicate veins held his attention as if they made him complete.\n\nDisplayed against the fathomless velvet of the heavens, the stars continued their gradual dance of death. And with every loss, the lights that remained seemed to shine more brightly, like beacons pleading for rescue. Only their vast profusion, and the immeasurable distances between them, suggested that the Earth's demise was not imminent.\n\nFor a while, Cirrus Kindwind with one maimed arm and Stormpast Galesend relieved Cabledarm and Stonemage. But soon, too soon, they wore themselves to the fringes of prostration. Then only Jeremiah and Stave were left to carry on the task.\n\nMidnight had come. It had not passed. Dawn and more help seemed impossibly distant.\n\nThe wind gathered force through the darkness, rushing from nowhere to nowhere, and contradicting its own impulses incessantly. Dust and grit driven away in one direction flailed the ridge from another. Sudden blasts strong enough to stagger Jeremiah righted him in an instant. Nevertheless the gusts did him one service: they scoured away the dirt between the stones. As a result, he was able to locate portions of malachite more quickly. Chunks no bigger than his head and ragged menhirs the size of Giants revealed their secrets as if they were etched in possibilities.\n\nStill there was too little that he and Stave could accomplish alone. Long before dawn, they had gathered all of the lesser shards that the edifice required. Some pieces they put in place: others they could not. For the heavier labor, only Giants working together would suffice. And even when Jeremiah had identified every fragment that he would ask the Swordmainnir to move, he lacked one crucial element.\n\nEventually he would need a capstone, a culminating lump of malachite. Not a large one: nothing bigger than his two fists together, or perhaps his goaded heart. And its precise contours were not critical. Any approximation would serve his purpose. But it had to be pure\u2014\n\nWell, not absolutely pure. He could tolerate some slight admixture of other substances. But not much. Not much at all.\n\nWhere in or under this rubble was he going to find enough unadulterated green? So far, everything had been veins, tracery, small nodes; threads deposited in trickles across centuries or millennia. Otherwise he would have needed rocks of lesser bulk.\n\nWithout its capstone, his edifice would have no power over the _Elohim_.\n\nWhile the Giants rested, there was nothing more that Jeremiah could do to prepare or build. He could only search. And dawn was still three hours away.\n\nIncreasingly alarmed, he scrambled up and down the rockfall, moving with less assurance and more haste; gripped by a fever of trepidation. Over and over again, he told himself to slow down. He could not probe the slope deeply or accurately while he was hurrying. But he seemed to feel jaws snapping at his back, fangs wet with venom and malice, rabid agony. Memories\u2014At any moment, they might catch him.\n\nIf he failed now, he would not deserve anything that Linden had done for him.\n\nA slap of wind caught him rushing from one boulder to another. His foot missed its step as if the solidity of the world had faded. Without warning, the entire rockfall seemed to stand on its side. Then he plunged.\n\nIn an instant, realities transposed their definitions. Through the darkness, he saw as clearly as prescience that all of his conflicts and confusions would be resolved when his head smashed itself open on that looming jut of granite, _that_ one. He was falling too hard to twist aside. But now he understood that being overtaken by his fears was not the worst possible outcome. Even a retreat to his graves was not the worst. Anything could be destroyed, anything at all, by a senseless, childish accident.\n\nThen Stave caught his arm, swung him out of danger so suddenly that Jeremiah did not recognize Stave's grasp until Stave had settled him on a canting shelf of basalt. He did not feel the tight hurt of Stave's fingers until the first wildness of his heartbeat began to subside.\n\nHe was panting as though he had lost a race.\n\n\"Chosen-son,\" Stave said like a man who had seen nothing, done nothing, \"you appear troubled to my sight. Do not take it amiss that I say so. I am _Haruchai_. Your silence I deem condign. I gauge that you have concealed naught which may alter the choices of your companions. What purpose, then, is served by speech? Nonetheless you are mortal, as I am. And at the side of the Chosen your mother, I have learned that it is not shameful to request or receive aid. Therefore I will hear if you wish to speak.\"\n\nJeremiah was breathing too hard to think clearly. Mom wanted him to talk. Grueburn wanted him to talk. They wanted to probe horrible memories, expose parts of him that bore the marks of the _croyel_ and the Despiser. Of course he refused. But now he knew that there were worse things than failure.\n\nHe had in fact concealed something that might have affected Linden's choices. She did not understand the dark core of Anele's legacy.\n\nThe former Master had promised to watch over him. To keep him safe.\n\n\"Stave\u2014\" he began thickly. \"They don't know. I'm so afraid\u2014\"\n\nBut he could not continue. The words stuck in his throat.\n\nWhat purpose, then, is served\u2014? His mother was already gone.\n\nWhile Stave waited impassively, Jeremiah wrestled his demons into their familiar shapes.\n\n\"I'm afraid this is all wasted.\" He gestured awkwardly around him. \"There's a piece I need, and I can't find it. Without it, nothing else counts.\"\n\nStave lifted an eyebrow. \"What is it that you require, Chosen-son?\"\n\nJeremiah swallowed a groan. \"A lump of malachite. About this big.\" He put his fists together. \"And it pretty much has to be pure. But all I've got are traces. That whole ridge probably doesn't have any pure malachite big enough to save the _Elohim_.\"\n\nStave scanned the slope as though it did not interest him. \"Perchance it does not,\" he remarked. \"We cannot be certain until we have searched with greater care. Also it may be that the surface of the rockfall conceals its depths. I will accompany you until you are confident of your perceptions. If no hope is found, then mayhap we would do well to delve within the rubble.\n\n\"I see no cause for concern\"\u2014he may have meant despair\u2014\"until we have done our utmost. And even then, the lore of our companions may devise possibilities which elude us.\"\n\nJeremiah stifled a protest. He wanted to say, That isn't going to work. All of us together can't move this many rocks fast enough. But Stave's uninflected calm seemed to refuse objections.\n\nHow could he be right? He did not share Jeremiah's fears.\n\nHe was _Haruchai_. He had sacrificed his place among his people to stand with Linden. How could he be wrong?\n\nAfter a moment, Jeremiah nodded reluctantly. \"Sure. Why not? What else are we going to do?\"\n\nBracing himself on the former Master's dispassion, he filled his hands with fire. Earthpower might serve to sharpen his health-sense. And if it did not, it might comfort him anyway.\n\nTogether Jeremiah Chosen-son and Stave of the _Haruchai_ began the tedious task of scrutinizing the rockfall from every angle.\n\nor Jeremiah, time crept by in an ocean surge of frustration, inexorable as a tide, rising and falling from one moment to the next, but always climbing higher. An accumulating sense of futility lured his attention into darker places. His flames changed nothing, and he let them go; immersed himself once more in the world's darkness. Occasionally his heart rose at the glimpse of a deposit. When he saw that the amount of malachite was too small, his spirit sank again.\n\nBut Stave was always at his side, always calm\u2014and steadier than Jeremiah's pulse. Over and over again, Jeremiah swallowed his alarm and kept going for no better reason than because Stave was with him.\n\nStealthy as betrayal, dawn came closer; and still Jeremiah could not find what he sought. An hour before the moment when the sun should have risen, he and the _Haruchai_ completed the first stage of their search. They had looked everywhere. They had looked at everything. Now nothing remained except the imponderable labor of digging into the rockfall.\n\nHigh up on the slope, Jeremiah collapsed on a slab of granite with his elbows propped on his knees and his face hidden in his hands. He was tired now, worn out by defeat. Everything that felt like excitement or hope had drained out of him. No doubt Stave would go on searching. Jeremiah could not.\n\nThe _Haruchai_ remained standing nearby, glancing here and there with apparent unconcern. He may have been waiting for Jeremiah to recover. After a few moments, however, he said, \"Set aside discouragement, Chosen-son. Hope remains.\"\n\nThe flatness of his tone made him sound reproachful.\n\nJeremiah jerked up his head. As aggrieved as a child, he burst out, \"It does not! We've looked everywhere! And I don't care what you say about taking this rubble apart. Sure, we can look deeper that way. But we only have eight Giants\u2014and _they_ don't have any food. They'll have to shove rocks out of the way for _days_ while they starve. The world is going to end, and it'll break Mom's heart, and we'll still be here just digging!\"\n\n\"Softly, Chosen-son,\" Stave replied as if he were commenting on the condition of Jeremiah's pajamas. \"The time has not come to rouse the Swordmainnir. Doubtless they would answer your urging, but we have no cause to summon them. In one respect, you are mistaken. We have not extended our search to its boundaries.\"\n\nJeremiah stared. He wanted to shout something vicious, but Stave's manner stopped him. Briefly his mouth and throat worked without producing a sound. Then he asked hoarsely, \"What're you talking about?\"\n\n\"Chosen-son,\" Stave stated without hesitation, \"you have not turned your gaze upward.\"\n\nStill Jeremiah stared. What, upward? At the stars?\n\n\"Consider the ridge,\" explained his companion. \"Consider the wound which the Chosen has made. Your discernment exceeds my senses, but to my sight it appears that there is a source of malachite above us.\"\n\nJeremiah sprang to his feet as if he had been stung, flung his gaze at the source of the rockfall.\n\nAt first, he found nothing except blunt granite, blind basalt. Apparently every bit of green had already fallen.\n\nBut Stave was looking higher, studying the hollow near its ragged upper rim.\n\nA tall slab stood there, a monolith heavy enough to resist Linden's detonation. To a quick glance, the stone resembled granite or schist. But when Jeremiah looked harder, he saw that the slab was actually a flawed mix of igneous rock and more porous sandstone supported by rigid shafts of flint.\n\nAnd enclosed within the monolith were signs\u2014\n\n\"Really?\" he breathed. \"Are you sure?\"\n\nWas that his capstone? Exactly what his temple needed?\n\nIf so, it was inaccessible. Completely out of reach. Perhaps Linden could have used her Staff, caused the slab to topple somehow. Her son could not.\n\nWith enough rope\u2014\n\nThe Giants had no rope.\n\nScowling, Jeremiah clenched his fists until his fingers ached. \"I can't tell. It's too far away.\" Then he beat his knuckles against his thighs so that his frustration would not erupt into the night. The monolith appeared to lean as if it were taunting him; daring him to believe that it would topple. \"But even if it's enough, it's useless. We can't get at it.\"\n\n\"Chosen-son.\" Now Stave's tone was unmistakably a reprimand. He regarded Jeremiah as if the tugging of the fractured gale did not touch him. \"You judge in haste. Therefore you judge falsely. Have you come so far in Linden Avery's care and failed to learn that despair gives poor counsel? If the needed stone lies beyond your grasp, withdraw. Retreat to the foot of the rockfall. Acknowledge this truth, that you are not alone.\"\n\nJeremiah opened his mouth; closed it. A mordant voice inside him snarled, What're you going to do? Fly up there? I dare you. But that reaction arose from memories which he strained to suppress. He would have pulled down the ridge gladly to bury them. And Stave was impervious to Jeremiah's galled incredulity. Withdraw. Fighting himself, Jeremiah moved backward under the pressure of Stave's severe gaze. Retreat.\n\nMom! Where are you? I don't know what's going on.\n\nRetreat from _what_?\n\nAwkward as a youth who had never been sure of anything, Jeremiah went down the rubble as quickly as he could manage.\n\nWhen he reached bare dirt, he peered upward. Just for a moment, he could not locate Stave. But then a suggestion of movement snagged his attention. Squinting, he spotted a hard shape like a piece of condensed midnight untouched by starlight. Stave had already climbed beyond the top of the rockfall. Now he hung splayed against the ridgefront, searching with his fingers and toes for holds which would enable him to lift himself toward the immense hollow cut by Linden and Earthpower.\n\nHe must have been creeping: he hardly seemed to move at all. Jeremiah could not imagine how he found cracks and rims still solid enough to support him. Yet Stave did move. Sudden jerks conveyed the impression that a grip had failed, or a toehold. He appeared to swing from side to side, hanging by one hand; perhaps by one finger. Uncertain as hallucinations, bits of debris dropped away. But he did not fall.\n\nHe was _Haruchai_ , born to the crags and precipices and flensing winds of the Westron Mountains.\n\nIf he gained the gouge, he would be able to climb more easily, at least for a while. Its lower surface was not vertical. He would be halfway to the monolith.\n\nThe monolith itself was three times his height, many times heavier. It could have served as a monument for a Giant. He would not be able to dislodge it by simply throwing rocks at it. His only choice would be to work his way higher.\n\nBut toward the back of the hollow, the ascent would become steeper. Then the harmed stone above him would tilt outward. There the slab he strove to reach stood on a crude protrusion like a snout. That formation multiplied the hazards. He would have to climb beneath it, hanging precariously in the air\u2014\n\nJeremiah heard one of the Swordmainnir moving toward him, but he could not look away from the small flutter of darkness that represented Stave. Over and over again, he held his breath as if he believed that his own tension might protect the former Master. The whole night had come to this: the little increments, barely perceptible, of Stave's efforts.\n\nWrapped in winds, Rime Coldspray towered out of the night to stand beside Jeremiah. The Ironhand had left her armor and sword behind, but she moved as if she still carried them\u2014and had another Giant sitting on her shoulders. That she had slept was plain. But she needed more than rest. She needed sustenance. Above all, she needed relief. She and her comrades had known little except struggle and strife since they had first approached the Land.\n\nBriefly she regarded Jeremiah. Then she lifted her gaze toward the ridge and Stave.\n\nHe had almost reached the hollow. Holds broke in his hands; but he cast those shards away and hunted for better grips. Occasionally Jeremiah heard the clatter as rocks hit the slope. At other times, gusts carried the sounds away, and Stave seemed to climb in a preternatural silence, fraught as a clenched breath.\n\n\"Stone and Sea,\" murmured Coldspray. \"If this is not madness incarnate, it serves some purpose which I do not discern.\"\n\nJeremiah pointed. \"He's trying to reach that slab. It has malachite I need. But I don't think he can even get there. He won't be able to break it loose.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" The Ironhand released a sigh. \"Now I comprehend. The malachite itself is vague to my sight. But consider the stone within which it is concealed.\" She stared hard under her heavy brows. \"If distance and darkness do not mislead me, the stone stands somewhat apart. A cleft or flaw has detached it from the ridge.\n\n\"Stave Rockbrother will endeavor to dislodge it.\"\n\nJeremiah did not believe that Stave could do it.\n\nAs if to herself, Coldspray added, \"When it falls, he will also. Then he must perish. Though he is _Haruchai_ , his flesh is not iron. His bones are not. They will not withstand an impact from that height.\"\n\nWhile pressure mounted in Jeremiah's chest, Stave's unyielding shape crossed into the gouge. There he rose to his feet and paused, secure against the battering of the wind. For a few moments, he appeared to study the challenge ahead of him. Then Jeremiah saw the former Master wave one arm: a gesture of reassurance so unconvincing that it made Jeremiah wince.\n\nThis was impossible. It was all impossible. What Stave had done was already insane\u2014and there was worse ahead of him. When it falls, he will also. Jeremiah had not thought that far ahead.\n\nThen he must perish.\n\nAbruptly Jeremiah wheeled on Rime Coldspray, clutched at her arm. \"Do something,\" he panted. \"He's _Stave_. Mom will never forgive me if he dies.\" Because he was pleading with a Giant, the Ironhand of the Swordmainnir, he tried to tell the truth. \"I'll never forgive myself.\"\n\nWithout turning her head, Coldspray answered, \"This choice was not yours to make, young Jeremiah. It belonged to Stave Rockbrother. It remains his. He will suffer the cost because he chooses to do so.\n\n\"At present, his peril is diminished. Later it will become extreme. Should he fall within the hollow, we can do naught to aid him. We must trust his skill and agility to preserve him.\n\n\"The achievement of his purpose is another matter.\"\n\nStill watching Stave's wary ascent, she called, \"Ho, Swordmainnir! Bestir yourselves! You will wish to witness Stave Rockbrother's valor. And he will have need of you!\"\n\nAt first, there was no response.\n\n\"Frostheart Grueburn!\" shouted the Ironhand. \"Latebirth!\" She sounded more relaxed than Jeremiah felt; far more confident. \"Cabledarm! Onyx Stonemage! Hear me! Hear and come!\"\n\nAfter a moment, a bleary voice answered, \"We hear you.\" Grueburn. \"The very stars hear you.\"\n\nIf she said more, gusts carried the words away.\n\nFor a while, Stave moved more easily. But soon he reached the steeper recesses of the wound, where the stone had more cracks. He was forced to resume his earlier care, testing each handhold, each support for his feet, each small ledge and crack and bulge, before he committed his weight to it.\n\nYawning, Giants approached Jeremiah and Coldspray. He recognized them without glancing at them. Only Stormpast Galesend and Halewhole Bluntfist lagged behind\u2014or they were still asleep.\n\nWhile Stave crawled up the back of the hollow and began to creep toward the granite jut which supported the monolith, often hanging by his hands alone until he found places to anchor his feet, Coldspray explained his intentions to her comrades. Then she said, \"He is Stave Rockbrother, able and stalwart as the _Haruchai_ of old. He will not fail.\"\n\n\"When he succeeds,\" muttered Grueburn, \"he will fall. He must.\"\n\n\"And he will perish,\" Stonemage added grimly.\n\n\"Therefore,\" concluded the Ironhand, \"we must intervene.\"\n\nConsidering the problem, her comrades nodded.\n\nJeremiah wanted to ask, Intervene _how_? But Grueburn, Latebirth, Stonemage, and Cabledarm were already moving away. Apparently they did not need Coldspray's instructions. As they started up the rockfall, they separated. Grueburn and Latebirth on one side, Cabledarm and Stonemage on the other, they labored toward the ridgefront.\n\nAt first, Jeremiah could not imagine what they had in mind. Then he understood. They aimed to bracket the slab's likely path when it toppled. Clearly they meant to position themselves on either side of that path. If they could avoid being struck, they might have some chance of catching Stave.\n\nIf he did not fall first. If he managed to shift the monolith. If loosened rocks did not hit anybody. If just one of the Giants was quick enough to intercept his plunge. If his impact in her arms did not kill him as surely as the jagged rubble. If it did not break or kill her\u2014\n\nJeremiah was holding his breath again. He thought that he saw Stave's arms flailing. Dislodged debris spattered like rain into the hollow.\n\nBut Stave's indistinct form still clung to the rock. One grip at a time, he eased upward.\n\nCirrus Kindwind left the Ironhand's side, strode some distance up the rockfall. When she had climbed atop an especially tall boulder, she stopped to study the ridgefront. Then she raised her voice in a shout.\n\n\"Grueburn! Latebirth! Alter your heading!\" She waved her arms, directing her comrades to the left. \"You will be struck!\"\n\nThe two women did not respond to Kindwind's hail; but they must have heard her. They shifted their course.\n\nUnfortunately now they were no longer clambering up the rockfall's spine. Instead they were forced to straggle along the side of the slope. If Stave came down toward the crest of the rubble, they would not be able to reach him without sprinting upward\u2014and they were fatally weary.\n\nStill Stave made his way by undetectable increments. Only the erratic spatter of stones and the wind-torn fall of dirt showed that he was still moving. But he _was_ moving. One hand or foot or finger or toe at a time, he worked his way closer to the bulbous rock supporting the slab.\n\nJeremiah hardly dared to estimate the distance. Involuntarily he imagined Stave's fingers bleeding, his muscles trembling\u2014\n\nRime Coldspray rested a gentle hand on Jeremiah's shoulder. \"Remember that he is _Haruchai_ ,\" she murmured. \"He has performed wonders ere now. Mayhap he will surpass our fears yet again.\"\n\n\"But he's in trouble either way.\" If Stave failed to shift the slab, he would never be able to climb back down. \"Can they\"\u2014Jeremiah meant Grueburn and Latebirth, Stonemage and Cabledarm\u2014\"actually catch him?\"\n\n\"We are Giants.\" The Ironhand's reply was softer than the wind. \"Often we have been tested. Often we have prevailed.\"\n\nFor a time, Stave seemed to vanish. Hidden by the shape of the bulge, he had become indistinguishable from the stone.\n\nIn alarm, Jeremiah blurted, \"Where is he? What's happened?\"\n\n\"Gaze more closely,\" Coldspray advised. \"You will perceive that he is safe for a time. One arm he has wedged into the cleft between the monolith and the cliff. While he remains thus secured, his peril is diminished. Now the uncertain balance of the stone is the gravest threat. Should it tilt suddenly, catching him unprepared\u2014\" She allowed herself a sigh. \"In that event, opportunities to affect his fate will be slight. Far better for him if he must exert his full strength to shift the stone. Then his efforts will carry him outward, away from the precipice and ruin.\"\n\nAs she spoke, Jeremiah caught an image of Stave dropping like more rubble. Spinning out of control. Hitting the ridgefront over and over again until he was mangled beyond recognition.\n\nThe former Master had made his own choices\u2014but Jeremiah had inspired them. His whole body ached with a futile desire to keep Stave safe.\n\nStill resting her hand on Jeremiah's shoulder, Rime Coldspray continued, \"For the moment, I am primarily concerned by the width and depth of the cleft.\" She sounded deliberately casual. \"At this distance, I cannot gauge it. If the stone does not stand free of the cliff, it is unlikely to fall. And if the cleft will admit no more than Stave's arm, he will have scant leverage. Then the bulk of muscle which he will require might exceed even a Giant.\n\n\"No, we must hope that he will contrive to force his arms and chest\u2014indeed, his body entire\u2014into the cleft. For him as for us, that will be the most favorable circumstance.\"\n\nShe may have been trying to soothe Jeremiah by focusing his attention on practical details.\n\nTo an extent, she succeeded. As if involuntarily, he found himself imagining Stave squeezed behind the slab; Stave straining to shift the monolith. While Stave did such things\u2014if he did them\u2014he would not fall.\n\nWind stung Jeremiah's eyes. His pajamas fluttered around him in tatters. He ignored Stormpast Galesend and Halewhole Bluntfist as they drew near. Instead he watched Grueburn and Latebirth, Stonemage and Cabledarm. They had reached the places where they meant to wait for Stave. Now they stood motionless in the night. They were not immediately below the slab, but they were close enough to be struck by debris\u2014or by the slab itself if it bounced crookedly against the ridgefront. Still Jeremiah thought that they were too far from the cliff\u2014and too far from each other. He could not believe that they had a prayer of saving Stave.\n\nThe three Swordmainnir with Jeremiah studied the monolith and its pediment. From her boulder, Cirrus Kindwind did the same. Winds flailed like indignation in all directions, outraged by affronts too distant to be answered.\n\nWithout warning, Kindwind shouted, \"Ware, Frostheart Grueburn! The stone shifts toward you!\"\n\nIt might move in that direction if Stave could use only one arm. Or perhaps the rim of the bulge above Grueburn's position was simply weaker.\n\nFaintly through the tumult in his heart, Jeremiah heard Grueburn reply, \"I have seen it.\"\n\nShe did not step back. Nor did Latebirth.\n\nOnyx Stonemage and Cabledarm readied themselves to spring forward.\n\nUnder her breath, Coldspray murmured, \"Be swift, comrades. You must be watchful and wary, but above all you must be swift. We can ill endure any loss of life.\"\n\n\"Or indeed any injury,\" muttered Galesend, \"worn and weakened as we are.\"\n\nJeremiah beat bruises onto his thighs and strove to see.\n\n_There_. He had lost sight of Stave. The _Haruchai_ had thrust his way into the cleft; or the shape of the jut masked his presence. But the monolith had moved: Jeremiah was sure of it.\n\nIt did not move again.\n\nThen it did.\n\nAt first, it appeared to lean back toward the cliff as though it sought to crush the force which had disturbed it. For moments as long as heartbeats, as urgent as cries, it hung in place, scattering scree from its base.\n\nWith the suddenness of a calving glacier, the slab slid away.\n\nSilent as a cast-off leaf, it appeared to drift through the darkness until one end collided with the ridgefront. Instantly it broke apart, became half a dozen pieces. They rebounded from the impact, falling like a barrage toward the waiting Swordmainnir.\n\nGrueburn, Latebirth, Cabledarm, and Stonemage were all in danger; but the threat to Grueburn and Latebirth was greater.\n\n\"He is yours, Cabledarm!\" Grueburn yelled. Jeremiah saw her and then Latebirth leaping down the jagged slope of the rockfall.\n\nGranite thunder boomed. Heavy shards pounded the rubble where the two women had been standing.\n\nAt the same time, Cabledarm dodged a fragment which would have slain her. She surged upward. Unscathed, Onyx Stonemage braced herself; remained where she was.\n\nAbove them, Stave also struck the cliff. But he twisted as he dropped so that he hit with his feet. Somehow he planted himself long enough to flex his legs and spring away. His great strength transformed his plummet into an outward leap.\n\nArms spread like wings, he cast himself soaring into the mad roil of the winds.\n\nCabledarm was there when he came down.\n\nIn spite of his splayed posture, he was falling too hard, plunging like a chunk of the slab. Even a Giant could not hope to catch him safely. His weight and momentum would shatter bones, Cabledarm's as well as his.\n\nBut she did not try to catch him. She had other intentions. During the quick instants of his descent, she crouched low. Then she sprang to meet him, arching away as she did so; already pitching herself backward.\n\nHer huge hands found his hips. Her arms bent to absorb the collision. Then she gave him a prodigious heave.\n\nHis force and hers flung her, helpless, down the side of the slope. She tumbled like a piece of the ridge.\n\nBut she had redirected his fall. He was soaring again.\n\nToward Onyx Stonemage\u2014\n\n\u2014who caught him in both arms.\n\nLike Cabledarm, she did not try to hold him. Instead she swung him in an arc and released him so that she seemed to throw him in the direction of open ground beyond the rockfall.\n\nHe landed on his feet; dove and rolled to dissipate the last of his momentum. Then he rose to stand upright in the thick dusk.\n\nJeremiah began running before the _Haruchai_ came to a halt.\n\nThe monolith was broken. Its burden of malachite may have been shattered, made useless. Everything may have been wasted. Even Linden's ride into the chaos of a _caesure_ \u2014\n\nBut Jeremiah was not racing to locate the outcome of his only hope. He was running as if his heart might burst to find out if Stave and Cabledarm were all right.\n\nIn the east, a dull dawn announced the third sunless day.\n\n## 9.\n\nAn Impoverished Temple\n\nThe company gathered around Stave and Cabledarm. Jeremiah fought down an impulse to babble. I can't believe it! That was amazing! Are you all right? But he could hardly speak in any case. He was panting as though he had run an inconceivable distance, and had witnessed wonders.\n\nStave's arms and feet were latticed with scratches. His palms and fingers, his toes, the soles of his feet: all oozed blood. But those injuries were trivial. The effects of his impact with Cabledarm's hands were another matter. His whole body had struck and recoiled like a cracked whip. Now every joint looked torn; every muscle. His internal organs appeared to throb as if they had been beaten with clubs. Blood gathered at the corners of his mouth: he had bitten into his tongue. In spite of his _Haruchai_ stoicism, he was trembling.\n\nHe stood, but he seemed unable to speak. Like a man who had been blinded, he stared at nothing. If he felt the presence of his companions, he did not react to it.\n\nRime Coldspray studied him for a grim moment. Then she sent Cirrus Kindwind to retrieve a waterskin. She had nothing else to offer him.\n\nCabledarm's wounds were more obvious. They looked worse. Pitching Stave to Stonemage, she had flung herself down the raw edges and fanged splinters of the rubble. Like Stave, she had regained her feet beyond the slope. Unlike him, she stood hunched in pain, hugging her left arm against her chest. Giantish obscenities bubbled like froth past her lips. She was bleeding from half a dozen gashes, at least two of them deep enough to expose bone. Contusions covered her from shoulder to ankle. But her worst injury was to her left shoulder.\n\nThe force of Stave's plummet had ripped her arm out of his socket. It was dislocated so badly that Jeremiah could hardly bear to look at it.\n\n\"Only you, Cabledarm,\" the Ironhand muttered through her teeth. \"Only you could emerge so harmed from such a rescue.\"\n\n\"It is my gift,\" Cabledarm rasped. Then she groaned a curse. \"Stone and Sea! Am I not a Giant? And have I not vaunted myself the mightiest of the Swordmainnir? How am I thus humbled by mere falling?\"\n\n\"We need Mom,\" Jeremiah breathed miserably. \"We can't help her. And Stave looks like he's going to pass out.\"\n\nBut the Giants did not respond. Cabledarm's dislocation, at least, was hurt which they knew how to address. At a nod from Coldspray, Halewhole Bluntfist moved to stand behind Cabledarm. With one arm on Cabledarm's left shoulder near her neck, and the other across her chest under her right arm, Bluntfist grasped Cabledarm tightly enough to wring a moan from her comrade. Without a moment's consideration, Coldspray gripped Cabledarm's damaged limb and heaved; twisted.\n\nThe sound as the arm slipped back into place hit Jeremiah like a jab to the stomach.\n\nCabledarm roared. Briefly she wobbled as if she were losing consciousness. But Bluntfist held her until her faintness passed, and she began to curse again.\n\nGrimacing, Cabledarm moved the fingers of her left hand, managed a fist. When she was done swearing, she muttered, \"It is much and naught, Ironhand. It will hamper me, but it will mend. Only stanch some few of my rents, and I will name myself blessed. Stave Rockbrother lives\"\u2014she glanced quickly around\u2014\"does he not?\" Seeing the answer in the eyes of her comrades, she finished, \"Then will I name myself blessed in all sooth.\"\n\n\"For the present, however,\" the Ironhand commanded, \"you will conserve yourself, Cabledarm. Cirrus Kindwind brings water. While you drink and rest, we will contrive bindings for your wounds. You have earned the tales which we will tell of you. Now we will contrive to earn those which you will tell.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" Cabledarm assented: another groan. With Bluntfist's help, she lowered herself to the dirt. There she extended one gashed leg so that Bluntfist could try to stop the bleeding.\n\nJeremiah saw her injuries too clearly: the rich pulse of her blood and pain made him feel sick. About some things he knew too much. About this he knew too little. He could too easily believe that Cabledarm would bleed to death. That Stave was dying inside.\n\nFortunately Kindwind soon returned with several waterskins. Two she tossed to Bluntfist. A third she took directly to Stave.\n\nFleeing the sight of Cabledarm's torn flesh, Jeremiah joined Kindwind.\n\nStave did not react to their presence. He remained standing; continued to stare at nothing as though his whole world had become the abyss of the Lost Deep. Tremors ran through him like waves of fever. His hands shook. Even his lips quivered.\n\nJeremiah did not know what to say or do. Stave had promised to protect him. This was the result.\n\nFrowning, Cirrus Kindwind rested her hand on Stave's shoulder. \"You are not alone, Rockbrother,\" she assured him. \"Rest you need. So much is certain. But first you must drink. Your flesh has been much abused. It requires refreshment. And see?\" She unbound the neck of her waterskin, held it in front of him. \"Here is water.\"\n\nStave did not move. He did not appear to hear her. But when she touched his mouth with the lip of the waterskin, he raised his arms, accepted it from her. Trembling, he drank.\n\nJeremiah had never seen any _Haruchai_ do more than sip from the cup of one hand. Now Stave swallowed long gulps as though more lives than his depended on them; drank until he had emptied half of the waterskin. Then, slowly, he sank to his knees, settled back to sit on his heels. The waterskin he placed on the ground. His hands he rested, open palms upward, on his thighs. He seemed to nod.\n\nAfter that, he resumed gazing sightlessly at the twilight of the new day.\n\nBeckoning for Jeremiah to accompany her, Kindwind stepped away. When they had withdrawn a few paces, she said, \"We must trust, Chosen-son, that his folk restore themselves in this manner. It appears that his spirit has turned inward. But I will believe that a man who has performed his feats must soon heal himself and return to us.\"\n\nJeremiah swallowed against the dryness in his throat. \"I hope so. He doesn't deserve this.\"\n\n\"Ah, deserve,\" sighed Kindwind. \"The notion of deserved and undeserved is a fancy. Knowing both life and death, we endeavor to impose worth and meaning upon our deeds, and thereby to comfort our fear of impermanence. We choose to imagine that our lives merit continuance. Mayhap all sentience shares a similar fancy. Mayhap the Earth itself, being sentient in its fashion, shares it. Nonetheless it is a fancy. A wider gaze does not regard us in that wise. The stars do not. Perhaps the Creator does not. The larger truth is merely that all things end. By that measure, our fancies cannot be distinguished from dust.\n\n\"For this reason, Giants love tales. Our iteration of past deeds and desires and discoveries provides the only form of permanence to which mortal life can aspire. That such permanence is a chimera does not lessen its power to console. Joy is in the ears that hear.\"\n\nHer assertion startled Jeremiah. It seemed to question his foundations. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the extremity of Stave's fall. The hard throb of Cabledarm's bleeding and the excruciation of her shoulder cried out to his senses. Awkwardly he reached for Kindwind's last waterskin. When she released it, he drank as if his thirst\u2014his dismay\u2014had the force of a moral convulsion.\n\n\"So you're saying,\" he protested or pleaded, \"what Stave did is worthless? What Cabledarm did is worthless? It's all dust?\"\n\n\"Aye,\" Cirrus Kindwind assented, \"if that is how you choose to hear the tale.\" Her tone was mild. \"For myself, I will honor the effort and the intent. Doing so, I will be comforted.\"\n\nJeremiah wanted to shout. Instead he fumed, \"You sound like the _croyel_.\" Was joy in the ears that hear? Then so were agony and horror. So was despair. \"It was forever telling me everything Mom did was useless. Nothing matters. It's all dust. That's why Lord Foul laughs\u2014and Roger\u2014and those Ravers. They agree with you. In the end, they're the only ones who get what they want.\"\n\nKindwind looked at him sharply. Like the flick of a blade, she retorted, \"Then hear me, Chosen-son. Hear me well. There is another truth which you must grasp.\n\n\"Mortal lives are not stones. They are not seas. For impermanence to judge itself by the standards of permanence is folly. Or it is arrogance. Life merely is what it is, neither more nor less. To deem it less because it is not more is to heed the counsels of the Despiser.\n\n\"We do what we must so that we may find worth in ourselves. We do not hope vainly that we will put an end to pain, or to loss, or to death.\"\n\n_Failure isn't something you_ are. _It's something you_ do.\n\nWithout warning, Jeremiah found that he ached to share Kindwind's beliefs, and Linden's. Perhaps the monolith had never contained enough malachite. Perhaps the deposit had shattered. Perhaps Stave and even Cabledarm would die. Perhaps Mom would never come back. Perhaps futility was the only truth. Still Jeremiah would have to find a way to live with it.\n\nTo himself, he muttered, \"It's not that easy.\"\n\nCirrus Kindwind had never been possessed.\n\nHer response was a snort. \"We were not promised ease. The purpose of life\u2014if it may be said to have purpose\u2014is not ease. It is to choose, and to act upon the choice. In that task, we are not measured by outcomes. We are measured only by daring and effort and resolve.\"\n\nJeremiah wanted to insist, It's not that easy. It's _not_. But the words died in his mouth. Kindwind had already turned away. Several of the Giants around Cabledarm had turned away. They were gazing up at the spine of the rockfall.\n\nAt Frostheart Grueburn and Latebirth. As Jeremiah caught sight of them, they labored past the crest and began their descent. Between them, they carried a large chunk of stone.\n\nIt resembled a fragment of the monolith. He detected distinct signs of malachite.\n\nNot seams or veins, delicate trickles. A concentrated lode.\n\nIn an instant, he forgot everything else. Leaving Kindwind, he ran at the slope.\n\nThat was a piece of the slab: it had to be. And its mineral deposit was still intact.\n\nHow big was that sealed lump of green?\n\nThe two Giants came a little way to meet him. Then they set down their burden and straightened their backs, loosened their arms. Before he reached them, he felt their emotions.\n\nIn spite of the gloom, they were bright with vindication.\n\n\"By good fortune,\" Grueburn called to her comrades, \"the object of Stave Rockbrother's extravagance contained an admixture of sandstone. When it struck, it broke along its less durable seams. The malachite of its heart was preserved.\"\n\nJeremiah needed to see for himself. Filling his hands with Earthpower, he clapped them to the surface of the rock; probed inward with all of his senses.\n\nThen he wheeled away, flung his gaze down the slope toward Stave.\n\n\"You did it! Stave, you _did_ it!\"\n\nThe former Master knelt with his back to the rockfall. He did not lift his head or turn. He may have sunk so far down into himself that he did not hear.\n\nNevertheless he had succeeded.\n\nSome things were too easy. Accepting failure was one of them.\n\nor a time, Jeremiah was content to confirm the various locations of his materials, study their shapes, and plan. While he did so, the Giants finished tending Cabledarm's wounds. Then they rested.\n\nEventually Stave stirred. With an air of caution, as if he feared that he might break bones, he looked around at the cratered plain, the crepuscular day. Then he rose to his feet.\n\nThe relieved shouts of the Giants elicited no response. Jeremiah's gladness he acknowledged with no more than a nod. He gave the impression that he had forgotten speech, or gone beyond it. When he had surveyed the company and the rockfall, the beginnings of Jeremiah's construct, and perhaps the passage of time, he put a hand to his mouth and whistled.\n\nWhile Jeremiah and the Swordmainnir watched him, wondering, Stave waited for Hynyn.\n\nThe stallion came promptly. Although Jeremiah had seen no sign of the star-browed roan earlier, Hynyn appeared as if he had reincarnated himself from the substance of the gloaming. At Stave's side, he halted; stood patiently while Stave welcomed him by stroking his neck and shoulder. Then, together, they approached the Giants.\n\nAt once, Jeremiah hurried to join Rime Coldspray and her comrades.\n\nWavering on his feet, Stave stopped. He seemed to have achieved an unstable victory over his private wounds, one which might become defeat at any unexpected action, any unpremeditated word.\n\n\"You did it,\" Jeremiah said again, but hesitantly, unsure of himself in Stave's presence. \"You saved us.\"\n\nYou saved me.\n\nStave glanced at Jeremiah, then away. He did not meet Coldspray's gaze. With obvious difficulty, as if language required skills which he had forgotten or misplaced, he said, \"Hynyn will guide you to water. The way is long.\" His voice began to fade. \"But there is water.\"\n\nIn a husky whisper, he added, \"My thanks to Cabledarm. Also to Onyx Stonemage.\" He made an effort to gather himself. \"And to Cirrus Kindwind.\"\n\nStill cautiously, he turned his back. With the elaborate care of a man who feared falling, he walked out onto the plain until he was barely visible. There he knelt again, facing the northwest like a diminished sentinel.\n\nHynyn remained with the Giants. Clearly the great stallion understood the promise that Stave had made in his name. He waited for the women to act on it.\n\nAfter a brief consultation, Kindwind announced, \"With your consent, Ironhand, this task is mine. In the shifting of stones, I am hampered, but the bearing of waterskins will test only my dexterity.\"\n\nRime Coldspray nodded. \"Go with my thanks. Return as swiftly as you are able. Water we must have. The tasks remaining to us will be arduous.\"\n\nNodding to her comrades, Cirrus Kindwind left with Hynyn. The imperious arch of the stallion's neck seemed to assert that he could not be humbled by such mundane service.\n\nWhen they were gone, Rime Coldspray said, \"Now, Chosen-son. We have delayed too long. There is death in every lost moment. Instruct us, that we may begin.\"\n\nJeremiah's heart beat eagerly. At last\u2014\"I've found everything I need,\" he answered. \"But some of it still has to be moved. Then I'll need help putting the pieces in place.\"\n\n\"Indeed.\" Coldspray scanned her comrades. \"For the present, we are only six. But six are more than five, or three, or one. We must suffice.\n\n\"Instruct us,\" she said to Jeremiah again. \"Come good or ill, boon or bane, we will strive to do as you ask.\"\n\nUrged by relief and gratitude, Jeremiah tried to cheer. Then he turned to lead the Giants. With every step, he recovered more of his necessary excitement.\n\ny midday, the women had finished moving green-veined rocks to open ground. Before they were done, they were all trembling on the verge of exhaustion. But earlier Cirrus Kindwind had returned with every bulging waterskin that she could carry. The Swordmainnir had been able to continue working because they had enough to drink.\n\nNow they were sprawled in the dirt, resting as though they had been felled. The fraught rasp of their respiration sawed at Jeremiah's nerves until he felt as raw as their lungs; as desperate to be done. But they still had a lot to do.\n\nFor him, actually assembling his temple would be comparatively easy. It required no thought at all. His talents were certain, as instinctive as breath. He could have completed the structure without hesitation\u2014if he could have raised the heavier rocks alone.\n\nBut for his companions\u2014\n\nThe work ahead of them would demand more effort, not less. As the walls rose, massive chunks and boulders would have to be lifted higher. And the roof would be more difficult than the walls. The Giants would have to hold the stones in place at the height of their own shoulders until he could brace the construct with his last hunk of granite, his capstone of malachite. Only then would the temple stand without support.\n\nAt some point, Cabledarm had climbed upright. Walking stiffly, she had come to watch her comrades. But she was still too weak to stay on her feet. She had nothing to offer except the encouragement of her presence.\n\nStave had not moved. At some distance, he knelt facing the northwest as if he sought to ward off threats by nothing more than force of will. Or perhaps he was praying for Linden's return.\n\nStanding near the Ironhand, Jeremiah said uncomfortably, \"When you're ready.\" Erratic bursts of wind slapped at him. Grit stung his cheeks. Beyond his horizons, a fierce storm was brewing. The air was growing cooler. \"I know where everything goes. I can do this fast.\" _Elohim_ were dying. \"But you should take your time. We can't afford mistakes.\"\n\nInfelice had tried to prevent his escape from his graves. She should have known better. She should have trusted Linden.\n\n\"Yet it must be done,\" Coldspray replied in a low growl. \"Much depends upon it. When we are beset by storms as we sail the world's seas, we do not rest merely because we are weary. Rather we cling to our tasks, and to our lives.\" She seemed to be trying to convince herself. \"Matters do not stand otherwise now.\"\n\n\"Sooth,\" groaned Frostheart Grueburn. \"All that you say is sooth, Ironhand. We must\u2014yet I cannot. In the Lost Deep, I deemed that I had measured the depths of exhaustion. Now I learn that our flight from She Who Must Not Be Named was no more than a child's game by comparison.\"\n\n\"Nay, Grueburn,\" Stormpast Galesend countered like a pale imitation of herself. \"You misesteem us. Exertion alone does not justify our weariness. In addition, we lack viands. Do not discount that deprivation.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\" exclaimed Onyx Stonemage. \"I will give my oath that I am dwindling. Hunger diminishes me. My garments hang loosely, and my cataphract has become an encumbrance, and I fear that my sword has grown too long for easy use.\"\n\nFor a moment, the Giants were silent. Then Coldspray said like a sigh, \"You forget to whom you speak, Stonemage. All here know that in your care every sword grows too long for easy use.\"\n\nAnother silence followed while Jeremiah fretted. The Ironhand's comment may have been a jest. If so, he did not understand it.\n\nApparently the other Giants did. After a moment, they started laughing.\n\nAt first, their laughter was as weak as their limbs: a sound like moaning amid the confusion of the winds. But then Stonemage retorted, \"Mockery is ignorance. Occasions there have been in abundance, yet none have inspired complaint,\" and her comrades began to laugh harder. Soon they were laughing with such abandon that they could not lie still. Latebirth and Galesend tossed from side to side. Grueburn pulled her knees to her chest, hugged them. Even Cabledarm chuckled in spite of her wounds.\n\n\"I don't get it,\" Jeremiah protested; but the women went on laughing.\n\n_Joy is in the ears that hear_. Clearly the Swordmainnir lived by that creed. Jeremiah did not understand at all. They sounded hysterical. Yet when they subsided, they were stronger. Somehow laughing had restored them.\n\nThat was enough for him: he could accept it. When he was able to believe that the Giants were ready, he moved away toward the scant beginnings of his construct, beckoning as he went.\n\nThe rectangle that he had marked in the dirt was still vivid in his mind, although its visible lines had been erased. A few heavy stones had already been put in place for him. He had added a number of small rocks himself. But that was barely a start. Most of the building remained to be done.\n\nHowever, all of his materials were waiting for him. He could imagine their eventual positions precisely, as if they were lit by sunshine rather than masked by dusk. His part of the work that remained was simple.\n\nFollowed by the Giants, he thrust his way through the wind to select rocks in their proper sequence: a sequence that would allow him to prop each one securely before the next was lifted.\n\nThat the women were more willing than able was painfully obvious. Stones that one Swordmain had managed alone earlier now required the strength of two or three, or even four. Nevertheless their willingness did not waver. To spare themselves, they rolled rather than carried rocks to the edges of the nascent temple. Together they heaved the shards into position. Then Jeremiah scrambled to insert the chunks of granite and basalt that would brace the bigger pieces in place.\n\nThe Giants took turns, resting as much as they could. When their waterskins were empty, the Ironhand sent Kindwind to fill them again. And the women watched over each other. Whenever one of them faltered or stumbled, others moved to help.\n\nBy slow increments, the walls of the temple rose.\n\nEvery now and then, Jeremiah remembered to glance at Stave. Indistinct in the distance, the former Master still knelt with his back to the construct, motionless as a tombstone. He gave no sign that he was aware of his companions' efforts.\n\nThey could have used his help.\n\nBy the time that Kindwind returned, the walls were nearly complete. A crude slab had been set to form the lintel of the entrance. Without counting, Jeremiah knew that a dozen heavy rocks and twice that many smaller ones remained before the capstone could be wedged into place. He knew exactly where the pieces would go. But he did not know how his companions would be able to finish the work. They seemed entirely spent. He was not confident that their hearts would continue to beat much longer.\n\nWhile Kindwind handed around waterskins and her comrades rested, Jeremiah went to plead with Stave.\n\nBut when he reached the _Haruchai_ , he did not know what to say. He could see that Stave was healing. The former Master knew how to provide for his own recovery. Nevertheless his heart beat with palpable reluctance, the pulse in his veins was as thin as a thread, and his breathing barely lifted his chest. In spite of his native toughness, he looked like a man who might not stand again.\n\nJeremiah's appeal for help turned to dust in his mouth. Winds seemed to drive it back down his throat.\n\nStave did not turn his head, but his shoulders stiffened slightly at Jeremiah's approach. After a moment, he answered the supplication of Jeremiah's silence.\n\n\"Chosen-son.\" His voice was a wisp of its familiar inflexibility. \"Say what you must. I hear you.\"\n\n\"I don't know why you're still alive,\" Jeremiah blurted. \"But I don't know why the Giants are still alive either. They're way beyond exhausted. They can hardly lift their arms. And we still haven't done the hardest part.\"\n\nAbruptly he stopped. He had no idea how to continue.\n\n\"The hardest part?\" Stave inquired: a mere breath of sound.\n\n\"The roof. I'm making a temple. I mean, that's how I think of it. It has to have a roof. But it won't stay up until I brace it. That's what your lump of malachite is for. They'll have to lift the rocks and stand\u2014\" Simply thinking about such things hurt. \"They'll have to just stand there holding up the roof. And even if they can do that, I don't know how they're going to set the capstone. I can't imagine\u2014\n\n\"It has to be just right, or it won't work.\" He struggled to devise scenarios. They were all cruel. \"So even if four of them can hold up the roof, that only leaves two to lift the last piece because at least one of them has to climb up there,\" adding her weight to the rocks on the shoulders of the other Giants, \"and put that piece in place. I'll probably have to be there myself to make sure it's right.\"\n\nWithout warning, sobs crowded into his chest. If he let himself, he would wail like a child. He was tired to the bone, and all of his talents and excitements were useless now. He did not have the strength to complete his construct.\n\n\"It's terrible.\" He restrained himself by gritting his teeth. \"It's all terrible. I don't know how to make it better.\"\n\nStave did not react. For a time, he knelt motionless and said nothing, as if he had no interest in Jeremiah's distress. Eventually, however, he bowed his head in submission.\n\n\"Yet the attempt must be made.\" He spoke as if the wind tugged the words out of him. \"I will remain as I am for a time. Then I will come.\"\n\nWith that, Jeremiah had to be content.\n\nAs suddenly as it had arrived, his impulse to sob faded. He had reached the end of his emotions. Now he felt emptied. Matters were out of his hands. He had done what he could. Anele's gift of Earthpower did not make him mighty. It only made him vulnerable.\n\nSagging into himself, he left Stave and stumbled across the wind back toward the Giants.\n\nBut he did not go to them. He had nothing to tell them that they did not already know. Under kinder circumstances, they probably could have finished the task without him.\n\nInstead he made his way to his crude edifice. For a while, he studied the four walls and the northwest-facing entrance. Then he set to work.\n\nWith negligent, futile ease, he tossed small stones into their necessary positions along the tops of the walls. Doing so did not require thought: it required only certainty. But soon he had done what he could. Then he had to wait for the Giants.\n\nAround him, the day grew darker. That was wrong: his senses were sure. The time was early afternoon, no later. Yet the vague illumination was fading. He had become little more than a shadow to himself, a wraith in a distorted dream. His construct crouched in the gloom like the base of a tower broken by siege.\n\nCarried by baffled gusts and blasts, the darkness gathered from the east, or perhaps somewhat north of east. It advanced in tatters like the wind, moiling and routed, then surging ahead. And its source was still distant, scores of leagues away. Nonetheless the fading of the light was a warning.\n\n\"Ho, Swordmainnir.\" Rime Coldspray sounded improbably far away. \"Now or never. Behold! Night gathers against us prematurely. I know not how to interpret this augury, but I do not doubt that it promises ill. We must complete our purpose.\"\n\nA chorus of groans arose: protests and curses. Across the distance, Jeremiah felt the Giants climbing to their feet as if they were struggling out of an abyss. Even Cabledarm stood.\n\nLeaning against each other, the Ironhand and her women came to stand with Jeremiah.\n\nHe heard their exhaustion, their frailty. He seemed to taste it like charcoal on his tongue. He did not know how to bear it\u2014or how to ask them to bear it.\n\nBecause he was concentrating on them, a moment passed before he realized that Stave also had joined him.\n\nSeveral of the Giants greeted the _Haruchai_ , but he did not reply. Instead he regarded the walls of the construct. After a pause, he announced thinly, \"This is _suru-pa-maerl_. The folk of the Stonedowns formed such sculptures balancing and fitting stones to each other. In Muirwin Delenoth, Chosen-son, you devised a structure of marrowmeld. Now you have restored _suru-pa-maerl_ to the Land, or perhaps created it anew. Perhaps it gives cause for hope.\"\n\nThen he turned to Rime Coldspray. \"I have recovered strength enough for one effort. I will expend it here. Afterward I will pray that we have no more need of it.\n\n\"You must fashion the roof. When it lacks only its capstone, I will ascend. Receiving the stone from those below, I will place it as the Chosen-son instructs. That I will be able to do, that and no more.\"\n\nJeremiah winced. In her weariness, the Ironhand herself flinched. \"Will you?\" she asked, stern and anxious. \"Stave Rockbrother, the prospect troubles me. The monolith which you dislodged is broken. The portion containing malachite is small by comparison. Still it outweighs you.\n\n\"Your prowess is ever a cause for wonder. Nevertheless I fear that no _Haruchai_ could lift and settle that fragment.\"\n\nGloom masked Stave's visage. Even his lone eye was shrouded as if it had fallen into shadow. \"Yet the choice is mine,\" he answered. \"The strength is mine. The life is mine.\n\n\"If I am not needed, I will stand aside.\"\n\nColdspray rubbed her face like a woman disguising another flinch. First with one hand, then with the other, she slapped her cheeks. She seemed to dig deep into herself for a response.\n\n\"Certainly you are needed,\" she rasped.\n\n\"Thus in the end,\" one of her comrades muttered, \"even Giants may be reduced to brevity.\"\n\nStave nodded. \"Then have done with delay.\"\n\nJeremiah opened his mouth to argue; closed it again. How could he object? His construct was impotent without its capstone. Everything that he and the Giants and Stave had done here hung in the balance. If he wanted to spare the former Master, he would have to suggest an alternative; and he had none.\n\nSighing, the Ironhand said, \"Come, Swordmainnir. The task exceeds only our muscles and thews. It does not lie beyond our comprehension. We must believe that a feat which may be understood may also be achieved.\"\n\nIn response, Cabledarm lifted her head, flexed her arms. \"I will join you,\" she announced grimly. \"I am less than I was. What of it? I am able to stand. Therefore I will be able to stand under some weight of stone.\"\n\nColdspray nodded. \"That is well. You also are needed.\"\n\nLike a woman walking to an execution, she went to the nearest roof stone. There she told her comrades, \"Some will lift. Others will serve as pillars. The first pillar will be Kindwind. Cabledarm will be the last. When the roof is complete, Bluntfist and I will pass the final fragment to Stave. Thereafter we, too, will become pillars until the capstone is set.\"\n\nThe other Swordmainnir nodded their assent. When Cirrus Kindwind had entered the temple, Rime Coldspray and Stormpast Galesend rolled a chunk of granite inside. There they heaved it upward until Kindwind could crouch under it, accept its weight with her back and shoulders.\n\nAt the same time, Latebirth and Grueburn began shifting another stone. Onyx Stonemage joined Kindwind: a second support. Halewhole Bluntfist and Cabledarm readied themselves.\n\nJeremiah, too, was needed: he knew that. The sections of the roof had to be positioned exactly. Otherwise they would not remain in place when they were wedged by the capstone. Yet he did not move. He had lost every resource of excitement. Now he felt only a sickening apprehension.\n\nHow much more would his companions have to suffer because he had suggested building a sanctuary for the _Elohim_?\n\nor a while, he sank into a kind of paralysis. Matters of scale overwhelmed him: the extremity of the Giants; the consequences of failure. Possible deaths drained the volition from his limbs. But then his fears were thrust aside by a summons which he could not refuse.\n\nThe straining women did not call out to him. Stave did not. His construct did.\n\nIt was crude in every detail, and so tenuously balanced that a nudge might knock it down. At the same time, it was ineffable, capable of mysteries. Eloquent as a paean, it spoke the language of his talents, his deepest needs. He had to finish it.\n\nCompelled, he followed a Swordmain into the temple.\n\nNow he seemed calm to himself, although his voice shook and his hands trembled. Fervid and sure, he told the Giants, the pillars, where they had gone wrong; urged subtle corrections of tilt and fit; encouraged them to stand taller under their burdens. While darkness mounted across the plain, he guided the placement of his materials.\n\nSoon only Halewhole Bluntfist and Rime Coldspray remained to move the last stones. Cabledarm had already taken her place inside the temple. Blood seeped from her bound wounds, but she ignored it. With her comrades, she did what she could to keep the roof steady. But there were still two slabs to raise. One would have to rest entirely on the injured woman and the wall. The other she would be able to share with Cirrus Kindwind.\n\nThe gasping of the Giants sounded like anguish. They had to stand as rigid as foundations, but they could not stand straight. The finished walls around them were no higher than their shoulders. They had to lower their heads and bow their backs in order to balance the roof stones. That posture constricted their breathing. Their heavy muscles quivered on the verge of collapse. Any sudden shift might scatter them like dying leaves. Sweat streaming from their faces spattered the dirt, made marks like cries. Their staring eyes showed white like terror in the enclosed gloom.\n\nNevertheless Coldspray and Bluntfist forced the remaining stones upward. Somehow Cabledarm and Kindwind bore those added loads. Somehow they managed to turn and twist\u2014lowering one shoulder, raising another, shifting their feet incrementally\u2014so that the slabs fit where they had to be.\n\nJeremiah supervised all of this without thinking about it. He could not afford to regard the sufferings of the Giants, and nothing else required his consideration. As soon as Cabledarm and Kindwind achieved the right positions, he dashed out of the temple with the Ironhand and Halewhole Bluntfist at his back.\n\nStave waited there as if he were deaf to the desperation of the Giants. Shredded gales as fragmentary as the rocks of the construct gusted around him and away, but did not move him.\n\nFighting for breath, Coldspray and Bluntfist paused briefly; braced their trembling hands on their hips; straightened the cramps out of their backs and legs. Then Rime Coldspray nodded to Jeremiah and the _Haruchai_.\n\n\"Ready yourselves,\" she warned the other Swordmainnir as if she wanted to scream and did not have the strength. \"The end is near. One exertion remains, the last and the worst.\"\n\nAt once, she grasped Stave and wrenched him into the air. He landed on the roof as if he were as weightless as dust.\n\nThen it was Jeremiah's turn. He held his breath while Bluntfist lifted him; placed him beside Stave.\n\nWith his bare feet, he felt the ordeal of the Giants. The surface of the roof resembled strewn rubble. It shifted under him when he moved. The women were only moments from absolute exhaustion. The roof might yet cave inward. And there was one more rock\u2014\n\nIf Coldspray and Bluntfist could even raise that piece. If Stave could manage it alone in spite of his wounds.\n\nIf.\n\nEntire realities rested on one small word.\n\n\"Hang on,\" Jeremiah croaked. \"We're moving as fast as we can.\"\n\nHe was sure only of himself. The temple had been built correctly: it was exactly what it needed to be. When the capstone sat in its proper position, the whole edifice would become secure. Even rested Giants might not be able to knock it down.\n\nStone was not bone: he could not fuse it. Nevertheless there was power in shapes: the right shapes, the right materials, the right fit. The right words. The right talent. Even the right Earthpower. Such things could change the world.\n\nPraying, Jeremiah watched Stave at the edge of the roof. Coldspray and Bluntfist would have to do more than lift the last stone. They would have to hold it over their heads for the _Haruchai_. If he had to reach down for it\u2014if he could not crouch under it\u2014even his great strength would not suffice.\n\nGroaning like women whose hearts were about to burst, the Ironhand and Halewhole Bluntfist heaved. In their extremity, they half threw their burden at Stave.\n\nJeremiah did not understand how Stave caught it. He did not know why Stave's bones did not break; why Stave's muscles and heart did not rupture. The former Master was not breathing. He had no pulse. A convulsion seemed to stop his life.\n\nThe roof where he stood tilted. The stones on either side of him swayed fatally. Giants groaned in dismay.\n\nHe stayed upright, but he did not move. He looked like he could not. Every sudden thrash of wind threatened his balance.\n\nThen Coldspray and Bluntfist reentered the temple to help their comrades. Together they steadied the roof.\n\nSlowly, as if he thought that he could live forever without air or blood, Stave turned away from the edge. He took one abused step toward the hole in the center of the roof. Then he took another.\n\nAnd another, ascending the slope of the stones.\n\nStill his heart did not beat. He did not breathe.\n\nA sensation like terror gripped Jeremiah. He moved toward the _Haruchai_. He could not help Stave carry the stone, but he could guide it. As firmly as he dared, he placed his hands on the rock. By touch, he urged Stave to accommodate a subtle rotation: a shift of inches so that the rock would fit its intended seat.\n\nStave did not appear to look at his target. His eye seemed sightless. No part of him reacted to the pressure of Jeremiah's hands: no part except his feet. At his next step, he angled his failing stance slightly to match Jeremiah's wishes.\n\nWith the slowness of hindered time, one instant forced to pause for the next, he sagged to his knees. By rending increments, he extended his arms. Beyond the limits of his strength, he dropped his treasure of malachite into place.\n\nIn almost the same motion, he thrust himself away. From his knees, he fell onto his back. Soundless as a figure in a dream, he rolled down the slant of the roof, fell over the edge.\n\nThe jolt when he hit the ground restarted his heart. He began to breathe again. With a gasp that no one heard, he fought air into his lungs.\n\nJeremiah did not see him. Suddenly faint, the Chosen-son crumpled as if his own heart had stopped.\n\nut he was only unconscious for a moment. Then he jerked up his head like a swimmer who had been underwater too long.\n\nThe roof under him felt as solid as the cliff looming across the southeast. It looked like an accidental spill of stone too heavy to hang in the air; but it was not. It had become something more. Delicate strands and small deposits of malachite held the roof and the walls together as if they had become one with each other. The hidden green was now a mesh of theurgy able to withstand shocks which would have broken a house.\n\nAnd the whole edifice thrummed with power. It sent a thrill of summons along the winds, out into the twilight and the rising dark.\n\nThey had done it, the Giants and Stave and Jeremiah himself. Somehow they had vindicated Linden's faith in them.\n\nBut he did not know how many of his companions had survived.\n\nThen he did. As soon as he cast his health-sense farther, he located Stave. The _Haruchai_ lay prone in the dirt. Respiration barely lifted his chest. His heart straggled from beat to beat. Nevertheless he lived.\n\nApart from Cabledarm, the women were in no worse condition than Stave. Rime Coldspray, Cirrus Kindwind, and three others had managed to stagger out of the temple before they collapsed. Now they sprawled on the ground like invalids in the last stages of a wasting illness.\n\nFelled by their efforts, the remaining Swordmainnir lay like debris on the floor of the construct. Frostheart Grueburn and Onyx Stonemage were there. Their prostration resembled Coldspray's, and Kindwind's. Still Jeremiah could hope that they would recover. But Cabledarm's plight was more severe. She had lost too much blood. He had no idea how much longer her heart would be able to sustain its beat.\n\nYet she had succeeded. The whole company had succeeded. The construct was complete. It was exact. In some sense, it lived. That achievement counted. It may have been as costly as a defeat, but it was a victory nonetheless.\n\nJeremiah wanted to hear a song of praise. He should have sung it himself, but he did not know how.\n\nUnaware that he was hurrying, he gained his feet, went to the edge of the roof, dropped to the ground beside Stave. \"We did it,\" he told the _Haruchai_. \"You did it.\" Then he trotted around the corner to the front of the structure.\n\nThere he announced to the Swordmainnir, \"You did it. All of you _did_ it. You were _amazing_!\"\n\nThe Ironhand turned her head. She was too weak to lift it. Wan as a whisper, she asked, \"Do the _Elohim_ come?\"\n\nJeremiah looked up into a hard slap of wind, scanned his surroundings. Mottled by craters, the hardpan plain stretched away into the gloom. It looked as empty as a wasteland. Toward the east, darkness continued to swell, dimming the unnatural day, obscuring even the ravaged heavens. But full dark was still hours away.\n\n\"Don't worry about it,\" he answered Coldspray. \"They'll come. They have to.\"\n\nThey could not refuse without ceasing to be themselves.\n\n_His purpose for us is an abomination, more so than our doom in the maw of the Worm. But it is not the worst evil._\n\nInfelice believed that Lord Foul would use Jeremiah's gifts to form a prison for the Creator. _The eternal end of Creation is shadow enough to darken the heart of any being_. For that reason alone, her people had no choice. While any of them lived, they would make one last attempt to stop Jeremiah.\n\nBut the prospect did not scare him. He was looking forward to it. Infelice thought that she knew him. She was wrong.\n\n\"Then, Chosen-son,\" murmured Coldspray, \"I ask that you bring water. Cabledarm must drink. Water may ease her.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" Quickly Jeremiah looked around for the waterskins. All of the Giants needed to drink. Stave did. Jeremiah was thirsty himself. But Cabledarm\u2014\"I'll be right back.\"\n\nFortunately Kindwind's last trek to the distant spring or stream had delivered seven full waterskins: as many as she could manage. Several had been emptied, but Jeremiah found three that still bulged. With the strength of his inheritance, he carried two. One he left within Coldspray's reach. The other he took into the temple.\n\nHe did not want to look at Cabledarm. Her injuries still seeped blood, in spite of makeshift tourniquets and bandages. Her spirit had been reduced to embers. The idea that those sparks might fade twisted his heart.\n\nBut he could not both lift her head and hold the waterskin. She was too big for him, too heavy. After a moment's hesitation, he knelt beside Frostheart Grueburn, nudged her gently.\n\n\"I need you. Please. Cabledarm is dying. I've got water, but I'm not strong enough to help her drink.\"\n\nWith a strangled groan, Grueburn tried to raise her head. Her eyes opened, but at first she did not appear to see. Then her gaze focused on the waterskin. Groaning again, she flung out an arm. Her hand found the waterskin. She dragged it to her.\n\nWhile she drank, Jeremiah insisted, \"Cabledarm needs that. Did you hear me? She's dying.\"\n\nWearily Grueburn nodded. After a few swallows, she wedged her elbows under her, forced herself to rise to her knees. There she paused while she tried to remember strength or balance or at least determination.\n\n\"Chosen-son.\" Her voice was an exhausted rasp. \"Does your edifice stand?\"\n\nJeremiah was too anxious to answer. \"Cabledarm,\" he pleaded. \"Water.\" Grueburn would recognize the truth for herself when her mind cleared. \"I'll get another waterskin.\"\n\nIn a rush, he left the construct.\n\nOutside, he saw that Coldspray had managed to sit up and drink. In spite of her frailty, however, she was sparing with her own needs. Two swallows, or three: no more. Then she began to rouse her comrades.\n\nJeremiah allowed himself a quick drink from the third waterskin before he carried it into the temple.\n\nHe found Grueburn and Stonemage beside Cabledarm. Grueburn supported Cabledarm's head and shoulders while Stonemage held the waterskin to Cabledarm's mouth.\n\nGrueburn glanced up as he entered. \"Our thanks, Chosen-son,\" she said hoarsely. \"Cabledarm will perish, or she will not. In large part, the choice is hers. For the present, this must suffice.\" With a twitch of her head, Grueburn indicated the waterskin Jeremiah held. \"Succor to our comrades.\"\n\nGlad to be spared the sight of Cabledarm's peril, he turned away.\n\nIn the gloom beyond the entrance, Rime Coldspray was no longer the only Giant conscious. Halewhole Bluntfist sat nearby, rocking from side to side and holding her head. Latebirth had begun the arduous chore of prying herself out of the dirt. Stormpast Galesend was stirring. And Cirrus Kindwind was already on her feet. She had labored less than her comrades: she rallied with less difficulty. Now she was readying herself to go for more water.\n\nShe gave Jeremiah a grimace that almost became a grin. \"We live, Chosen-son. And we have accomplished our purpose. I have said that I honor effort and intent. Now I also honor their outcome. Few in life are given such gifts.\"\n\nThen she nodded in Stave's direction. \"How fares Stave Rockbrother?\"\n\nBefore Jeremiah could reply, he heard a sound in the wind.\n\nHe was expecting the chimes that announced the sovereign of the _Elohim_ , waiting for it: the crystalline clear ringing of small bells, lovely and delicate. Instead he heard a sharp clatter like the ruin of gongs; like a welter of huge iron crashing down. It was not loud. Indeed, it seemed imponderably distant, as if it had reached him from the far side of the world. Yet its tone and timbre were unmistakable. They spoke of shattering and calamity and irreparable loss.\n\nHe tried to call a warning to the Giants inside the temple, but the words stuck in his throat.\n\nInstinctively he believed that Infelice was coming to prevent _the worst evil_. To kill him before he could be reclaimed by the Despiser.\n\nIf so, none of his companions would be able to defend him. No Giant could stand against any one of Infelice's people. And the Swordmainnir were too weak to don their armor or swing their swords. Stave was not even conscious.\n\nBut Jeremiah did not flinch. He knew that Infelice was wrong about him. She would see the truth when she arrived.\n\nForgetting Stave and Kindwind and water, he went to stand at the entrance to his temple as if he had become its guardian.\n\nThe metallic clamor continued. It acquired intensity and ire. It was as sharp as knives forged to flense and flay. In spite of the distance, it cut. And it was coming closer. The Giants heard it now. The Ironhand and Bluntfist struggled upright, stood wavering with their fists clenched. Latebirth was at Galesend's side, rousing her comrade. Cirrus Kindwind moved to join her.\n\nAs Jeremiah reached the entryway, Grueburn and Stonemage emerged, supporting Cabledarm between them. They bore her a few paces to one side, lowered her carefully to the dirt. Then they stood over her as though they meant to fight for her.\n\nBut the wrath and repudiation of the _Elohim_ would not be directed at her, or at any of Jeremiah's companions.\n\nHe folded his arms across his chest; across the fouled blue and horses of his pajamas. He did not know how else to contain his trembling.\n\nRime Coldspray took a position on his left. Halewhole Bluntfist matched her on his right. Together they waited.\n\nHe expected to see forces gathering in the eastern darkness, anger as fierce as lightning, an army of eldritch beings. The shredded winds seemed to promise multitudes and violence. But when Infelice came, she came alone. And she did not arrive from any direction. Instead she incarnated herself in front of him like a star plucked out of the heavens. She was no more than five steps away.\n\nInvoluntarily he blinked. Her brightness stung his eyes. She was clad in light: an elegant profusion of gemstones\u2014emeralds and rubies, sapphires and garnets\u2014all shining with their own radiance, all arrayed like garments woven of glory. Only the iron clangor and desperation of her bells contradicted her deliberate loveliness, her stubborn will to believe that she was the crown of Creation.\n\nAcross the plain behind her, the wind fashioned illusions of movement in the hollows, illusions that made the ground look like it was squirming.\n\nHer vehemence seemed to appall the dusk. It buffeted Jeremiah's bones. Now he saw that her many jewels resembled tears, incandescent woe. Her wrath was weeping. The suzerain _Elohim_ 's form and raiment articulated fury indistinguishable from grief.\n\n\" _Abomination!_ \" she cried. \"Malign child! Thus you complete our despair! Better for us to be devoured by the Worm. Better had you never been given birth.\n\n\"I am able to decline entrance only because I am Infelice. I cannot continue to do so. My people have not come only because I prevent them. I cannot continue to do so. Soon we must accept eternal absence and futility, eternal continuance in a void in which we can do nothing, and from which we cannot return.\n\n\"This evil you have performed, though I have both striven and pleaded to avert it. In your heedlessness, you are a-Jeroth's servant, and all of your deeds conduce to his designs.\"\n\nColdspray and Bluntfist glowered uselessly. Farther away, Stormpast Galesend tottered to her feet between Latebirth and Kindwind. Grueburn and Stonemage knelt like shields on either side of Cabledarm.\n\nJeremiah should have been terrified. On some level, he was. Infelice had not given rise to the darkness mounting in the east. Her ire and lamentation had not caused the turmoil of winds. Something else was coming\u2014\n\nNevertheless his fears only made his hands tremble, only caused his heart to stutter. His crossed arms closed a door on that part of himself. Behind his fa\u00e7ade, memories of the _croyel_ barked in derision. Outwardly he faced Infelice as if he could not be daunted.\n\nIn spite of her supernal powers, she did not know him. He was exactly what she believed him to be. At the same time, he was something entirely different.\n\nHe raised his halfhand as if he expected her to respect it; to recognize that it did not resemble Covenant's. \"You're wrong,\" he said in a fevered voice. \"You don't know what you're talking about.\n\n\"Your people are dying. You need to get them here.\" Then he gestured behind him. \"But first you need to _look_.\" He wanted to shout in the _Elohim_ 's face. \"You've been wrong about me all along.\"\n\n\"Do you think to mislead me, boy?\" Infelice retorted imperiously. \"Do you believe that _I_ may be deceived?\"\n\nNonetheless she glanced past him.\n\nThen she stared. Confusion made chaos of her clangor and radiance. Her apparel thrashed around her like the storms of desire and misery which had haunted Esmer. Her visage modulated: it seemed to become scores of different faces in quick succession, as if all of her people were suddenly manifested in her. As if the entire meaning of their existence had been called into question.\n\nAn instant later, the clatter of falling metal ceased. Every wind dropped. Silence closed like a lid over the plain. The gems of Infelice's raiment corrected themselves, resumed their accustomed grace. When she spoke again, her voice was little more than a whisper.\n\n\"It is not a gaol. It is a fane.\"\n\nLike an antiphony, her bells chimed relief. They implied awe.\n\n\"That's right!\" Jeremiah crowed. Vindication rose in him. It felt like scorn for the ways in which the _Elohim_ had misjudged him. \"You have to go in, but you can come out whenever you want. If you want. If I were you, I would stay inside. Let the rest of us worry about the Worm. As long as you're in there, it can't reach you.\"\n\nFor a moment or two, Infelice looked so lovely that every aspect of her seemed to sing: every line of her face and form, every implication of her demeanor, every glad jewel. She was lucent with melody. But then she appeared to recall herself from a vision of hope. It had almost seduced her. Now she returned, unwilling, to the implications of her plight.\n\nFrowning, angry again, and strangely uncertain, she said as if she were asking a question, \"Yet the Worm will destroy the fane. Though we will not be consumed, we will be denied our place in life. That you cannot prevent.\n\n\"You have wrought a surpassing wonder. I acknowledge it. I acknowledge that we have misesteemed you. And your theurgy is\u2014\" Bells described her astonishment. \"Child, it is vast. My strengths are many, yet I cannot unmake what you have formed. Against any threat other than the Worm, this fane would stand.\n\n\"But you do not comprehend the Worm's power. It _transcends_. Sensing our presence, the Worm will devour the fane without thought or effort. Then it will continue its search for the EarthBlood and doom. Deprived of egress, we will be eternally lost.\"\n\n\"Mom is working on that,\" Jeremiah replied without hesitation. \"Sure, what we've done is vulnerable.\" Roger had smashed Jeremiah's Tinkertoy castle with the ease of contempt. \"And we don't have enough power to stop the Worm. But Mom went looking for somebody who can teach her how to do what we need.\n\n\"As long as she gets back\u2014\"\n\n\"Madness!\" Infelice cried at once. \"Utter madness!\" Apparently her fears had blinded her to other things. Preoccupied by carnage, she had focused on Jeremiah rather than Linden. Now she reached for arcane sources of knowledge. Revelations struck her like blows. \"The Wildwielder hazards the world's past. She seeks a Forestal forged from the substance of an _Elohim_. She seeks _forbidding_.\n\n\"It is madness.\" Infelice seemed to be speaking to herself. Arguing with her own instincts. \"Should she fail, she will destroy all Time and life ere the Worm achieves its culmination.\" But then her attention focused on Jeremiah again. Softer hues flowed through her raiment. \"Yet I see valor also in her, as we have from the first. Therefore we sought to forestall her darkest desires, and to serve her in defiance of her own wishes. Should she succeed\u2014\"\n\n\"That's right,\" Jeremiah said again. \"You'll still have a chance. You'll be safe, at least until the Worm gets to the EarthBlood. And it'll be slow. I mean, slower than if it ate you. We'll have more time.\"\n\nTime for Linden or even Covenant to come up with a better answer.\n\n\"A worthy effort,\" murmured the Ironhand, \"regardless of its hazards.\"\n\nThe other Giants remained silent.\n\nInfelice appeared to consider Jeremiah's assertion. Instead of contradicting or challenging him, she consulted the ineffable ramifications of her bells and Linden's daring and his construct.\n\nHe bit his lip; tried not to hold his breath. He had done what he could. If Infelice turned her thoughts now to what she had called _the worst evil_ , nothing that he had done\u2014nothing that he might say\u2014would satisfy her.\n\nAbrupt gusts broke free around the _Elohim_. Winds like the discarded scraps of a hurricane, tattered and imminent, gusted at the Giants, the fane, Jeremiah. Fretted with new grit, they rebounded from the ridge. The plain blurred and ran like a landscape in a mirage. Driven air did not touch Infelice, but it pulled like thorns at Jeremiah's pajamas, moaned in the gaps between the stones of his construct.\n\nIt was possible that Jeremiah had built hope for everyone else, and had left none for himself.\n\nFinally Infelice looked at him again. For the first time, he heard regret in her voice.\n\n\"You have exceeded our conceptions of you. This I confess freely, though it humbles me. Yet one threat remains unaddressed. Your companions have named you Chosen-son. I do so also. Yet you are chosen of a-Jeroth as you are of the Wildwielder. I have spoken of his desire to accomplish absolute evil. Chiefly for that reason, he has endeavored to possess you. He will do so again.\n\n\"You have completed your fane.\" The music of her bells became sharper. It cut against the winds. \"Your part in the world's doom is done. For the Earth's sake, and for Creation's, I must now slay you.\"\n\nHer words shocked the Giants. They hit Jeremiah hard even though he had expected them. He had no defense.\n\n\"I am loath to do so,\" admitted Infelice. \"Yet I cannot otherwise forestall a-Jeroth. The Worm will feed, or it will not. The Arch of Time will fall, or it will not. Still the Despiser will make use of your gifts. From your heart and passion and youth and weakness, he will devise imprisonment for the Creator. He will put an end to the very possibility of Creation. Only your death will prevent his eternal triumph.\"\n\nJeremiah stared at her; said nothing. Simply standing his ground required everything within him, his most intense love and his bitterest darkness.\n\nHe had inherited too much from Anele.\n\nBut Cirrus Kindwind rose to her feet. She spoke for him. With gems reflecting in her eyes, she said, \"You forget, _Elohim_ , though you are the highest of your kind. The Chosen-son is not alone.\"\n\n\"He is not,\" Rime Coldspray affirmed. She sounded as hard as a fist. \"Doubtless you discount his companions. And in this you are perchance correct. Our striving in your name has weakened us. We cannot oppose you.\" In spite of her weariness, her voice hit and tore as if its knuckles were studded with spurs. \"Nor do I name the Timewarden, whose deeds and purposes remain unknown to us. But having misesteemed young Jeremiah, will you now compound your error? Have you forgotten that Linden Avery, Giantfriend and Wildwielder, has proven herself capable of much? Have you forgotten that there is hope in contradiction?\n\n\"No. I will not credit it. You are _Elohim_. You do not forget. Yet one matter lies beyond your comprehension. Being who you are, you have no experience of it. Therefore I will say _this_ in the teeth of all who meditate ill toward the Chosen-son. He has _friends_. The Despiser may well attempt to possess him. If so, that evil will fail. No possession can hold one who does not stand alone.\"\n\nShe seemed to mean, One who is loved.\n\n\"Why otherwise,\" she concluded, punching home her avowal, \"is he now free of the monster which once ruled him? Doubtless foes who relied upon the _croyel_ were certain of their designs. Yet here he stands, relieved from mastery, and dedicated to the preservation of beings who abhorred him.\"\n\nConflicting responses appeared to twist Infelice's mien. Her raiment fluttered in disarray. At first, Jeremiah thought that she had taken offense; that she would react with wrath and violence. But then he saw her more clearly.\n\nThe sovereign _Elohim_ was diminished. Her assurance, her contentment in herself, had received a blow from which she did not know how to recover. The notion of _friends_ perplexed her; undermined her. Winds gyred around her like relief and dismay: a conundrum which she appeared unable to resolve.\n\nBut she did not hesitate long. Pressures that surpassed Jeremiah compelled her to a decision. Her voice wore discordant chiming like a funeral wreath. Though she was the highest of her kind, she had been wrong too often.\n\n\"I can delay no longer. I must acknowledge that I am answered, as the summons must be answered. You have spoken truly. We are _Elohim_. We have no knowledge of _friends_.\n\n\"This, then, is my word. Come what may, we who are great must now place our faith in you who are small.\"\n\nThen she found a brief severity. \"Be wary, Chosen-son. Your deeds bring perils which you do not foresee. We have given of our utmost, according to our W\u00fcrd. Now we can do naught. If your companions fail you, you are undone.\"\n\nTurning away, Infelice lifted a cry into the heavens: a resounding clang like a hammer-stroke on an immense gong.\n\nAt once, other _Elohim_ began to appear as if they had been brought by the winds; as if they had found their substance among the oneiric seethings that troubled the plain.\n\nOne after another, they flowed like liquid light toward the fane, so many of them that Jeremiah was astonished. He had seen stars dying: he had not considered the number that still lived. Perhaps the relationship between these beings and stars was more symbolic than literal. Nevertheless the heavens had not been entirely decimated. Those _Elohim_ that answered the call of Jeremiah's construct resembled a multitude.\n\nThe sight enchanted him. They were so beautiful\u2014! One and all, they were lovely beyond description. To his human eyes, they were men and women clad in elegance, and accustomed to glory: innocent of mortality; untainted by the dross of inadequacy and the burden of suffering; immune to the woes and protests that could only be stilled by death.\n\nThey were the _Elohim_ , eldritch and fey: as cryptic as prophecies in a foreign tongue, and as ineffable as the beauties of Andelain, or the melodies of Wraiths. An uncounted host of them had already perished: a throng remained, craving life.\n\nThey sanctified the unnatural twilight as if their coming were a sacrament.\n\nInstinctively Stormpast Galesend and Latebirth forced themselves to their feet. Even Cabledarm found the strength to stand. All of the Giants endeavored to square their shoulders, straighten their backs. In spite of their troubled history with the _Elohim_ , they set aside their exhaustion.\n\nGraceful as willows, stately as Gilden, each faery individual paused only to exchange a nod with Infelice, who stood aside for her people. Each glided into the fane and vanished from sight. And Jeremiah watched them stream past like a boy who had become magnificent in his own estimation, full of pride. He had caused this: _he_. He had justified Linden's highest hopes for him. Yet the swelling of his heart was not pride. At that moment, at least, it was gratitude. The success of his temple was not something that he had accomplished: it was a gift that he had been given. He did not waste himself on pride.\n\nFor that moment, while it lasted, he soared above his secrets as if he had been lifted into the heavens.\n\nExalted and transfixed, he could not brace himself against the convulsion that shook the ground like the onset of an earthquake. He had no answer for the blast of heat as fierce as an eruption of magma, or for the blare of savagery that seemed to repudiate the world. He did not understand the sudden cries of the _Elohim_ , or the haunted look that filled Infelice's eyes, or the frantic shouts of the Giants. He did not know what was happening until Kastenessen entered him, and all of his thoughts became anguish and slaughter.\n\nEcstatic agony. Rage so great that it could not be contained. Pain too extreme to be called insanity.\n\nThe mad _Elohim_ struck the plain like a fireball flung by a titan. At the impact, the very ground under his feet seemed to ripple and clench like water, liquefied by ferocity. He came roaring with triumph and lunacy and hate: a monster who no longer resembled the people who had imprisoned him; damned him. He was not lovely, not graceful. His visage was a contortion of suffering. Interminable pains gnarled his limbs. His vestments were fire. His eyes blazed like the fangs of the _skurj_. From his kraken teeth, slaver splashed the dirt and smoldered. And he dominated the horizon; cast back the gloom until even the darkness in the east appeared to wither and fade. He had made himself taller than a Giant, as tall as one of the avid worms which he had once restrained.\n\nHis right fist he held above his head, ready to hurl ruin at the fane.\n\nIt was not an _Elohim_ 's fist. It was Roger's, human and fatal. With it, Kastenessen could deliver devastations that no other being of his race might attempt or condone.\n\nBut he did not strike. He was not ready\u2014or he saw no need.\n\nHe had already taken Jeremiah, who stood on bare dirt. The boy had inherited this vulnerability from Anele.\n\nIn an instant, less than an instant, a particle of time infinitely prolonged, Jeremiah passed through the eager malice and sadism of the _croyel_ into pure fire, the catastrophic frenzy of bonfires. During that interminable flicker, his spirit was split. He seemed to become several separate selves, all simultaneous or superimposed, all cruelly distinct.\n\nNow he knew why Anele had chosen madness.\n\nOne Jeremiah realized that he had been possessed\u2014again!\u2014and tried to scream. One stood in the white core of a furnace, while another interpreted every form of pain as delight, as agony perfected to ecstasy. One watched the Giants, who should have scattered, saved themselves. But they did not. Doomed and determined, they placed themselves in the path of Kastenessen's savagery. And another Jeremiah relished the knowledge that he had become incarnate lava. The idea that his companions were about to die glorified him. It was for this that the Despiser had marked him. It was for this that he lived.\n\nSwift with glee, he moved to do his ruler's bidding.\n\nStill another self remembered every horror which the _croyel_ had inflicted upon him. He experienced again the misery of deluding Linden in Roger's company, cringed at what he had done under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. Another aspect of his shredded identity fled for the safety of sepulchres. Another gibbered for the godhood of eternity. In that manifestation, he knew the keen pain of the _krill_ against his throat.\n\nAnd one\u2014\n\nOne of the many Jeremiahs _understood_.\n\nThis Jeremiah recognized the extremity of Kastenessen's need for ruin. He remembered the forbidden love, potent as delirium, and altogether delicious, which had drawn Kastenessen to mortal Emereau Vrai, daughter of kings. He felt Kastenessen's rage and dismay while he fought for his love against Infelice and others of the _Elohim_ , who should have valued him more highly. This Jeremiah knew intimately the unconscionable hurt of Kastenessen's Durance, his imprisonment against and among the _skurj_. This Jeremiah recalled in every detail the torment which had driven Kastenessen to begin merging himself with monsters.\n\nThis Jeremiah understood why Kastenessen cared only for the utter destruction of the _Elohim_. More, he knew why Kastenessen had not acted directly against Linden, or indeed against Jeremiah himself, until now; until all of his surviving people were gathered in one place. Although Kastenessen had used Esmer with remorseless brutality, he had not delivered his fury in person because any absence from the proximity of She Who Must Not Be Named would have put an end to Kevin's Dirt. His presence was required to channel and shape and direct the bane's fearsome energies. And he had believed, or _moksha_ Raver had persuaded him, that only the dire brume which hampered Earthpower and Law would make his revenge possible.\n\nNow Kastenessen had no more need for such stratagems. He had come in response to the fane's call, but he was not mastered by it. He was part _skurj_ and part human: he was in enough pain to refuse any coercion. No, he was here because he had achieved his desires. One of the Jeremiahs would carry out the last preparations.\n\nThat in turn was why Kastenessen raised Roger's fist, but did not strike. He had the power to shatter the fane, render it back to rubble. Nevertheless he withheld his blow, waiting for the certainty that every one of the _Elohim_ would be destroyed.\n\nNothing that happened in or to Jeremiah took any time at all. Part of him regretted that. He loved what he had become. He reveled in the purity of his given hate.\n\nIncandescent or incinerated in each of his separated selves, he flung himself at Infelice.\n\nIt was for this that he\u2014that Kastenessen\u2014had planned and waited and endured: so that the highest and mightiest and most dangerous of the _Elohim_ would be slain with the rest when he delivered his retribution.\n\nThree swift strides would be enough. Then Kastenessen in Jeremiah would wrap hate like molten stone around Infelice. He would hurl her through the fane's portal, the entryway to extinction. After that, only heartbeats would remain until the summons was complete; until every _Elohim_ was inside.\n\nUntil Kastenessen could unleash uncounted millennia of torment.\n\nJeremiah was sudden. He was quick.\n\nStave was faster.\n\nThe former Master was scarcely conscious. He could barely stand. Nevertheless he kept his promise to Linden. Lunging, he grasped Jeremiah's arm.\n\nHeat as fierce as brimstone savaged his hand, but he did not let go. Desperate and already failing, he delivered Jeremiah to the only protection that lay within his reach.\n\nAs Rime Coldspray had done to Stave himself earlier, the _Haruchai_ wrenched Jeremiah into the air. Off the bare dirt that exposed him to Kastenessen. Onto the stone roof of the temple.\n\nInto the direct line of Kastenessen's intended attack.\n\nThen Stave collapsed again. He did not rise.\n\nBut Infelice remained untouched outside the fane.\n\nKastenessen howled rage at the heavens, but Jeremiah no longer heeded him. As Jeremiah's feet left the ground, he crashed inwardly. His many selves seemed to smash against each other like projectiles, like bullets.\n\nThe force of their impact stunned him. It numbed his mind. He no longer thought or moved: he hardly breathed. Instead he lay still, wracked by revulsion; as weak as Stave. He could do nothing except watch and dread.\n\nKastenessen roared, but he did not strike. He wanted his full triumph. In moments, even Infelice would answer the fane's call. Then\u2014\n\nAlready the last of the _Elohim_ were passing inward. Their hope had become horror, and their features were written with dismay, but they had no power to reject their own natures. Two heartbeats, or perhaps three, no more than that, and Infelice would stand alone. Then she, too, would enter\u2014and Kastenessen would strike.\n\nNo, he would not. Not with Roger's hand. Never again.\n\nWhile Kastenessen readied his blast, a Giant surged out of a crater behind him. Jeremiah would not have known who the newcomer was if Frostheart Grueburn had not shouted, \"Longwrath!\"\n\nSwift as a bolt of lightning, the man reared high behind the deranged _Elohim_. In both fists, he gripped a long flamberge with a wicked blade. It edges gleamed against Kastenessen's lurid radiance as if starlight had been forged into its iron.\n\nOne stroke severed Roger's hand from Kastenessen's wrist.\n\nKastenessen screamed like an exploding sun. He staggered.\n\nLongwrath followed him to strike again.\n\nBut Kastenessen caught his balance. Blood pulsed from his wrist, the tainted ichor of Earthpower and lava. He did not heed it. Wheeling, he swung at his attacker with his good arm.\n\nPower erupted in Longwrath's chest. His armor had been damaged, torn apart at one shoulder: it could not withstand Kastenessen's virulence. The wrought stone sprang apart, spitting splinters as piercing as knives. But the shards evaporated or melted at the touch of Kastenessen's lava. Longwrath was flung backward, hurled away like a handful of scree. When he fell, he did not move again. Smoke gusted out of his chest as if his heart and lungs were on fire.\n\nRoaring once more, Kastenessen turned back to Infelice and the fane. Obscene heat mounted within him. He grew taller, blazed brighter. Acrid flames swirled higher, spinning about him like the birth-pangs of a cyclone. His sick brilliance stung Jeremiah's eyes, but the boy could not look away.\n\n\"Hear me, treacher!\" the mad _Elohim_ howled. \"I am more than you deem! Yon puerile fane cannot compel me! Still am I Kastenessen! Still my pain suffices to destroy you!\"\n\nRaving, he stoked his lethal energies, Earthpower and magma, _Elohim_ and _skurj_ , until they looked fierce enough to consume every life that had ever walked the plain. They were far more than he needed them to be. They would level Jeremiah's crude edifice as if it had no substance and no meaning.\n\nInfelice had been appalled earlier. Now, strangely, she was calm. She did not answer Kastenessen. Instead she remarked to Rime Coldspray, \"You think ill of us, Giant, and you have cause. But we are not as dark as you deem. For this also we laid our _geas_ upon your kinsman. For this also he acquired his blade. Failing one purpose, he has served another.\n\n\"He has not redeemed us, but he has weakened our lost brother. Now comes one who may achieve our salvation, however briefly. We cannot ask more of any who oppose the Worm.\n\n\"You will forgive your kinsman's passing,\" she added sadly. \"Alive, he would not lightly bear the recall of his deeds.\"\n\nThen the bedizened _Elohim_ faced Kastenessen across the gulf that separated their thoughts and desires, hers and his.\n\n\"I have heard you, doomed one.\" She did not raise her voice, yet it rang out, clarion and clear. \"Now you will hear me. Cease your striving. Enter among your people. Permit your hurt to be assuaged. We have dealt cruelly with you, but we are also kind. While life endures to us, we will provide a surcease from all that you have suffered.\"\n\nShe may have been telling the truth.\n\nNow comes one\u2014\n\nBut Kastenessen had spent long ages in his Durance. He had made choices which exacerbated his fury. Infelice's appeal could not reach him. For him, it may have been the final affront.\n\nHe gathered flames until they burst from his eyes and his mouth, from every limb and line of his towering form. He was becoming a holocaust, devastation personified: a bonfire high and hot enough to ravage the plain. His reply was one word:\n\n\" _Never!_ \"\n\nYet he was not given time to release his accumulated hate.\n\nFrom the northeast, a burst of extravagant argent opened the twilight. It cast back the darkness, dismissed the sunless gloom. It was as bright as Kastenessen, and as complex, but immeasurably cleaner. And it was brief, little more than a blink. Nevertheless it was long enough.\n\nOut of it came riding Thomas Covenant and Branl _Haruchai_ of the Humbled. Covenant held Loric's _krill_.\n\nThe shock of their arrival snatched Kastenessen away from his victims.\n\nCovenant rode a shovel-headed horse as ungainly and muscular as a mule. Branl was mounted on a Ranyhyn that Jeremiah had never seen before. And they were in a desperate hurry. Froth snorted from the nostrils of Covenant's horse, the muzzle of Branl's palomino stallion. Sweat reflected brimstone on their coats. They looked like they had galloped for leagues or days. Covenant lurched in his seat as if he were falling.\n\nAs soon as his mount's hooves struck the dirt, he pitched from his saddle. But he did not sprawl. Staggering like a holed ship in a storm, he managed to stay on his feet. Awkward and urgent, he confronted Kastenessen as if he had forgotten that the _Elohim_ could reduce his bones to ash.\n\nIn his maimed hands, the gem of the _krill_ shone like a kept promise in an abandoned world.\n\n\"You\u2014!\" Kastenessen began: a strangled howl. Rage clenched his throat, choked off his protest.\n\n\" _Try_ me,\" Covenant panted as if he were on the verge of prostration. \"Do your worst.\" He looked too weak to withstand a slap. Streaked by conflicting illuminations, his face had the pallor of a wasting disease. Still he was Thomas Covenant. He did not falter. \"See what happens.\n\n\"I killed my ex-wife. I helped destroy a Raver. And I've seen the Worm of the World's End. I am _done with restraint_!\" His teeth gnashed. \"I used to care how much you've suffered. I don't anymore. If you think you can beat me, go ahead. I'm _wild magic_ , you crazy bastard. I'll cut you apart where you stand.\"\n\nJeremiah stared and stared, and could not name his astonishment, when Kastenessen flinched\u2014\n\n\u2014and took an alarmed step backward.\n\nCovenant advanced, holding up the _krill_. It blazed like havoc, unmitigated and unanswerable. Its argent covered him with majesty. The silver of his hair resembled a crown.\n\nBranl came behind him, but did not intrude.\n\nKastenessen retreated another step, and another. Another. The passion in Covenant's eyes drove him. He must have realized that he was being forced toward Infelice and the fane; but he did not stop. Perhaps he could not. Perhaps he saw something in Covenant, or in Loric's numinous dagger, that cowed him.\n\nWith every step, he dwindled. Retreating, he became smaller. Lava seemed to leak out of him and fade, denatured like water by his own thwarted heat.\n\nCovenant stumbled and wavered, and kept coming. Kastenessen shrank away from him.\n\nGiants let him pass. They watched as if they were as stricken as Jeremiah; as transfixed.\n\nThen Infelice spoke Kastenessen's name like a command, and Kastenessen turned from Covenant to face her.\n\nTerror and loathing contorted his features. He conveyed the impression that he wanted to scream and could not because he feared that he might sob. Through his teeth, he spat words like fragments of torment.\n\n\"You have earned my abhorrence.\"\n\nInfelice's calm had become irrefusable. Placid as Glimmermere, she answered, \"We have. We will not ask you to set it aside. We ask only that you allow us to soothe your pain.\"\n\nHer response appeared to horrify him. \"It is what I am.\"\n\n\"It is not,\" she countered, undismayed. \"When it is gone, you will remember that you and you alone among the _Elohim_ have both loved and been loved.\"\n\nTo that assertion, he had no reply.\n\nShe did not repeat her invitation. Instead she reached out one hand to clasp his severed wrist. With chiming and mercy, she stanched his bleeding. If the pollution of the _skurj_ within him caused her any hurt, she accepted it.\n\nHis eyes bled anguish. He made no attempt to pull away.\n\nBriefly Infelice glanced at the Giants, at the Ironhand. \"Be warned,\" she told them. \" _Moksha_ Jehannum now rules the _skurj_. He will wield them with cunning and malice. And do not forget that the Chosen-son is precious to a-Jeroth.\"\n\nThen she surrendered at last to the imperative of Jeremiah's construct. Drawing Kastenessen with her, she entered the fane. In an instant, they were gone as if they had stepped out of the world altogether.\n\n\"Damnation,\" Covenant gasped. \"I wasn't sure I could do that.\"\n\nLowering his arms as if he had been beaten, he tried to approach the Swordmainnir. But his legs failed, and he dropped to his knees.\n\nOverhead Kevin's Dirt had already begun to dissipate. If more stars perished, they did so beyond the horizons. Jeremiah did not see them die.\n\n## 10.\n\nBut While I Can\n\nAs if they were each entirely alone, Linden Avery and Manethrall Mahrtiir rode through hell to save or damn the Earth.\n\nThey did not exist for each other. They were mounted on Ranyhyn that did not exist. Immersed in a cyclone of rent instants, they were consumed by the kind of hiving that drove men and women mad. Every nerve was stung beyond endurance, assailed by bitter particles of reality. At the same time, every perception had become white ice, gelid as the gulfs between the stars. Linden and her companion inhabited a frozen wilderland eternally unrelieved in all directions. They had entered a realm in which excruciation defined them. It was all they knew because it was all that they had ever known. It was all that they would ever know. One moment did not lead to the next, and so there was nothing to see or do or understand.\n\nIn that perfection of agony, Linden may once have imagined that she and Mahrtiir would be defended by experience. They had endured _caesures_ twice before, and had survived. Surely they would be sustained by the knowledge that what they were trying to do was possible? But she was wrong. Memory was meaningless in a place that contained all time and none simultaneously. One instant, _this_ instant, was the whole truth of who and what they were.\n\nYet it was not the whole truth of their plight. The _caesure_ imposed other dimensions of torment as well, other forms of futility. She had asked the Ranyhyn to take her and Mahrtiir backward in time, against the current of the Fall's wild rush; and that effort had consequences. While hornets burrowed into her flesh, and she occupied a bitter wasteland as if it were the summation of all her needs and desires, she also floated inside herself like a spectator, helpless amid the chaos, watching her own desecration as if she were dissociated from it.\n\nDays and days ago, she had once hung suspended like this inside Joan's mind, observing ruin through Joan's eyes because she had entered a _caesure_ of Joan's making. But now Linden was the cause of her own suffering. While other tortures failed to tear her apart only because their duration had no meaning, she also bore witness to herself.\n\nShe watched the Linden Avery who had always been inadequate to what her life required of her. The Linden who had allowed herself to be misled by Roger Covenant and the _croyel_. The Linden who had defied every Law by resurrecting Thomas Covenant, _compelled by rage_ \u2014and had nonetheless failed to resurrect him whole. The Linden who had been consumed by She Who Must Not Be Named, and had not sufficed to raise her precious son from his graves.\n\nThe Linden Avery who had roused the Worm of the World's End.\n\nBut there was more. Observing, she was able to recall things which the storm of time denied.\n\n_There is no doom so black or deep that c_ _ourage and clear sight may not find another truth beyond it_.\n\nCovenant had told her that. In the aspect of her anguish that resembled a shadow cast by her own flawed self, she yearned to believe him.\n\n_Trust yourself._\n\nOh, she ached for the ability to believe. But he had also said, _Don't touch me_ , as if he feared that her love would corrupt some essential part of him. She did not know how to trust herself. She was the daughter of her parents, a mother and father who had feared every hurt of living, and had raised her for death. That knowledge endured in her bones. A Raver had confirmed it. Unforgotten and unredeemed, it ruled her even now, in spite of Covenant and Jeremiah and the Land.\n\n_In your present state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you. It does not cr_ _owd at your back_.\n\nIt was here. Was it not?\n\nBut because she was watching herself as if she were someone else, she was able to recognize that there were other ways to think. Her many friends had been trying to teach her that lesson ever since Liand had first introduced himself in Mithil Stonedown. By their devotion, they had assured her that she did not need to judge herself as if she were defined by her sins. In spite of her concealments and dishonesties, her fury _contemptuous of consequence_ , she was not alone.\n\nIf _courage and clear sight_ exceeded her, they did not surpass her companions. From the first, she had been supported by people whose hearts were bigger than hers; by loyalties more unselfish than hers. _Every essential step along the path_ , Stave had assured Infelice, _has been taken by the natural inhabitants of the Earth_. Linden's friends had urged _trust_ until even she had heard them.\n\nTrapped in the savagery of the _caesure_ , she found that desperation was indistinguishable from faith.\n\n_Attempts must be made_ \u2014\n\nHyn had carried her willingly into the Fall. Mahrtiir on Narunal had accompanied her willingly. She could believe in them.\n\n_\u2014even when there can be no hope._\n\nAnd she had done some things right. Witnessing herself with the detachment of a spectator, she could acknowledge those deeds. She had fought her way through the machinations of Roger and the _croyel_. She had provided for her son's rescue from the _croyel_ 's covert in the Lost Deep. And when every other action had been denied to her, she had given Jeremiah his racecar: the last piece of the portal which had enabled him to step out of his prison.\n\nIn those moments, no one else could have taken her place. To that extent, Anele had told the truth about her, as he had about so many things. _The world will not see her like again_.\n\nAnd there was more.\n\nNothing ameliorated the extravagant burrow and sting of dismembered moments. Nothing eased the cruelty of the frigid wasteland which would arise from Desecrations like hers. Nothing could. Nevertheless she still held Covenant's wedding band clasped in her hands. Silver fire still shone from the metal even though she was not a rightful wielder of white gold. It was as vivid to her as Covenant himself. It could be an anchor for her foundering spirit.\n\nThen she was no longer alone. She had always and never been alone. Manethrall Mahrtiir was at her side, holding the Staff of Law for her and looking ahead as if he had nothing to fear; as if he had finally identified the import of his life.\n\nAnd she was seated on Hyn's back, as she had always been. Narunal was at her side. The horses were not moving. Movement required causality: it depended on sequence. Yet they ran. Stride for stride, dappled Hyn matched Narunal's strength, Narunal's certainty, as the palomino stallion raced from nowhere to nowhere across the white wilderness.\n\nIn spite of the _caesure_ 's excoriation, Linden clung to Covenant's ring and endured.\n\nShe did not have to wait long. She had been waiting forever, and did not have to wait at all. This moment did not move on to the next because it could not, or because there was no _next_. Nevertheless the hard circle between her hands flared suddenly; and Hyn carried her out of chaos into sunshine under a summer sky.\n\nSunshine. A slow hillside clad in brittle grey-green grass as thick as bracken. A summer sky as lenitive as hurtloam.\n\nWithout transition, Linden was released.\n\nThe shock of change made her muscles spasm, made the world reel. Her stomach hurt as if she needed to spend hours puking. Blots of black confusion wheeled around her as though she were under assault by crows or vultures. The continuity of her personal world had been severed from itself. Unable to determine her position in time and space, she tumbled from Hyn's back, landed hard on the grass.\n\nFor a moment, she could not breathe; could not think. While her nerves floundered, she clung to the kind earth and wrestled with her impulse to vomit. She had arrived somewhere. Some when. Hyn had brought her here. She smelled summer in the air, felt an insistence on life in the stiff grass in spite of a prolonged paucity of rain. Straining to inhale, she caught a whiff of distant desiccation, as if she had arrived too close to a desert. The sky held too much dust. She had expected Andelain and lushness. She was unprepared for this baked hillside, this heat, this\u2014\n\nSomething had gone wrong.\n\n\"Ringthane,\" Mahrtiir croaked as if he were retching. \"Release the white gold. You must. Accept your Staff.\"\n\nShe heard him, but the words did not make sense. He sounded like an ur-vile, barking incomprehensibly. Something had gone wrong. The world was wrong: the grass, the sky, the sunshine. Only the writhing ruin of the Fall as it drifted away felt familiar. Narunal trumpeted a warning that she did not know how to interpret. Alarm fretted Hyn's answering whinny.\n\n\"Chosen!\" insisted the Manethrall. \"Linden Avery! Your _Staff_. You must quench the _caesure_! If it enters among the trees, it will wreak harm which no Forestal will pardon. We will not be heeded if you do not first spare the forest!\"\n\nLinden recognized a few sounds. The sigh of an arid breeze. The consternation of birds somewhere in the distance. A few words.\n\nWhen she remembered to let go of Covenant's ring, she began to breathe again.\n\nMahrtiir stumbled to her side. Roughly he rolled her onto her back. \" _Ringthane!_ \" Crouched against a glare of sunlight, he dropped the Staff of Law onto her chest. Then he fumbled at the dried remains of his garland, pinched off one of the last nubs of an _amanibhavam_ bloom. Scrubbing the nub between his palms to powder it, he slapped one hand to his nose, clamped the other over Linden's nose and mouth.\n\nToo many sensations. _Amanibhavam_ stung her sinuses as if she had inhaled acid. She had no time to notice that it dispelled her nausea. The sunshine wore a faint patina of dust. Shadows blurred Mahrtiir's visage.\n\nThen Earthpower flowed into her from the black shaft of the Staff; and she thought, Trees? A Forestal?\n\nOh, God.\n\nYou must quench the _caesure_!\n\n_Caesures_ destroyed stone. They would tear any forest to shreds. Even a forest defended by a Forestal\u2014\n\nWhere _was_ she?\n\nMahrtiir knew Andelain. Surely he would have called that woodland by name?\n\nReflexively she clutched the Staff. Then she heaved herself into a sitting position; staggered to her feet.\n\nThe Fall was already thirty paces away, forty. And it was big, as virulent as a tornado; a rip in the fabric of reality. Seething, it lurched toward a scatter of trees: Gilden, ash, sycamores, thirsty willows. They stood alone and in loose copses, punctuating the browning grass like the out-riders of an army in retreat. Like the grass, they looked parched, stricken by a persistent lack of rain, a dwindling watershed. She could not see past them to the forest itself, but she knew instantly that the forest was there. It seemed to glower in the distance, defying an inexorable drought.\n\nThe _caesure_ savaged the ground as it moved. It was going to plow a furrow of devastation into the heart of the woods.\n\n\" _Melenkurion abatha_ ,\" she gasped as if she were cursing. The burn of _amanibhavam_ sent flames like tendrils along the channels of her brain. \" _Duroc minas mill_.\" She felt as blighted as the trees, wan with thirst.\n\nWhere am I?\n\nWhat have I done?\n\n\" _Harad khabaal._ \"\n\nOne fire led to another; enabled another. As if she were turning her mind inside out, she drew ebon conflagration from the Staff and flung it like outrage into the core of the Fall.\n\nEarthpower and Law, the salvific antitheses of the time-storm. Her flames were as stark as fuligin, as black as the immedicable gulf of a night sky after every star had been devoured. But the darkness was hers: it was not inherent to the Staff's magicks. And here\u2014wherever _here_ might be\u2014she was not hampered by Kevin's Dirt. Riding the invocative force of the Seven Words, she hit the _caesure_ with a deluge of extinction as if she were pouring a lake onto an inferno.\n\nThe Fall could not withstand her. As she had done before, she caused the violent miasma to implode. With a sound like thunder, the _caesure_ swallowed itself as if it sought to suck her with it into nothingness. Then it was gone.\n\nIts passage had galled the earth\u2014a bitter wound\u2014but the nearest trees had not been touched.\n\n\"Mane and Tail, Ringthane!\" breathed Mahrtiir. Already he sounded steadier, stronger. Even withered, _amanibhavam_ retained the potency to restore him. \"That was well done. Another moment, and our quest would have failed. No tale of Forestals told among the Ramen makes mention of forbearance. They do not countenance the ravage of their woods.\"\n\nTrembling, Linden extinguished her flames. Well done? she wondered. Really? Mahrtiir was right, of course. She could not expect any Forestal to grant her desires after she had damaged his trees. But now she had no idea how she and her companion would return to their proper time. Too tired to think clearly, she had assumed that she would use the same _caesure_. An impossible idea. It had brought her to the brink of a terrible mistake. Yet the result was that she and Mahrtiir were trapped.\n\nShe could not imagine an escape that did not require another _caesure_ , another Desecration. And she could not guess what would happen if she violated Time in this era. Thousands of years separated her from Jeremiah, Stave, and the Giants; from any conceivable reconciliation with Thomas Covenant. The Law of Life had not yet been violated. A time-storm created here might consume every possible future.\n\nShe bit her lower lip in an effort to control herself; but she could not stop trembling. These trees did not belong to Andelain: she was sure now. The forest beyond them was too dark, too angry. And she knew of no time in which the heart of the Land had been gripped by a drought like this. Clearly Hyn and Narunal had ignored her desire to reach Caer-Caveral. So when _was_ she?\n\nWhy did the mood of the woodland seem familiar?\n\nNagged by the same concerns, Mahrtiir continued, \"Yet I confess that I am troubled. Was it not your intent to seek out the Forestal Caer-Caveral? That I conveyed to great Narunal. But this is not Andelain. Plainly it is not. Rather we have come to a place and time unknown to me.\" He muttered a Ramen curse. \"I cannot account for it. I am certain only that the gifts of the Ranyhyn are unerring. They have turned aside from your wishes for some good purpose.\"\n\nLinden nodded in bafflement. The presence of the great horses nearby offered an oblique solace. Still she could not keep the tremor from her voice as she asked, \"Do you recognize anything? Anything at all? Can you guess where we are?\"\n\nThe Manethrall scowled above his bandage. \"In these straits, Ringthane, blindness hinders me, though I am not constrained by Kevin's Dirt. I am able to assure you only that I have never stood in this region of the Land.\" After a moment of hesitation, he added, \"Among the Ramen, however, there are tales\u2014\"\n\nHis voice trailed away. Before Linden could prod him, however, he asked, \"The trees lie to the north, yes?\"\n\nShe nodded automatically, trusting his awareness of her.\n\n\"Are there hills in the east?\" he continued. \"Do they mount toward mountains?\"\n\nShe looked in that direction, summoned Earthpower to increase the range of her senses. \"If I'm not mistaken.\"\n\n\"And in the west? Do mountains also arise there?\"\n\nSquinting into the distance, she murmured, \"I think so.\"\n\nMahrtiir's manner became sharper. \"One question more, Ringthane. Does a waste extend at our backs? I perceive barrenness. Does it spread to the horizon and beyond?\"\n\n\"As far as I can tell. It looks like the edge of a desert.\"\n\nThe Manethrall stood taller, straightened his shoulders as if he had found himself in the presence of majesty. \"Then I must surmise,\" he announced so that the trees and even the wide sky might hear him, \"that we stand in the gap of Cravenhaw. Before us lies dire Garroting Deep. Narunal and Hyn have delivered us, not to Caer-Caveral, but to Caerroil Wildwood. If you would speak with him, Ringthane, we must dare his demesne.\"\n\nHe sounded almost eager.\n\nBut his words gave Linden a jolt. Details came together, formed connections.\n\nCaerroil Wildwood. Garroting Deep.\n\nNo wonder the darkness seemed familiar.\n\nShe had encountered Caerroil Wildwood when Roger and the _croyel_ had stranded her deep in the Land's past. At that point in his long life, the Forestal's puissance was undiminished. He had given her gifts: her life as well as runes for her Staff. In some sense, he had made possible Covenant's resurrection. And he had charged her with a question.\n\n_How may life endure in the Land, if the Forestals fail and perish, as they must, and naught remains to ward its most vulnerable treasures? We were formed to stand as guardians in the Creator's stead. Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?_\n\nHe had understood that she had no reply. Nevertheless he had spared her. He had seen something in her, _the mark of fecundity and long grass_. _And the sigil of the Land's need has been placed upon her_. What sigil? For all she knew, then or now, he had referred to the bullet hole in her shirt. Or to the healed wound in her hand where the _croyel_ had stabbed her. Still she had felt compelled to promise an answer.\n\nBut long ago\u2014millennia later in the Land's life, a decade earlier in Linden's\u2014when she and Covenant had first met Caer-Caveral in Andelain\u2014when the guardian who had once been Hile Troy had sacrificed himself against the Law of Life\u2014he had been the last Forestal. By that time, Caerroil Wildwood had passed away. All of the Upper Land's ancient forests had been destroyed by the Sunbane.\n\n\"My God, Mahrtiir.\" Inferences linked themselves into language as rapidly as she could speak. \"This must be hundreds of years after I met Caerroil Wildwood,\" after the Mahdoubt had saved her. \"It must be before the Clave. Before the Sunbane.\"\n\nThe kingdom against which Berek Halfhand had waged his war was not a desert.\n\nHyn and Narunal had known what they were doing. Here she was in no danger of confronting the Forestal before her first encounter with him.\n\n\"That is well,\" averred Mahrtiir. \"Alas, to their shame the Ramen have no tales of events in the Land after the onset of the Sunbane. I must believe that Caerroil Wildwood perished striving against that abomination.\"\n\n\"No,\" Linden said at once. Covenant had learned the truth from the Clave. He had told her. \"He passed earlier. Before the Sunbane.\"\n\nThe Manethrall's surprise was plain. \"Then how was he brought to his end?\"\n\nShe bit her lip again. \"I'm not sure. It had something to do with the destruction of the first Staff of Law.\" Then she hurried on. \"But at least now we know _when_ we are\u2014approximately, anyway. Caerroil Wildwood is still alive. He may recognize me. If he doesn't, he'll recognize his runes. We have a chance.\"\n\nShe had intended to address her appeal to Caer-Caveral; but she saw now that Hyn and Narunal understood her needs, and the Land's, better than she did. What had she expected of Andelain's Forestal? Had she truly imagined that meeting her before her proper time would not affect his later decisions?\n\nIn _this_ time, here and now, she was in no danger of burdening Caer-Caveral with knowledge which he had not earned. The Ranyhyn had spared her a potentially catastrophic miscalculation.\n\n\"Thus,\" the Manethrall observed proudly, \"Hyn and Narunal vindicate their wisdom once again.\" Then he admitted, \"Yet queries remain. Are you able to summon the Forestal? To attract his notice is both perilous and necessary. And will he heed your desires? If the tales are sooth, Caerroil Wildwood will not grant a kindly hearing. Even in the days of dark Grimmerdhore, Garroting Deep was deemed the most wrathful of the forests. You have encountered this Forestal and lived\u2014aye, and were given ambiguous boons. Do you conclude therefore that he will bestow the knowledge you seek, though you wish to preserve a world in which he does not exist? Neither he nor any Forestal?\n\n\"Ringthane, if you are able to gain his heed, how will you sway him?\"\n\n_How may life_ _endure in the Land_ \u2014?\n\nLinden watched birds soar like questions among the trees. Beyond them, Garroting Deep brooded over its innumerable wounds and grievances, its savage hungers. Winds from the mountains which walled Cravenhaw on both sides did nothing to soften the heat swelling from the south. Already sweat gathered at the corners of her eyes. Dampness trickled down her spine.\n\n\"I don't know,\" she admitted. \"Caerroil Wildwood gave me his runes for a reason, and I don't think that it was just because I needed help. It had something to do with the question he asked me. He knew that I couldn't answer it, but he wanted an answer anyway. Maybe his runes were part of the question. Or he hoped that they might be part of the answer.\"\n\nMahrtiir considered her for a moment. Then he nodded with an air of renewed anticipation. \"For us, then, only the simpler query remains. How will you attract the Forestal's notice? He is said to be an imperious being, mighty and impatient withal, having good cause to loathe humankind. Also Garroting Deep is vast. He may be many leagues distant, unaware of our approach. Or he may be unwilling to acknowledge beings whose like have butchered trees beyond all counting.\"\n\nLinden frowned, shook her head. \"Hyn and Narunal got his attention for us. They brought us so close\u2014I almost let that _caesure_ hurt his forest. I don't care how far away he is. He must have felt that kind of violence. He'll come, even if all he wants to do is to kill us.\"\n\nThe Manethrall nodded again. \"Indeed, Ringthane. I cannot gainsay you. Thus my query becomes, how will you forestall his ire? Our tales assure us that the Forestals were mighty beyond comprehension. How otherwise did their puissance suffice to forbid the Ravers from the Upper Land?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"I'm not exactly helpless myself.\" She had different concerns: fears that baffled her. _How may life endure in the Land\u2014?_ They were laden with doom. _Just be sure you come back_. \"But I won't fight him.\" She, too, loved trees. And she had not forgotten the lessons of Gallows Howe. \"I won't have to.\" Again she said, \"He'll recognize his runes.\"\n\nFor another moment, Mahrtiir scrutinized her as if he sought to gauge her resolve. Then he nodded once more. \"As you say, Ringthane. As ever, the deeds of the great horses conduce to hope. I grasp now that there is a fitness to your purpose. My own desires are thereby justified. Come good or ill, boon or bane, I will regret no moment of our quest.\"\n\n\"All right,\" Linden murmured. Gradually her attention shifted away from her companion. \"Then all we have to do right now is wait. And try not to go crazy.\"\n\nWhat choice did she have? She did not want to think about Jeremiah; about people and loves that she had left behind and might never see again. In one respect, her presence in a time where she did not belong was no different than any other crisis. In fact, it was no different than ordinary life. The only way out was forward. While Time endured, there was no going back.\n\nGripping her Staff for courage, she tried to put everything else out of her mind. At her side, Mahrtiir folded his arms across his chest like a man who knew how to contain his impatience. In the service of the Ranyhyn, he had learned the discipline of setting himself aside. He knew how to accommodate his frustration.\n\nHer former world had taught Linden similar skills. She had acquired a professional detachment in medical school and emergency rooms and Berenford Memorial. But she had lost that resource, or had left it behind with Jeremiah and the Giants, Stave and Covenant. She did not know how to stop fretting. Instead she gnawed on her fears as if she hungered for them; as if at the marrow she would find sustenance.\n\nShe needed her son and Covenant. She had to do what she could to keep them alive in spite of the intervening millennia.\n\n\"Oh, hell,\" she muttered abruptly. \"Who am I kidding? I can't just wait around. Let's at least get closer.\"\n\nHolding her Staff ready, she moved toward the nearest trees.\n\nTheir suffering without sufficient water was palpable. The willows in particular ached with distress, and the grass crackled under her boots. As the ground sloped down behind her toward the wasteland, moisture was wicked away from the woods. Apparently Caerroil Wildwood's music could no longer protect the outlying trees from the effects of the diminished watershed. Even if Garroting Deep faced no other perils, it was under assault by the perpetual drought in the south.\n\nTensely Linden crossed through stippled shade to bypass the forest's first fringes. Unaware that she was holding her breath, she approached the ragged edge of the Deep. At her shoulder, Mahrtiir matched her pace. A short distance away, Hyn whickered softly, and Narunal stamped his hooves; but the Ranyhyn did not follow.\n\nLinden passed a stunted copse, then a magisterial Gilden with leaves like scraps of clawed fabric, an oak mottled with brown stains like blights. The low rustle of breezes among their branches seemed to sound her name until she reached a stretch of open ground like a clearing. With enough water, it might have been a glade surrounded by verdure and consolation. Here it was simply earth that nourished little more than grass. Nevertheless the grass was healthier than it was beyond the trees.\n\nIn the center of the clearing, she stopped. Surely the Forestal was close? Surely he had felt her presence? But he was needed everywhere in Garroting Deep. He might turn away when he saw that the danger of the _caesure_ had passed. And she could only call out to him in one language: the speech of fire.\n\nUnsure of herself, she turned to Mahrtiir.\n\nThe Manethrall considered the forest for a moment. Then he offered gruffly, \"Here I am reminded of a tale concerning Lord Mhoram at a time when the forces of the Lords were threatened by an army commanded by a Raver. It is the same tale which relates the doom of Hile Troy. Risking much, the Lord approached Garroting Deep from Cravenhaw and raised fire in supplication. But he also dared to speak words of power, words which belonged to the Forestal. Therefore Caerroil Wildwood came.\n\n\"But those words were not repeated to the Ramen. The tale is known to us only because it was shared by Bannor and others after the _Haruchai_ had withdrawn from their service as the Bloodguard. They are a reticent people, as you know\"\u2014Mahrtiir sounded grimly amused\u2014\"and did not tell the tale fully.\"\n\n\"I wonder what they were,\" Linden mused absently. Her ears strained for hints of Caerroil Wildwood's singing: the poignant and feral melody of the Forestal's strength.\n\nA _caesure_ should have been inconceivable in this time. How could any lover of trees ignore such a threat?\n\nApparently Caerroil Wildwood could not. When Mahrtiir had been silent for a while, and Linden's trepidation seemed ready to burst out of her chest, she heard the first notes of a song that rent her heart.\n\nIt seemed to arch from tree to tree as if it were setting every leaf alight. Its power was unmistakable, a force as fraught as wild magic. But its potential ferocity was muted, held in abeyance: perhaps because its full might was not needed to rid the Deep of two mere humans; or perhaps because the Forestal was curious in spite of his unrelieved wrath; or perhaps because he recognized\u2014\n\nBreezes and tuned ire made the woods appear to waver like a mirage. Scraps of song more audible to percipience than to ordinary hearing spread like ripples. Boughs and roots added notes which should have been discordant, but which instead wove a dire counterpoint through the lamentation of leaves, the grief and objurgation of sap. Words that almost formed verses skirled through the grass at Linden's feet: _days before the Earth_ , and _its walk to doom_ , and _forbidding dusty waste_.\n\nWearing an aura of embattled music, Caerroil Wildwood appeared far back among the trees.\n\nHis steps were instances of a dirge, ancient and unreconciled; irreconcilable. Lucent melody rather than light cloaked him in lordship. A penumbra of sorrow etched with gall and despair surrounded him as he advanced; and he seemed to waft rather than walk, as if he were carried along by the chords of his puissance. He was as tall as a king; his flowing hair and beard and his long robe were white with antiquity; the silver authority of his eyes judged all things harshly. He commanded homage from the trees as he passed, but it was an obeisance of appreciation and reverence, not of servility. The service here was his: the forest did not serve him. In the crook of one elbow, he cradled a gnarled wooden scepter as if it were the symbol and manifestation of every trunk and shrub and seed-born wonder that he had ever loved. Loved and lost.\n\nAt her first glimpse of him, Linden bowed her head. Carefully she displayed the Staff of Law in front of her, lying like an offering across her hands.\n\nPlease, she breathed in silence. Just look. Don't decide anything until you look. I abandoned my son for this. If you don't help me, I've abandoned the whole world.\n\nBeside her, Manethrall Mahrtiir stood straighter. He held up his head as if he wanted to emphasize his bandage, the ruined sockets of his eyes; wanted the Forestal to see that he was unafraid in spite of his blindness.\n\nAt the edge of the clearing, Caerroil Wildwood stopped. He did not deign to come closer. He did not speak. His tune in its myriad voices spoke for him.\n\n_My leaves grow green and seedlings bloom._\n\n_I inhale all expiring breath,_\n\n_And breathe out life to bind and heal._\n\n_My hate knows neither rest nor weal._\n\nLinden ached to sing with him. If she could have replied with melody, he would have known that she had no wish for harm: not here; not in any forest. But she did not know the rites and cadences of his lore. Even her own magicks were mysteries to her. She could not address the Forestal in his natural tongue.\n\nStill she had to try. Singing, he seemed to become higher and mightier, exalted by the inadequacy of her silence.\n\n\"Great One\u2014\" she began. But then her littleness caught in her throat, and she faltered.\n\n\"Ringthane,\" Mahrtiir urged privately, \"you must. It is as you have said. He is aware of his doom. There lies the true heart of his torment. With every leaf and sprout of his realm, he cries out in bitterness and supplication. I hear now that he cannot decline to heed you. Some hope he must have. Is it not for this that he has clung to his devoir? Is it not for this that we have come, to proffer hope? Or, if not hope itself, then our striving in the name of hope?\"\n\nLinden feared the guardian of the Deep. Oh, she feared him! _From border to border, my demesne thirsts for the recompense of blood_. Now more than ever, that was true. He had known for millennia that he could not prevail over heedlessness and malice. His trees were too vulnerable\u2014\n\nVulnerable and precious.\n\nYet his insights when she had met him before had surpassed her comprehension. They might do so again.\n\nShe made another attempt. \"Great One. You know me.\"\n\nShe wanted to raise her voice even though she had no music to match Caerroil Wildwood's. But she could not be peremptory in his presence. She had to speak softly.\n\n\"You gave me a gift.\" She insisted on her Staff as if it were a pledge. \"And you asked me a question that I couldn't answer. I need your help.\"\n\nVexation spread through the trees. \"What is that to me?\" the Forestal countered: raw tatters of sound that seemed to arise from the woods at his back. \"In a bygone age, my heart was wrath. I was avid for bloodshed, and my ire suffused every leaf and twig and branch and trunk and root of my demesne. Yet now I recall that time as a halcyon era. Though I knew myself and all forests doomed, I remained capable of much, potent for both killing and nurturance in the name of trees and green. As you foretold, I feasted on the flesh of a Raver. But the years have become an age of the Earth, and the time of my power has passed. My strength withers in my veins. I cannot restore it.\n\n\"Do you ask my aid? I have none to give. My every effort is required to slow the ruin of all that I have held dear.\"\n\nHe fell silent, although his music went on weeping.\n\n\"You're right,\" Linden replied, forcing herself. Such honesty was difficult for her, but she had no other response. \"You've always been doomed. But soon it's going to get worse. Much worse.\" She meant the Sunbane. \"The Clave is going to create an evil like nothing that the Land has ever seen before, and it won't stop even when it has destroyed every last fragment of the One Forest. Eventually even Caer-Caveral will be gone. He'll reach the end of himself and let go.\n\n\"But long ago I told you that you would have a chance to make a Raver suffer. Now I tell you that the coming evil _will_ be stopped. White gold and Law and love will cast it out. A new forest will grow,\" Salva Gildenbourne, \"and it will be vast. The world will keep on turning, Great One.\n\n\"But that's not the end of what I know. Eventually there will be new evils. Worse evils. That's why I'm here. I can't offer you hope. I have to ask for it. I need _forbidding_. I need to know how to _forbid_. Otherwise my time will be as doomed as yours. Where I come from, the world won't keep on turning. The evil has gone too far. Nothing except forbidding can save it.\"\n\n\"What is that to me?\" the august figure asked again. \"The end of my days crowds close around me. I cannot forbid the waning of my own strength. My trees must perish. What will you forbid that I have not already failed to prevent? Soon or late, all things come to dust. I have no other purpose than sorrow.\"\n\n\"Now, Ringthane,\" Mahrtiir breathed like the breeze. \"You are acquainted with despair. Harken to his, and he will heed you. His song speaks to my heart. In this, he and I are one.\"\n\nLinden winced. She understood the Manethrall. She feared that she understood him too well. She had been given hints enough. But she could not afford to falter in her purpose.\n\n\"Great one, look at me,\" she implored. \"Look at my Staff.\" _This blackness is lamentable_ \u2014\"Look at your runes. You know what they mean. You gave them to me long ago, but even then you saw what was coming. You could already feel the hopelessness that eats at you now. You were so angry then because you were fighting your own futility. That's why you asked me a question.\" _How may life endure\u2014?_ \"Now I've come back. You've been waiting for millennia, and I'm finally here. Let me try to answer you.\"\n\nLet me tell you why I need you.\n\nThe Forestal did not reply at once. For a time that strained Linden's nerves, he sang to himself as if he were considering her plea, or her death; debating the many cruelties of his plight. Small winds carried plaints through the struggling grass.\n\nWhen he spoke at last, his melody sounded sharp enough to draw blood.\n\n\"Then come, human woman.\" He gestured imperiously with his scepter. \"Bring your companion if you must. If you would dare my scrutiny, you must stand upon Gallows Howe. In the presence of my doom and denunciation, you will speak. There you will live or be slain.\"\n\nBefore Linden could give her assent, Mahrtiir's voice rang out, pealing against the chime of the Wildwood's music. \"What of proud Narunal, Great One? What of Hyn, loyal and loving? They are Ranyhyn, as revered as trees. Without them, we are lost.\"\n\nFor the third time, Caerroil Wildwood demanded, \"What is that to me?\"\n\nThen Linden no longer stood on open ground. Ripples altered the surface of her senses, and she drifted among the trees where the Forestal had waited. The Forestal himself was gone: his song remained. It summoned her like a _geas_ from the depths of the dark Deep.\n\nWhile she staggered within herself, the fringes of the forest wavered like disturbed water. She stepped without transition onto a thin track like a path for deer wending crookedly among monarchs thick with age. She had no sensation of movement, but she had already come far. Aching branches swathed her in shadows defined by sunlight falling cleanly between the leaves. Caerroil Wildwood was drawing her toward the heart of his demesne. Doing so, he seemed to call her in the direction of her own past, and the Land's. With every stride, she crossed decades and leagues as if they were seamless, woven together by the fecund mutter of music from a thousand thousand voices.\n\nVaguely she was aware that Manethrall Mahrtiir walked at her side, passing farther and farther into Garroting Deep and time. He did not speak, and she did not. Like her, he appeared ensorcelled by the counterpoint of the Forestal's ubiquitous song.\n\nTogether she and her companion traveled among changes in the terrain: hills and streams; low stone buttresses grey with age and clad in moss; complex trails like a web of welcome for the animals that enriched the woodland. Variations among the trees themselves measured the progression of leagues: stands of new growth interrupted by the magisterial contemplation of ripe oaks; thickets crowded with orchids and _aliantha_ ; vibrant tracts of aspen and cottonwood on higher ground in the west, draped cypress and willow in lowlands and swales to the east. If the sun moved at all in the distant heavens, Linden did not notice it.\n\nHow far had they come? How far were Gallows Howe and the Black River from Cravenhaw? She did not know\u2014and could not care. While Caerroil Wildwood's trance carried her, compelled her, she only took one step after another, and filled her lungs with the woodland's wealth of scents, and marveled that so much largesse had withstood the depredations of centuries and humankind and malevolence.\n\nThe woods seemed as timeless as the chaos of a _caesure_ ; but Garroting Deep was not Desecration. In spite of its enduring bitterness, its galls of woe and ire, it had been formed for peace. The lost nature of the One Forest was irenic, as rapt as _Elohim_ , and as self-absorbed. Perhaps that similarity, that kinship, explained the willingness of the _Elohim_ to take action for the preservation of woodlands. The result was an anodyne for travail even when the trees were stiff with outrage. If Linden had ever been afraid, or desperate, or appalled, she had forgotten it; or the Forestal's music warded her from herself.\n\nFor her, the way was not long. Denser shade cut out more and more sunlight. Darker trees gathered gloom beneath their branches: their roots fed on shadows. Vines like hawsers tangled the underbrush on both sides of the trail where she and Mahrtiir walked. Swaths of leaves looked as black as dying blood except when brief glimpses of the sun revealed their true green. After unremarked moments or hours, she found herself approaching the barren slope of Gallows Howe.\n\nThe hill seemed higher than she remembered it: higher and more cruel, as if it had absorbed a terrible increase of savagery from the killing of a Raver's physical form, the destruction of a fragment of the Illearth Stone. The very dirt radiated hunger, thirst, desire, as though every clod and pebble craved the taste of blood; of slaughter enough to drench the soul of the forest. Here the Deep had no language for its bereavement except rage. Utterly dead, the Howe piled darkness upward as if it were impervious to sunshine; as if no light from the heavens could touch it. And near the crest arose the two dead trunks which supported the Forestal's gibbet.\n\nFrom the branches of the crossbar hung two nooses, ready and willing.\n\nBeside his gibbet, Caerroil Wildwood stood with his arms folded over his scepter as if he had been waiting for an age of the Earth. Around his neck he wore a garland braided from the stems and blooms of accusations. The song he spread around him had once been a dirge, but it had become as harsh and heavy as drumbeats announcing judgment.\n\nHis presence stopped Linden and Mahrtiir at the foot of the slope.\n\n\"Ringthane,\" the Manethrall breathed, suddenly aghast. \"This place\u2014Mane and Tail! Tales name it, but no Raman has beheld it. It is the Forestal's heart. It cannot be answered.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Linden said hoarsely. The labor of her pulse seemed to clog her throat. \"But he has a right to it. I felt like that, and all I lost was my son. What he's suffered is worse.\n\n\"The _Elohim_ made this possible.\" One of them had planted the seeds of power and lore which had germinated to become Forestals. \"But they don't die, so they don't grieve. They had no idea what his life would be like.\"\n\nA handful of Forestals had not sufficed to save the woods. As benign as Gilden and oaks, Caerroil Wildwood and his kind had been slow to recognize hate and heedlessness. They had taken too long to learn anger, too long to summon their strength. As a result, they had been forced to watch millions of living things in their care perish.\n\n\"But you said it yourself,\" Linden went on. \"He'll hear us anyway. He needs something to hope for.\"\n\nShe had to believe that.\n\nTouching Mahrtiir's shoulder, she urged him to join her as she began her ascent of Gallows Howe.\n\nHe may have faltered for a moment\u2014but only for a moment. Then he found his resolve, and his features seemed to become sharper. _You'll have to go a long way to find your heart's desire_. With his chin jutting, he moved upward at Linden's side.\n\nDeath accumulated under her boots at every step. The dirt heeded no appeal and would never be appeased: it had lost too much. On this hill in another era, she had found the granite rage which had carried or driven her from her battle with Roger and the _croyel_ to Thomas Covenant's resurrection. She understood the Howe's ire in the deepest channels of her heart.\n\nAs she climbed the hill's accreted hunger, however, she recognized other emotions as well. Listening with her nerves, her health-sense, she heard more. The passion of Gallows Howe was for revenge, retribution: the ground burned to repay its ancient pain. But that trenchant yearning arose from a foundation of unannealed bereavement. Trees beyond counting had been destroyed before the woods had awakened to anger. Grief came first. Without woe and protest, there would have been no wrath.\n\nThen inchoate perceptions which had tugged at the edges of her thoughts for days shifted toward clarity, and she heard still more. In spite of their avid bitterness, the songs sung by Caerroil Wildwood beside his gibbet were more complex than they appeared to be. First came grief. Yes. It led inexorably to rage. But it did so only because a different need had been denied. Between the underlying loss and the accumulated gall lay a yearning of another kind altogether: a vast, sorrowing, stymied desire, not for revenge, but for _restitution_. The forests, and the emblem of Gallows Howe, would not have grown so dark if they had not first failed to reclaim what they had lost. If the Forestals had not failed at restitution, they would not have succumbed to ire and viciousness.\n\nThat unbidden insight humbled Linden. It daunted her when she could not afford to flinch or turn away. It had too many personal implications.\n\nShe, too, had gone from loss to rage when her first efforts to find her son had failed. Nevertheless Jeremiah had been restored to her. Even though she had refused to forgive.\n\nShe could not ask Caerroil Wildwood to pardon the foes and forces which had ravaged his demesne. His vehemence was necessary. It was just. It was\u2014\n\nBut the Forestal did not wait for her to sort through her confusions. His music demanded more of her. While she and Mahrtiir neared his gibbet, the tall figure commanded, \"Speak, then.\" Melodies sawed across her hearing as if they sought to cut away subterfuge and falseness. \"I am done with forbearance.\"\n\nBecause she did not know what else to do, Linden lifted her Staff once more.\n\n\"Great One.\"\n\nEvery word required an effort of will. Inwardly she slogged through a quagmire. How could she ask Caerroil Wildwood for anything? He was doing what she would have done in his place; what she had already done. Nevertheless she made the attempt for Jeremiah's sake, and for the Land's, and for Covenant's\u2014and perhaps even for her own.\n\n\"A long time ago, you asked me a question. I think that I can answer it now. Or a piece of it, anyway.\n\n\"That isn't why I came. I've tried to imagine an answer for you ever since you spared my life, but I couldn't think of one. I wasn't even trying to reach you. But now that I am here, I see things differently.\n\n\"Great One, I need your help. If I'm right, that's your answer. You can help me.\" _Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?_ \"And you're the only one who can. If you don't, beauty and truth will be just the first casualties.\" She meant the _Elohim_. \"Eventually the whole world is going to die.\"\n\nThe Forestal studied her. In a voice as low as a hum, and as piercing as an auger, he commanded her again. \"Set aside your blackness. I well recall the craving which inspired me to carve my will upon it. It has no virtue to preserve you.\"\n\nHe may have been asking for a show of good faith.\n\nAs if the written wood had burned her hands, Linden dropped her Staff.\n\nCaerroil Wildwood allowed the limbs of his trees a brief flourish of approval. But he did not dwell on it. Still stringently, he sang, \"You acknowledge that it was not your intent to seek me out. To that extent, I discern sooth. Now you will speak further. Do you ask me to credit that the desires of one human, or of two, or of a myriad myriad, suffice to determine the doom of the Earth? Justify your need, woman. Sway me or perish.\"\n\nLinden shook her head. \"You already know the truth.\" She had come too far to hold back. And she understood the peril of revealing things which might affect the Wildwood's role in the Land's history. \"You've known it for a long time. If you didn't, you wouldn't have given me your runes.\"\n\nHe would not have prevented Hile Troy from accepting Covenant's ring.\n\n\"You asked me how life can go on without Forestals. It can't. Thousands of years from now, it won't. Evil doesn't die. It doesn't stop. And where I come from, it's finally found a way to end everything. Unless you teach me how to _forbid_ it.\"\n\n_There must be forbidding._\n\n\"If I can do that, maybe I can save something.\" _Without forbidding, there is too little time_. \"I'll start with the _Elohim_ ,\" what was left of them. \"If that works, I'll do more. With my Staff and white gold and what you know, I'll stop as much evil as I can.\" _If it is not opposed by the forgotten truths of stone and wood_ \u2014\"But I can't do anything without the power to say _no_.\n\n\"You blocked the Ravers from the Upper Land. I need to learn how you did that. I need to be able to do the same thing. If you don't teach me, you might as well give up.\" From her perspective, his surrender had already happened. Something had driven Caerroil Wildwood to abandon his devoir long before she had first entered the Land with Covenant. \"There won't be any hope for any of us.\n\n\"Do you need a future for trees, Great One? This is your only chance. Without your help, I'm as lost as you are.\"\n\nSilver flared in the Forestal's eyes. It limned his gibbet and the surrounding trees, gave them a spectral cast as if they were etched with presentiments of ruin. The music of the woods became a threnody, forlorn and irredeemable. Leaves rose and sank like sobbing on their twigs. Song fell like tears on all sides.\n\n\"Then you are lost indeed. You speak words which you deem sooth. That I acknowledge. And you have striven to satisfy my query. That, also, I acknowledge. Therefore I will not require your heart's blood to repay the hurt inflicted by your plea.\n\n\"But I cannot grant your desire. You are human and ignorant, incognizant of deeper truths. You do not grasp that the forbidding which you seek is not lore. It is neither knowledge nor skill. It is essence. It is both my nature and my task. I cannot impart it.\"\n\nHis response was as simple as a sigh\u2014and as fatal as an earthquake. Linden staggered as if the Howe itself had shuddered under her; refused her. Cannot? She wanted to wail in chagrin. You _cannot_? After what she had done?\n\nBut he was Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep. His grandeur and grief silenced her protests. Instead of yelling, she floundered for arguments.\n\n\"Then how did you make your Interdict against the Ravers?\" Her voice trembled on the verge of breaking. \"If you can't impart what you are, how did the Colossus of the Fall keep Ravers away from the Upper Land?\"\n\nAbruptly Mahrtiir took a step forward. Like the woods around the Howe, like the gallows, he looked sharp with intensity, whetted by the Forestal's shining. His eyeless visage seemed to yearn. His hands were ready for his garrote; for some demand that required death. But the Wildwood did not regard him.\n\n\"By transformation,\" the Forestal told Linden severely. \"By the alteration of essence. There is no other means. The _Elohim_ who became the Colossus of the Fall ceased to be who she was. She was made stone and could not unmake herself. Therefore her refusal endured. It did not wane until the forests dwindled, too grievously diminished to sustain her.\"\n\nWhile Linden cried out inwardly, unable to articulate her sudden despair, Mahrtiir took another step forward; upward. Then he stopped, holding himself poised as if for battle.\n\n\"Great One,\" he said, insisting on Caerroil Wildwood's attention. \"The world of our time requires forbidding\u2014and the forest of our time requires a Forestal to wield that stricture.\" His tone defied contradiction. \"You have it within you to create another of your kind, as you did with Caer-Caveral. Do so again with me. Make of me a Forestal for the woodland which will arise when its time has come, and for the preservation of the world. Permit me to carry on your labors. Share with me your mighty purpose, for I have none of my own, except to stand with those who shed their lives for the Land's sake.\"\n\nHe was certainly as blind as Hile Troy had been: as blind and as valiant. Like Troy, he had already chosen his doom.\n\nLinden tried to object; but the Manethrall's willingness and the Wildwood's singing closed her throat. _No_ , she pleaded, _no_ , but her voice made no sound, or no one heard her.\n\nThe guardian of the trees was going to refuse. Of course he was. His own fate was sealed, whatever happened. She had offered him only abstractions, vague predictions empty of substance. He had no reason to care about a world that did not exist for him.\n\nYet he seemed to stand taller, towering over the Manethrall. The multiplicity of songs around him acquired a new tune that vied against the woods' immedicable sorrow and ire. He raised his scepter. From its gnarled length sprouted notes woven to form harmonies which Linden had never heard before.\n\n\"That gift,\" he pronounced as if it were a sentence of death, \"is mine to grant.\"\n\nOh, Mahrtiir\u2014\n\nWere _all_ of her friends going to sacrifice themselves?\n\nIf she had snatched up her Staff, she might have been able to intervene. She could at least have made the effort. _And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us_. But she did not move. Perhaps she could not. Or perhaps she simply understood.\n\n_I seek a tale which will remain\u2014_\n\nStill she had to say something. \"Mahrtiir\u2014\"\n\n\"No, Ringthane,\" the Manethrall replied at once. \"You are the Chosen, but this choice is mine.\" He knew her too well. \"In this, Anele spoke wisely, as he did on other matters. To you, he said, 'All who live share the Land's plight. Its cost will be borne by all who live. This you cannot alter. In the attempt, you may achieve only ruin.'\" Then he gave her a fierce grin. \"It is done. The Forestal of Garroting Deep has heard me. His heart and his pain are great. He will not refuse.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" Caerroil Wildwood hummed in harmony with his trees. \"I do not recant my gifts.\"\n\nA sharp skirl of music seemed to snatch her Staff from the dirt, carry it toward him. Holding his scepter in one hand, he caught the Staff in the other. The lines of his runes began to burn like his eyes, silver and severe.\n\n\"Yet I am grievously diminished. My strength falters. Therefore I will make use of your blackness to sustain me, as I have written that I must.\"\n\nWith the Staff and his scepter held high, he brandished gleaming like certainty over the Howe. \"Harken now. Hear my answer to your need.\"\n\nExtremes contradicted each other in Linden's heart, a turmoil of unexpected hope and dread. Possibilities that she had failed to foresee daunted and exalted her. In the dirt under her boots, complex emotions thrummed as if Gallows Howe had forgotten or surrendered none of its desires. Ahead of her, Mahrtiir stood with his hands open as if he were waiting for the weapon which would give them meaning at last: an import which no mere garrote could supply. Higher on the hill, and wreathed in compulsions which appeared to draw only purity from the Staff of Law, Caerroil Wildwood made his music louder, more encompassing, until it became a hymn chorused by the entire woodland. At the same time, he tuned his singing to a pitch that resembled language. Perhaps with her ears, or perhaps only with her health-sense, Linden listened to an arboreal melody more numinous than speech.\n\n\"It is my heart I give to you,\n\nMy blood and sap and bone and root,\n\nTo serve the woods with what we are\n\nWhile what we are endures to serve.\n\n\"I guard and grow the world's deep love.\n\nIts loveliness must justify\n\nThe sterner truths of rock and sea,\n\nFor they persist but do not grow\n\nAnd so their life is only Law:\n\nIt is not melody or joy.\n\nTheir substance, substanceless, is woe\n\nUnless it is redeemed by green,\n\nBy growth and verdure that relieve\n\nThe world from stone's commanding cold.\n\n\"If rock does not erode it does\n\nNot feed the trees that give it worth.\n\nIf sea does not give way to rain\n\nIt does not vindicate its surge.\n\nSuch passage is Creation's pulse:\n\nIts transformation brings forth love\n\nFrom Law's unending rest and flood,\n\nFor only life which passes on\n\nCan glorify remaining life.\n\n\"For loving's sake I guard the green:\n\nIts steward I became and am\u2014\n\nAnd you as well, for by my song\n\nIt is my soul I give to you\n\nTo serve the woods until we die.\"\n\nAnd while the Forestal's invocation swelled across tree and hill, Manethrall Mahrtiir of the Ramen began to change. Ineffable magicks wrapped him in their cocoon until he was barely visible. Swathed in Caerroil Wildwood's power, his bandage was burned away, and his raiment fell from him like dross. His lean form with its scars of struggle and its ropes of muscle was robed in samite that shone like incarnate cleanliness. An unalloyed argent too rare and refined to be wild magic transformed his visage. As if he had brought it forth from within him, a twig grew in his grasp until it became a sapling nearly as tall as himself: a child-tree crowned with new leaves, its roots clinging to a ball of rich loam, which he held with the ease of supernal strength.\n\nThe end of his human life had come upon him. When he emerged from the Forestal's theurgy, the man who had been steadfast in the face of every peril would be gone. Like the _Elohim_ of the Colossus, he would not be able to revoke his transubstantiation. Nevertheless his gladness aspired among the harmonies of Garroting Deep, and his eagerness for strife contributed a peal of joy.\n\nWatching him, Linden wanted to cry; but she had no tears for a friend who had found his heart's desire.\n\n## 11.\n\nBack from the Brink\n\nThomas Covenant could hardly stand. He felt like wreckage. Certainly he looked like a derelict, with his tattered jeans and T-shirt, and his silver hair wild. Only his boots had come intact through his immersions in Sarangrave Flat. If Rallyn had not led Mishio Massima through an arduous series of translations by wild magic, he would not have arrived anywhere. He and Branl would still be trudging along the edges of the lurker's wetland an impossible distance from where he was needed. Traveling through argent circles drawn on grass and stone and dirt with Loric's _krill_ , he had exceeded his image of himself.\n\nBut he had not done so without help. He was not as weak as he should have been, or as numb. Some of the effects of hurtloam lingered deep within him. He had drunk water made clean for him by the Feroce, and had eaten _ussusimiel_ melons. Aided beyond any reasonable expectation, he had been able to traverse the leagues.\n\nWith Kastenessen gone, Kevin's Dirt may have begun to dissipate; but if so, that was a victory which Covenant could neither confirm nor measure. Instead he was torn inside, frantic and grieving. Clyme's death remained as vivid as scars, as harsh as Joan's. The Worm was coming: it had already reached the Land. And Linden was not here.\n\nShe was not here.\n\nIn the instant of his arrival, he had seen things that deserved celebration. Jeremiah had escaped from his mental prison, or had been freed: that was obvious. Otherwise he would not have been able to design the crude structure at the foot of the rubble and the ridge. The Giants would not have known how to build it. And the edifice had succeeded. Infelice's presence at the portal, and Kastenessen's raging opposition, demonstrated that Jeremiah's efforts had achieved their strange purpose\u2014whatever that might be.\n\nBut the boy sprawled on the roof of the construct as if he had been felled. Stave lay motionless in the dirt near Infelice. None of the Giants wore their armor. They had no weapons. And there was no sign of Mahrtiir. Like Linden, the Manethrall had gone somewhere else\u2014or had been left behind\u2014or\u2014\n\nCovenant was stretched too thin to appreciate what the Land's defenders had accomplished.\n\nWithout any flicker of hesitation or pause for thought, he had flung himself toward Kastenessen armed only with Loric's eldritch dagger and his own extremity. _I killed my ex-wife_. Joan's ring seemed trivial against a being of Earthpower merged with brimstone and lava. _I helped destroy a Raver_. Yet Kastenessen had believed him. _And I've seen the Worm of the World's End_. Perhaps the _krill_ was capable of killing greater foes than Joan and _turiya_ Herem. _I am_ done with restraint _!_ Or perhaps Kastenessen had secretly wished to be swayed.\n\nBeyond the construct where Infelice and Emereau Vrai's lover had vanished, the gouged ridge rose like a barricade against the southeast; against memories of Joan. Covenant had sacrificed his own daughter. More than once. He had raped her mother. Ignored Triock's death. Permitted Clyme's. And he was Roger's father. He was responsible for that lost soul as well. In Morinmoss long ago, he may have killed the woman who had healed his mind. Hell, he had even ridden the Harrow's destrier to its death. He had committed wrongs enough to mark him as an acolyte of the Despiser.\n\nNow Linden was not _here_. He could not confess himself to her, or seek absolution.\n\nStave had said of her that she did not forgive. If that were true\u2014\n\nThe aftermath of Kastenessen's surrender left Covenant reeling with needs and ignorance. To defeat Joan, he had sealed the fracturing of his mind, but he had not rid himself of vertigo. Even the comparatively level plain felt like a precipice in the doom-clogged twilight. Slaps of wind raised dust on all sides as if every step altered the ground itself. He hardly noticed when Branl took the _krill_ to spare him at least that one burden.\n\nUnheeded or unneeded, Rallyn and Mishio Massima trotted away, presumably seeking water and forage.\n\n\"Unbeliever,\" Giants murmured or panted. \"Timewarden.\" Wan with exhaustion, Rime Coldspray called, \"You are timely come.\" And Frostheart Grueburn, \"Have you accomplished your purpose?\" And Cirrus Kindwind, \"Some ill end has befallen Clyme _Haruchai_.\" Other Swordmainnir repeated like groans, \"Longwrath,\" and, \"Lostson.\" They sighed the names of the _geas_ -damned man's parents, and ached for Moire Squareset and Scend Wavegift, both of whom were dead because of Longwrath.\n\nToo many questions. Too many contradictions to absorb. Covenant only knew that Jeremiah was still alive because the boy was looking at him; staring as if he were stunned, barely conscious. Stave lay like Longwrath. Like Longwrath's, Stave's flesh smoked as if Kastenessen had scoured his heart with scoria.\n\nIt was all too much. As if he were being ripped open, Covenant released a cry that seemed to come from the marrow of his bones.\n\n\" _What happened to Linden?_ \"\n\nThen he stood wavering as if he could not take another step without the woman whom he had loved for all of the Earth's ages.\n\nSwordmainnir hung their heads, too weary or overwhelmed to answer. But after a moment, Rime Coldspray summoned a vestige of resolve. She leaned into motion, came unsteadily toward Covenant. Tears that might have been relief or chagrin or sorrow\u2014that might have been anger\u2014made runnels through the dust on her face. When she was near enough to speak in a hoarse whisper and be heard, she stopped.\n\nLike Saltheart Foamfollower, the Ironhand towered over Covenant. The Giants had always been too much for him, more than he deserved. Trying to meet her gaze, he staggered until Branl steadied him.\n\n\"Timewarden,\" Coldspray breathed, \"our need is great. We have expended our last strength, Lostson Longwrath lies before us, slain for our salvation, and Stave Rockbrother is much harmed. For these ills, we have no anodyne. We must\u2014Ah, Stone and Sea. We must be more than we are.\n\n\"Yet I discern that your need is also great. Indeed, I fear that it exceeds comprehension. Therefore I will speak when I fain would hear.\"\n\nShe looked like she might collapse, but she did not. Even now, she met the challenge he represented.\n\n\"We deem that an alteration in Linden Giantfriend began when she was borne to the verge of the Sarangrave a second time.\"\n\nGloom held the plain. Beyond the stark brilliance of the _krill_ 's gem, the preternatural twilight seemed to defy every sentence. A second time? When was the first? Was that when she had hurt the lurker enough to inspire an alliance?\n\n\"There the Feroce conveyed a message, citing your command. They urged her to _Remember forbidding_. For that reason, she parted from us.\"\n\nThe Feroce had done Covenant's bidding. He had no one else to blame.\n\n\"Here we have fashioned a fane for the _Elohim_. It compelled them to come, and to enter, drawing Kastenessen with them. There its magicks will ward them from the Worm's feeding.\"\n\nCovenant stared up at her. Silver etched the lines of her visage, cut them into shapes that he feared to recognize. He believed the Ironhand, of course he did. Vast spans of time and knowledge were gone from him; but he remembered Jeremiah's importance, Jeremiah's talent. In some nameless sense, every future depended on Linden's son.\n\nChosen-son. The Giants had given the boy an epithet to call his own.\n\nExhaustion abraded the Ironhand's voice. \"All remaining _Elohim_ are now here. Therefore the Worm also must come. Preserved within the fane, they cannot be consumed. When the Worm destroys our edifice, however, they will have no egress. They will be eternally lost. For this reason, Linden Giantfriend determined that the Worm must be turned aside.\"\n\nThat, at least, Covenant understood. The Worm would come. It was coming. He wanted to ask, Then why gather all the _Elohim_ in one place? But he knew the answer: to give them a chance. They were helpless otherwise. And their presence here would not hasten the Earth's demise. Having reached the Land\u2014and having been blocked from Mount Thunder\u2014the Worm was bound to sense the location, the comparative proximity, of its final food. It would have come this way no matter what Jeremiah and the Giants did.\n\nBut it was not here now. The crazy turmoil of winds might mean anything. The clotted darkness on the northeastern horizon had more than one possible interpretation.\n\n\"Therefore Linden Giantfriend has invoked and entered a _caesure_. Accepting only Manethrall Mahrtiir as her companion, she seeks the deep past of the Land, where it is her hope that a Forestal will impart to her the forbidding which the world's peril demands.\"\n\nWithout Branl's support, Covenant might not have been able to stay on his feet. The deep past\u2014Oh, hell. Joan's death had not put an end to _caesures_. In spite of everything, Linden was still exceeding his expectations.\n\nBranl's expression was unreadable, as inarticulate as a mask of marble. However, his gaze was fixed, not on Rime Coldspray, but on Stave. Mind to mind, the Humbled may have been asking the former Master for confirmation.\n\nHow had Linden persuaded Stave to let her go without him?\n\nAt the end of her determination, the Ironhand said, \"If she succeeds\u2014and if the Arch does not fall\u2014and if she is able to return\u2014she will endeavor to refuse the Worm from this place.\"\n\nCovenant groaned aloud. Linden's absence was his doing. He had pushed her toward a risk so extreme that merely hearing it described made his pulse falter in his veins. He had been pushing her ever since she had returned to the Land, even though every stricture of Law and Time had screamed against such intervention. If she failed, the fault would be his.\n\nBut what else could he have done? He could not have acted differently without ceasing to be who he was.\n\nRime Coldspray was waiting. Her comrades were waiting. He had to say _some_ thing: something that was not more self-recrimination. He had done enough of that. It served no purpose.\n\nAnd Linden was not here to heal or curse him.\n\nGoading himself, he rasped, \"You already know some of my story.\" The Swordmainnir had heard his challenge to Kastenessen. \"Joan is dead. I rode the Harrow's horse until I killed it. We almost lost Mhornym and Naybahn. But they saved me. Then we went after _turiya_. Branl and me. And Clyme.\"\n\nNow that he had made a start, he meant to continue. But Coldspray held up her hand, asking him to pause. Other Giants were coming closer. Limping arduously, Frostheart Grueburn led the way with Latebirth and Cirrus Kindwind at her back. Onyx Stonemage and Stormpast Galesend moved like cripples, supporting Cabledarm between them. Wheezing, Halewhole Bluntfist labored after them.\n\nAs the women gathered beside the Ironhand, Covenant went on.\n\n\"Some things I have to guess,\" he admitted, \"but I gather Linden had a run-in with the lurker. You were probably there. Whatever happened, it got that monster's attention. Apparently Horrim Carabal can feel the Worm coming. It doesn't want to die. It needs more power. But it couldn't beat Linden\u2014or you and Linden. So the Feroce found me.\" They had accused him of being the Pure One. \"They offered us an alliance.\" _In pain and desperation_ \u2014\"Mutual help, safe passage, that sort of thing.\" _Already he suffers the presence of one who wanders lost within his realm_ \u2014\"That must be how Longwrath got here. The lurker let him through. And dozens of those little creatures died helping us get to Joan.\"\n\nHis listeners nodded again. Silver reflected like keening in their eyes. Longwrath's attack on Kastenessen must have astonished or appalled them. They had tried so hard to follow his _geas_ with him until he found peace. But they did not interrupt.\n\n\"After that,\" Covenant said, fierce and quavering, \"I wanted an alliance myself.\" He dreaded memories like this one. They were as piercing as images of Joan. \"It isn't hard to imagine we're going to need all the help we can get. And I was afraid _turiya_ would take the lurker.\" He did not mention the former Guardian of the One Tree. The Swordmainnir would recognize Brinn's name; but Covenant had no courage to spare for that explanation. \"Once I learned how to jump across leagues, we went after the Raver.\n\n\"We didn't catch up with him until he was in the Sarangrave. I tried to kill him, but I couldn't. Clyme and Branl did it.\" In spite of his private horror, he could not gloss over this detail. The Giants needed to hear it. They would understand. And the Humbled deserved at least that much homage. \"Clyme let _turiya_ possess him.\" Like Honninscrave in Revelstone. \"Then he held the Raver while Branl cut him to pieces.\" Covenant remembered hacked flesh, severed bones, blood. \" _Turiya_ wasn't just rent. He's gone. There isn't anything left.\"\n\nThe distress of the Giants showed in the way they looked at Branl; in glances teary with compassion and dismay. Perhaps more than any other living people, Coldspray and her comrades knew the cost of causing a Raver's end. Yet Branl's gaze gave them nothing. He was _Haruchai_ and did not accept grief.\n\nCovenant considered that rigidity a weakness, not a strength. He believed that forgiveness began with sorrow. But perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps a man who grieved would have spared Clyme. Then _turiya_ Herem would have lived. Eventually Horrim Carabal would have been lost\u2014and the Worm might have made its way, unresisted, to Mount Thunder.\n\nGrinding his teeth, Covenant went on.\n\n\"When Branl and I got out of the Sarangrave, we probably weren't all that far from where we are now. But the Feroce told us the Worm was getting close. That's when I sent my message. Then I wanted to see it for myself. We went to look.\n\n\"Now the Worm is here.\" He bit down on his voice to hold it steady. \"I can't describe it. I'm not going to try. But I can tell you this.\" Facing the clenched apprehension of his audience, he said, \"It wasn't headed _here_ ,\" toward Jeremiah's fane and the sealed _Elohim_. \"It was going west. Straight at Mount Thunder. At She Who Must Not Be Named.\n\n\"That scared me,\" he growled. \"Lord Foul likes convoluted plots. Every trap you face has another one hidden inside. If the Worm and that bane went after each other, we wouldn't have to worry about the _Elohim_ , or anything else for that matter, because we would already be dead.\"\n\nHe spread his hands; his truncated fingers. \"We're not, so I have to assume\u2014\"\n\nRime Coldspray looked like she wanted to interrupt then; but Covenant did not pause. As concisely as he could, he explained how the lurker and the Demondim-spawn had striven to deflect the Worm from Mount Thunder. Then he finished, \"I didn't wait around to see how long they could hold. Branl and I just ran. But they must have held long enough.\" Somehow. \"I can't imagine it would take this long for the Worm to get through Lifeswallower. Now I just have to hope we didn't lose them in the process.\"\n\nHe expected Coldspray or the others to question him. He had questions of his own. What had happened to Jeremiah and Stave? How had Jeremiah been retrieved from his dissociation? But before anyone spoke, Branl moved.\n\nWithout ceremony, as if the action did not require comment, the Humbled handed Loric's _krill_ to Rime Coldspray.\n\nShe accepted it reflexively, her eyes wide, as Branl strode past her toward Stave.\n\nWith Handir and the other Humbled, Branl had participated in punishing\u2014in excommunicating\u2014Stave for his defiance of his kinsmen; his devotion to Linden. The Masters had refused to acknowledge Stave's mental voice. Like Clyme and even Galt, Branl had treated Stave with disdain. Like them, Branl had challenged Stave more than once, tried to strike him down.\n\nNow the last of the Humbled approached Stave's prone form like a man who proposed to deliver judgment.\n\nCovenant should have stopped him; should have said something, anything. Clyme's death was only one example of the severity with which the _Haruchai_ judged themselves. But at that moment, Covenant was like the Giants. He had come to the end of what he could do.\n\nA darkening storm made omens in the northeast. Winds whipped Branl's legs, tugged at the tears in his tunic. But he ignored them. Implacable as a fanatic, he strode through the gusts.\n\nAt Stave's side, he stopped, braced his fists on his hips. For a moment, he bowed his head over Stave, apparently searching Stave's slack form for some sign of awareness. Stave's hand and forearm, his right, no longer smoked. Still he lay helpless, as if his mind or his heart had been as badly charred as his skin.\n\n\"I have named Stave 'Rockbrother,'\" Coldspray announced. She may have been warning Branl; but she seemed unable to raise her voice.\n\nAbruptly Branl stooped over the fallen _Haruchai_. With both hands, he lifted Stave upright.\n\nStave's head lolled to one side, then sagged until his chin rested on his chest. He dangled emptily in Branl's grasp.\n\nIn a blink of motion so swift that Covenant barely understood it, Branl released one hand and slapped the side of Stave's head. The blow made no sound that Covenant could hear through the wind.\n\nFrostheart Grueburn winced. Coldspray lurched toward the _Haruchai_ , going too late to Stave's defense.\n\nAs if the movement were full of pain, Stave slowly raised his head. His lone eye opened. Blinking, he fixed his gaze on Branl.\n\nBranl did not strike again. Unsure of herself, the Ironhand halted. Covenant watched with his pulse trapped like a cry in his throat.\n\nFor a few heartbeats, Branl met Stave's gaze. Then Stave's head sagged again; and the Humbled nodded once. Shifting his grip, he wrapped his arms around Stave.\n\nWith Stave hugged against his chest, Branl informed Covenant, \"The tale of the Giants is incomplete. We do not fault them. Their heed was consumed by Kastenessen and great weariness. It may be that they did not recognize the plight of Linden Avery's son. To Stave, however, it was evident that the boy received more than Earthpower at Anele's hands. The gift included Anele's openness to possession.\n\n\"Arriving in his fury, Kastenessen entered the boy. His apparent purpose was to drive Infelice into the fane, that he might destroy her with the other _Elohim_. But Stave intervened. By removing the boy from dirt underfoot, he severed the possession. Hence his burns, and his unconsciousness, and the boy's presence atop the fane, where he is warded by stone.\n\n\"There he might readily have been slain. Only Longwrath's coming, and yours, ur-Lord, preserved him. Yet more Stave could not have done. Without aspersion to the Swordmainnir, I assert that no other could have done as much.\"\n\nFresh vertigo sucked at Covenant. Realities shifted into new alignments: their implications veered like the world. Somehow Jeremiah had been rescued from his dissociation, or had saved himself. A mixed blessing: the Earthpower with which Anele had invested Jeremiah had made the boy vulnerable. No wonder Anele had hidden himself in madness; made himself blind. How else could he have concealed his true abilities, his secret purpose, from the Despiser? But Jeremiah did not have the old man's cunning. Lord Foul would be able to claim the boy whenever Jeremiah chanced to stand on the right surface, the right rough grass.\n\nThe ridge seemed to wobble from side to side, mocking Covenant. There were other inferences\u2014\n\nBranl had said _we_. He had addressed Stave in the fashion of the _Haruchai_ \u2014and he had listened to Stave's reply. Now he had reaffirmed his kinship with Linden's friend as if he felt pride in it. He spoke for Stave as well as himself.\n\nA profound change. If the Humbled had ever needed or desired Covenant's forgiveness, he earned it now.\n\nApparently the Ironhand also had heard and understood Branl's _we_. She raised the _krill_ so that its gem lit the _Haruchai_. Striving for formality, she replied, \"There is no aspersion, Branl Humbled. There is only praise, both for Stave and for you\u2014and for Clyme as well. At a better time, we will tell the full tale of Stave Rockbrother's deeds. We will honor your own. For the present, be assured that we esteem your courage and devoir.\"\n\nIndirectly she steadied Covenant. Breathing deeply to calm his private reel, he muttered, \"Then I guess Linden did the right thing when she made Stave stay behind.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" assented Coldspray. And Branl said unexpectedly, \"In this, the Chosen has shown foresight. I am reminded of matters which Stave has not forgotten concerning her former service to the Land.\"\n\nAnother surprise. Covenant frowned through the silver light, and found that he had no response. For a moment, he almost wept.\n\nNone of the Humbled had ever called Linden by her title.\n\n\"And Stave Rockbrother himself?\" asked Cirrus Kindwind. \"How does he fare? He is closed to our discernment, as you are, Branl Humbled. We fear for him.\"\n\nBranl shrugged to indicate Stave. \"This state is not unknown among the _Haruchai_. More commonly, we have recourse to it when we are snared by storms among the high peaks of our homeland. When both passage and shelter cannot be attained, we withdraw as Stave has done to preserve the essence of our lives. Thus we endure the gales, emerging when they are spent. Upon occasion, however, we withdraw similarly to heal otherwise mortal wounds, or mayhap to weather such shocks and virulence as Stave has received. When he has restored himself, he will stand among us once more.\"\n\nCarefully he lowered Stave to the earth, then stepped back to resume his place with Covenant. He may have thought that he had said enough.\n\nBut Covenant had not entirely regained his balance. \"Wait a minute,\" he objected. \"There has to be more to it than that. Stave has touched Kastenessen before, and he wasn't hurt like this. Something is different now.\"\n\n\"It is, ur-Lord,\" admitted Branl. But he did not elaborate. Perhaps Stave had not remained conscious long enough to share those memories.\n\nRime Coldspray sighed heavily, a gust torn away by the moiling winds. \"I am too worn to bear the burden of Stave's tale. I will say only that he was gravely injured in the raising of young Jeremiah's fane. We will speak further when we have rested. I cannot remain upon my feet.\"\n\nIn fact, Covenant suspected that she was close to fainting. And the condition of her comrades was no better. Cabledarm's was worse. Even to his blunted sight, it was obvious that the injured Giant could not stand without support.\n\n\"Then don't worry about it,\" he said unsteadily. \"We'll have plenty of time for tales\"\u2014a grimace jerked across his face\u2014\"unless we don't, in which case it won't matter anyway.\n\n\"Is there any shelter around here? We should try to get out of this wind.\"\n\nGrueburn glanced at Jeremiah's construct. \"Can we not find calm within the fane?\" She sounded wistful. \"I am not so chary of _Elohim_ \u2014or indeed of Kastenessen\u2014that I would decline to ease my weariness in their presence.\"\n\nWhen Covenant followed her gaze, he saw Jeremiah lower himself to the ground. A moment later, the boy came running, waving his arms for attention. His ragged pajamas\u2014soiled with grime and stained by blood\u2014made him look destitute and desperate. Nevertheless he was recovering from Kastenessen's violation.\n\nTogether, the Giants turned to watch him. Rime Coldspray held up the _krill_.\n\nHe reached the company, jerked to a halt. \"You won't see them,\" he panted. Apparently he had heard Grueburn. \"It's just stones. The magic only works on them.\"\n\nA heartbeat later, he flung himself at Covenant, wrapped his arms around the Unbeliever. Suddenly he was crying\u2014and fighting to deny it.\n\n\"I'm sorry. I didn't have a chance. Mom left, and Stave was hurt, and Kastenessen\u2014he\u2014out of nowhere\u2014The _croyel_ was bad. He's worse. Much worse.\n\n\"I am _so_ glad to see you.\"\n\nCovenant returned Jeremiah's hug without hesitation. He ached for that himself; for any embrace if he could not have Linden's. And he, too, loved the boy.\n\nHe, too, feared for Linden's son.\n\nAs carefully as he could, he asked, \"What did Kastenessen do to you?\"\n\nJeremiah swallowed a sob; clung harder. \"He broke me.\"\n\nSudden compassion stung Covenant. Deliberately he eased his own clasp until Jeremiah did the same. Then he held the boy at arm's length, studied every detail of Jeremiah's mien: the rich brown of his eyes, the passionate mouth, the fine stubble on his cheeks; the lines cut by too much suffering. But he could not discern how deeply Jeremiah's hurts ran, or how badly he had been marred.\n\n\"How did he do that? What was it like?\"\n\nThe question seemed to transform Jeremiah. Ferocity darkened his eyes to the color of rot-laden silt. His mouth stretched, baring his teeth. The lines of his face assumed predatory angles. In an instant, he was no longer a boy confused by his wounds. He had become a young man crowded with bitterness.\n\nAlmost spitting, he snapped, \"I'm sorry Infelice let him inside. I'm sorry you didn't kill him. I want him _dead_. I hate being used, and _I don't want to talk about it_.\"\n\nHis vehemence shocked Covenant. A similar reaction twisted Coldspray's visage, and Grueburn's. Branl took a subtle step closer as if he sensed that Covenant was in danger.\n\nBut Covenant stood taller in front of Jeremiah. With a portion of his own ferocity, his rage for the damaged and the outcast, he retorted, \"Then hang on to feeling broken. Hang on to the pain. It can be useful. I should know.\"\n\nThen he lowered his voice. \"In any case, Kastenessen is different now. Without Kevin's Dirt, he's just another victim.\"\n\nJeremiah looked like he wanted to sink his teeth into Covenant's throat. \"I don't care.\"\n\n\"Chosen-son,\" the Ironhand murmured: a reprimand that lacked the strength to insist.\n\nTo himself, Covenant groaned, Oh, Linden. I'm so sorry. Nevertheless he held the boy's glare without flinching. Severe as a judge, he demanded, \"Then tell me something else. Is that temple a prison?\"\n\nHe already knew the truth, but he wanted to hear it from Jeremiah. He wanted Jeremiah to acknowledge it. It might help.\n\nAt once, Jeremiah's fury became chagrin. Without transition, he seemed altogether young and vulnerable. \"No!\" he cried as if Covenant had slapped him. \"I wouldn't do that. They can get out whenever they want.\"\n\nAh, hell. Covenant's relief was so swift that he sagged against Branl. Hell and blood. A host of fears drained out of him before he had managed to name them all. Sure, the boy was in pain. His rage revealed the depth of his wounds. But his distress now was as true as his desire for harm. And he had done what he could to forestall the world's end.\n\nAs soon as Covenant recovered his balance, he moved to hug Jeremiah again. \"Thanks,\" he breathed like a sigh at Jeremiah's ear. \"I knew that about you. I just needed to hear you say it.\n\n\"Linden will be so proud we won't know what to do with her.\"\n\nJeremiah sobbed again, a small sound like a plea. But he did not stiffen or pull away. Surrendering to Covenant's hold, he asked fearfully, \"Will she make it? Will she come back?\"\n\nHe seemed to say, I don't know who I am without her.\n\nCovenant knew how he felt. Striving for confidence, he countered, \"She's _your_ mother. Has she ever _not_ come back?\"\n\nCenturies ago among the Dead in Andelain, High Lord Elena had urged Covenant to take care of Linden, _that in the end she may heal us all_.\n\nBefore Jeremiah could reply, the Ironhand wavered on her feet: she nearly fell. Blinking as if she could no longer focus her eyes, she croaked, \"For mercy's sake, have done with contention. We must rest.\"\n\n\"Hellfire,\" Covenant growled. During his many experiences with Giants, he had seen them in every extreme of peril and pain; but he had never known them to be utterly exhausted. \"What're we waiting for? You don't just look tired. You must be half starved.\" Where could they have replenished the Ardent's supplies? \"Let's go lie down.\"\n\nInstead of responding, the Swordmainnir simply turned and trudged toward the fane like women who had come to the end of every desire except the wish for relief. Longwrath they left where he had fallen. After everything that they had done and endured, they were too weak to lament his end.\n\nnside the edifice, the company found better shelter than Covenant had expected. Though the walls were punctuated with gaps, and the ceiling looked precariously balanced, the winds outside were reduced to a confusion of mild breezes. In addition, the stones retained a suggestion of warmth: an aftereffect of theurgy. There Rime Coldspray returned the _krill_ to Branl, and the Giants stretched themselves out like dead women. But they did not sleep immediately. In low voices, wan and necessary, they began to talk, first Cirrus Kindwind, then Latebirth, then Onyx Stonemage. They told Covenant how Linden had broken open the ridge to uncover malachite. Passing the story from one to another, they described the building of Jeremiah's fane, and the extravagance of Stave's efforts, and the narrowness of his survival. And when their voices trailed away at last, Jeremiah gave Covenant a condensed version of his escape from his mental ensepulture.\n\nAmong his companions, Covenant sat with his knees hugged to his chest and tried not to rock from side to side like a child in need of solace. He wanted Linden, and had no way to reach her.\n\nCabledarm lay shivering as if she were feverish. Shock, Covenant thought. She had fallen hard and badly after deflecting Stave's plummet. Not for the first time, he felt bewildered by the abilities of the Giants. Saltheart Foamfollower had once walked through lava: a kind of _caamora_ , terrible pain and cleansing. Such deeds had come to appear almost normal for Foamfollower's people. Now Covenant wondered whether the Swordmainnir would be able to leave their present straits behind if they did not first find fire in which to release their sorrow.\n\nA comparable extravagance seemed normal for the _Haruchai_ as well. Covenant could hardly bear to contemplate what Stave had done to help complete Jeremiah's construct. And the sheer strength of will with which Stave had resisted Infelice for Jeremiah's sake, and for Linden's, left Covenant gaping inwardly.\n\nHow was it possible for any ordinary man\u2014or woman\u2014or boy\u2014to live up to the example set by the Land's other defenders, the natural inhabitants of this world?\n\nNonetheless Linden had taken Mahrtiir into the Land's past for a purpose as extreme as anything that the Giants and Stave had attempted. Covenant yearned to believe that she would succeed. And he had one tentative reason to think that she would not fail\u2014or had not failed yet. The Arch of Time still held. One moment led to the next. Covenant inhaled and then exhaled. He heard words arranged in comprehensible sequences. Therefore Law endured. Linden had not caused a fatal rupture\u2014or its ripples had not yet reached him.\n\nPerhaps that inference was an illusion. Perhaps he only experienced time chronologically because he was human, too mortal to perceive any other reality. Perhaps nothing truly existed outside the confines of his own perceptions.\n\nHe had considered such ideas before. At one time, he had trusted himself to them. Now he discarded them with a private shrug. They changed nothing. He was responsible for the meaning of his life, as he had always been: for his loves, and for his rejections. While he remained able to think and feel, he could not set such burdens down without betraying himself.\n\nNo doubt Linden believed something similar. How otherwise could she have hazarded a _caesure_? Without some kind of faith in the necessity of her commitments, how could she have ridden away from her son?\n\nNo wonder Covenant loved her.\n\nEventually the voices of his companions fell into silence. With the suddenness of a child, Jeremiah collapsed into slumber: an aftereffect of effort and Kastenessen's touch. Cabledarm stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, in too much pain to sleep, or to hear. But Bluntfist's eyelids closed, and she sank away. Onyx Stonemage resisted yawns\u2014briefly, briefly\u2014until they overcame her. Then Latebirth and Galesend slept as well. Soon only Coldspray, Grueburn, and Kindwind remained awake with Covenant and Branl.\n\nThe three women regarded Covenant, obviously waiting to hear more of his own tale.\n\nAs much for his own sake as for theirs, he began to speak. But he did not talk about what he had done and endured. He had no language adequate to Joan and the Ranyhyn, or to _turiya_ Herem and Clyme, or to the Worm of the World's End. Instead he spoke of Linden and Horrim Carabal.\n\n\"At least now we know what the Ardent meant when he said her fate is _writ in water_. Or part of it, anyway. She gave us an alliance with the actual lurker,\" who was nothing if not a creature born of water, made great by water. \"Hellfire! How improbable was _that_? But there's more. If she hadn't brought down that flood above the Lost Deep, none of us would have escaped. If she hadn't gone back to the Sarangrave, the Feroce might not have been able to give her my message.\"\n\nShe had used water to provide malachite for Jeremiah. And Covenant himself had broken her free from memories of She Who Must Not Be Named by holding her underwater. In retrospect, he trembled at his own daring.\n\n\"Long ago,\" he finished hoarsely, \"I told her to _Do something they don't expect_. If we ever find a way to stop Lord Foul, it'll be because she's taken him by surprise over and over again.\"\n\nAfter a long pause, Rime Coldspray mused, \"It indeed appears that many unforeseen outcomes were enabled by Linden Giantfriend's last effort among the caverns. But the same may be said of any deed. If she had not retrieved the Staff of Law. If she had not accompanied your false son and her possessed boy into the Land's past. If she had not dared all things to create a place for you among the living. Life is ever thus. One step enables another. For that reason, auguries are an ill guide. They tread perilously upon the borders of unearned knowledge.\n\n\"Still we are Giants. We crave an understanding of your own deeds. Will you not tell their tale more fully?\" She spread her hands in the light of the _krill_ as if she wanted to convince Covenant that they were empty and needed to be filled. \"Ignorance haunts us. It hinders rest.\"\n\nInstead of saying, No, or, Have mercy, or, I can't bear it, Covenant countered, \"I'm not sure that's true. I think it's Longwrath who haunts you.\" The Giants may have felt that they had failed him. \"You need a _caamora_ , and you don't know how to get one. It eats at you.\"\n\nThe Ironhand did not contradict him. Instead she asked, \"Are our hearts so plain to you?\"\n\nCovenant shook his head. \"I only think you need to grieve because I've known Giants for a long time. I can't _see_ you. And Kevin's Dirt just makes me blinder.\"\n\nNumbness was eroding his ability to _hold on_. When he could no longer grip, he would be effectively impotent.\n\n\"Then it will comfort you,\" interposed Frostheart Grueburn, \"to hear that Kastenessen's vile brume has faded from the heavens. His entry to the Chosen-son's fane has unbound his theurgies. Also the decimation of the stars has ceased. While the remaining _Elohim_ are preserved, it will not be resumed.\"\n\nFaded\u2014Covenant released his legs, sat up straighter. \"Well, damn.\" He had assumed that Kevin's Dirt was gone\u2014that its bale required Kastenessen's constant attention\u2014but he had not had an opportunity to ask for confirmation. \" _Thank_ you. If you hadn't built this place\"\u2014he gestured around him\u2014\"I might be useless by now.\"\n\nHe had always been useless without friends.\n\nBut the Giants were not deflected from their concerns. \"Nonetheless,\" Cirrus Kindwind remarked, still probing, \"your ailment has gained force. And we fear that you will refuse Linden Giantfriend's succor, as you once refused hurtloam in Andelain. It is your resolve that you must not be healed which most drives our desire to comprehend you.\"\n\nReflexively Covenant grimaced. In a quiet rasp, he said, \"I don't know how to explain it. Leprosy protects me somehow.\" If Lena had not given him hurtloam when he first came to the Land, he would not have been able to rape her. \"Sure, it costs me a lot. But it's also a kind of strength. It makes some things possible that I couldn't do without it.\"\n\nThen, to forestall more questions, he urged, \"You should get some sleep. We all need rest. Later I'll figure out some way to give poor Longwrath a _caamora_.\" Once before, he had done something similar. \"I have Joan's ring. And the _krill_. I should be able to manage a fire.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" the Ironhand murmured. She was already drifting. \"Though the burden of our woe is great, it is surpassed by weariness.\"\n\nIn another moment, her head sagged, and she was asleep.\n\nFrostheart Grueburn tried to swallow a cavernous yawn. Then she did what she could to make herself comfortable on the bare dirt.\n\nFor a while, Cirrus Kindwind continued to study Covenant through the _krill_ 's silver. But she did not prod him further. Nodding as if she were content, she said, \"Earlier I had occasion to remind Stave Rockbrother that he is not alone. I would proffer a similar assurance now. Whatever the substance of your fears or pains may be, you will not be required to confront it alone. We are merely weakened. We are not inclined to forsake you.\" She hesitated briefly, then added, \"And Linden Giantfriend has not forgotten her love for you.\"\n\nBefore Covenant could decide whether to weep or smile, Kindwind turned away and settled herself for sleep.\n\novenant dozed for a while himself. Most of his efforts since the struggle with _turiya_ Herem had been mental and emotional rather than physical, but they had drained him nonetheless. He did not mean to sleep while he hoped for Linden; but drowsiness overcame him, and he sank into a shallow slumber.\n\nLater some preterite instinct roused him, and he jerked up his head to look around. Squinting against the blur that marred his sight, he saw Stave enter the fane.\n\nThe former Master moved cautiously, as if he had become unsure of his balance. His right hand and forearm gave the impression that they ached. But his single eye as it caught the _krill_ 's shining was clear. It flashed argent at Covenant as if Stave had gained the ability to see into the Unbeliever's soul.\n\nPerhaps he had. He had allowed himself to grieve for Galt, his son. And he had let Linden convince him to remain with Jeremiah. To Covenant, those were astonishing changes. Of the _Haruchai_ whom he had known, only Cail had revealed a comparable willingness to go beyond rigid stoicism. Even men like Bannor and Brinn, Branl and Clyme, had measured themselves by standards which any other _Haruchai_ would have approved.\n\nCarefully Stave eased himself to the ground in front of Covenant. There he sat cross-legged, upright as a spear driven into the dirt, with the backs of his hands resting on his thighs. His eye seemed to transfix Covenant.\n\nWithout preamble, as if he were resuming a conversation, Stave said, \"I did not part willingly from the Chosen.\"\n\nHis manner rather than his tone suggested that he wanted to be understood.\n\n\"I know,\" Covenant answered quietly. \"But you let yourself be persuaded anyway. She asked, and you agreed.\"\n\n\"I did,\" the former Master admitted. \"I have found that I am no longer able to refuse her.\"\n\nCovenant's mouth twisted. \"I know the feeling.\"\n\nStave flexed the fingers of his right hand, testing them for residual damage. \" _Haruchai_ do not indulge in regret. Yet I am\"\u2014he appeared to search for a word\u2014\"unsettled. If she does not return, Timewarden, I will be unable to quench my sense of loss, or my remorse that I did not stand at her side.\"\n\nNow Covenant winced. \"I know that feeling, too.\" He had not simply turned away from Linden. He had told her not to touch him. More harshly than he intended, he said, \"But sometimes things like that have to be done anyway.\"\n\nStave nodded. \"Necessity demands. It does not countenance denial.\" Then, unexpectedly, he looked away, as if he rather than Covenant had cause to feel shame. \"Thus I am compelled to inquire of myself what purpose is served by regret\u2014or indeed by grief.\"\n\nWithout pausing to consider his reply, Covenant countered, \"How else do we know we're alive?\"\n\n\"By our deeds,\" Stave answered. \"By striving and service. By\u2014\"\n\nAbruptly he froze. His gaze sprang back to Covenant's. Nothing else moved.\n\nAfter a moment, he released a long breath. \"Ah.\" His regard did not waver, but his rigidity eased. \"Now I begin to grasp how it transpires that you and the Chosen have failed to comprehend the Masters\u2014and how the Masters have been misled in their apprehension of you. You and the Chosen\u2014those of your world\u2014The Chosen-son. Hile Troy. You judge by your hearts. It is by grief and regret that you know yourselves, rather than by deeds and effort and service.\"\n\nIn his turn, Covenant nodded. \"Well, yes.\" More than once, he had tried to explain himself to the _Haruchai_ ; but somehow he had failed to grasp the question implicit in their notions of service. \"Grief and regret. What else is there? Those are just other names for love. You can't feel bad about losing something if you don't love it first. And if you don't love, why else would you bother to _do_ anything at all?\"\n\nOf course, love was not so simple. He knew that as well as anyone; perhaps better than most. It spawned complications faster than it clarified them. It could be misguided or selfish. It could close its eyes. It could curdle until it became hate. And it implied rejection. Stepping in one direction required moving away from another. But at its core\u2014\n\nAt its core, love was the only answer that made sense to him.\n\n_There is hope in contradiction._\n\nFrom where Branl stood, the _krill_ left Stave's features in shadow. Covenant could barely discern the outlines of the former Master's mien. Only Stave's eye pierced the dusk.\n\nImpassive as any _Haruchai_ , he said, \"It is a terrible burden, Timewarden.\"\n\nCovenant shrugged. \"Look at Branl. Look at the Masters. Look at yourself.\" Briefly his old rage for the abused of the world rose up in him. \"Hellfire, Stave! Look at the _Elohim_.\" Then he subsided. Almost whispering, he asked, \"Is what you see any less terrible?\"\n\n\"It is not,\" Stave replied as if he were sure. \"It is more so.\"\n\nA moment later, something that may have been a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. \"Were I inclined to the homage of mutilation\u2014which I am not\u2014I would now claim a place among the Humbled. Though they have aspired to emulation, they have not grasped the full import of their desires.\n\n\"Until now,\" he added in Branl's direction, acknowledging what Branl had done and endured.\n\nBranl lifted a shoulder slightly. \"Should the world endure,\" he promised, \"and the Masters with it, I will undertake to instruct our people.\"\n\nFinally Covenant bowed his head. The Humbled had made it surprisingly easy to forgive the manner of Clyme's death.\n\nradually the gloom within the temple became the more ominous twilight of late afternoon. By degrees, it thickened toward evening and full night. Branl remained standing, so motionless that he did not appear to breathe; holding Loric's dagger steady as a beacon. Stave still sat in front of Covenant, resting while his strength returned.\n\nIn the gathering darkness, the Giants began to wake.\n\nFrostheart Grueburn was the first. Muttering Giantish expletives, she rolled onto her side and struggled upright. Without a word, she left the fane. When she returned, she brought several waterskins. One she passed to Covenant.\n\nAs Covenant drank, Halewhole Bluntfist raised her head. After gazing blearily around her for a moment, she nudged Onyx Stonemage. Stonemage responded by ascribing a list of offenses to Bluntfist's parents; but she did not refuse to be roused.\n\nOne after another, the Swordmainnir arose. In the stark illumination of the _krill_ , they looked garish, like women who had become fiends while they slept\u2014or had been tormented by fiends.\n\nAmong them, Jeremiah woke up suddenly. His eyes seemed to give off glints of panic as he looked around for some sign of his mother. When he realized that she was still absent, he slumped back to the ground, covered his face with his hands. But then he practically flung himself to his feet. Ignoring his companions, he hurried out of the fane.\n\nThe Ironhand shrugged. No one said anything.\n\nBy turns, the Giants studied Cabledarm's condition, offered her what encouragement they could. Stormpast Galesend urged a little water into her mouth. They had no other help to give her.\n\nAll of them drank until they had emptied the waterskins. To no one in particular, Latebirth sighed, \"I would barter my sword\u2014aye, and my arm with it\u2014for a handful of _aliantha_ , and count myself fortunate in the exchange.\" Her comrades nodded mutely.\n\nWhile Covenant watched, Rime Coldspray stretched her arms and back, loosened her neck. Then she looked at him. \"Longwrath,\" she said curtly, reminding him of his promise.\n\nFire, he thought. Lamentation for the dead. The pain that consoles. In his own fashion, he understood how Giants grieved. Still he was reluctant to move. He had spent hours waiting for Linden: waiting and aching. Now he felt too heavy to stand, as if he were wrapped in iron chains. He would have preferred to go on waiting.\n\nBut he might not get another chance to keep his word. For all he knew, Cabledarm was dying.\n\n\"We need Linden,\" he muttered to no one in particular. \"I need her.\" Then he extended a hand to Branl, let the Humbled lift him upright.\n\nAfter sitting against the wall for so long, his muscles had stiffened. He felt like an assemblage of mismatched parts as he accepted the _krill_. But he was accustomed to that. And the gem of Loric's weapon shone steadily, answering the presence of white gold. With its magicks, he had already accomplished things which he had considered impossible. Why not more?\n\n_You are the white gold._\n\nHolding the dagger by its wrapped hilt, he led his companions from the shelter of the fane.\n\nOutside he found that night had almost claimed the plain. Beyond the reach of the _krill_ 's gem lay only blackness. Harsh buffets of wind seemed to hit him from every direction simultaneously. The chill pang of the air augured days of deeper cold. He had hoped for a moon; but it had not risen\u2014or it was left in darkness by the sun's absence from the world.\n\nHere even his blunted senses felt the violence glowering in the northeast: a crouched impression of storm as fierce as a predator, and as absolute as fuligin. He wanted to ask how far away it was, and how quickly it was moving, but the words caught in his throat.\n\n\"It is the Worm, ur-Lord,\" Branl stated like a man who could read minds. \"Yet it is many and many leagues distant. Also the fury of its coming outruns the Worm itself. It is not imminent.\"\n\nCovenant forced himself to breathe. After a moment, he managed to ask, \"How much time do we have?\"\n\nThe Humbled looked at Stave. Something silent passed between them. Then Branl said, \"If it does not increase its haste, it will not strike this region until the morrow, perhaps some hours after dawn.\"\n\nIn a low growl, the Ironhand confirmed Branl's estimate. \"Beyond question, the lurker and the Demondim-spawn have accomplished the wonders which were asked of them.\"\n\nThe force and confusion of the winds affected Covenant like vertigo. Lurching like a holed ship in an uneven gale, he moved toward Longwrath's corpse.\n\nThe two _Haruchai_ accompanied him, and behind them came the Swordmainnir. Cabledarm the Giants supported between them, although her mind wandered the borderland between consciousness and delirium. Maybe they hoped that fire would cauterize her internal bleeding.\n\nEventually Covenant spotted Jeremiah. The boy had climbed back onto the roof of the fane. Vague in the darkness, he stood there as if the crude edifice were a watchtower. Restlessly he scanned the plain from horizon to horizon, searching for some sign of his mother's return.\n\nCovenant felt a pang for the boy, but he did not allow himself to pause. Winds slapped at his face. They came at him from one direction and then another as if they were trying to nudge him aside from his purpose. The Worm was a condensed apocalypse: it pushed turmoil ahead of it like a bow-wave. He kept moving so that he would not relapse to waiting for Linden.\n\nLostson Longwrath lay where he had fallen, charred and lifeless: a darker shape like an omen outstretched on the benighted ground. Beside the _geas_ -doomed Swordmain, Covenant stopped. Too many lives had already been lost. No doubt the Worm had left tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths in its wake, perhaps millions\u2014and the carnage was just beginning. The _Elohim_ would not be the only casualties of Lord Foul's quest for freedom; his obsessive denial of his own despair. As it always did, Despite littered the world with victims.\n\nCovenant had to do what he could.\n\nWhile he secured his numbed grip on the _krill_ , however, Rime Coldspray said, \"A moment, Timewarden. One matter remains to be resolved. It concerns Longwrath's flamberge.\" She indicated the wave-bladed longsword where it lay near the man's burned fingers. \"He appeared to acquire it at the behest of his _geas_ , and therefore of the _Elohim_ , though we saw no clear purpose in it. Now, however, it appears in an altered light. The Harrow said of it that it was forged by theurgy to be potent against Sandgorgons. Its puissance has faded with disuse, he informed us. But those monsters have come to assail the Land, and we are too few and worn to oppose them. Therefore it is my hope that the blade's force has not altogether waned.\n\n\"If this weapon retains any virtue, one among us must wield it.\"\n\nA good point, Covenant thought. No matter what happened, the Land's defenders would need every conceivable weapon. But while the Giants looked at each other and frowned, weighing possibilities, Branl spoke.\n\n\"The ur-Lord will have need of the _krill_ , and I have no sword. A Giant's blade is an inconvenient length in my hands, but its weight does not exceed my strength, or my skill.\n\n\"The _Haruchai_ have ever eschewed weaponry. Nevertheless weapons we must have. If our people do not elect to reinterpret their service, they will render their lives effectless in the last crisis. Fists and feet suffice to oppose Cavewights, but they will not harm Sandgorgons or hinder _skurj_.\"\n\nStanding over the flamberge, he watched the women for their reactions.\n\nHesitating, the Ironhand asked, \"Timewarden?\" She seemed loath to let a man who was not a Giant take up Longwrath's only legacy. She faulted her ancestors for Longwrath's _geas_. It was the responsibility of the Swordmainnir to attempt amends.\n\nBut Covenant was sure. \"Why not?\" he returned. \"One way or another, we all have to reinterpret our notions of service. That's what Linden is doing. Stave did it a long time ago. Now Branl is doing the same. Why not let him keep going?\"\n\nColdspray gave her comrades a chance to object. Some of them scowled or looked away, shifted their feet uncomfortably; but no one contradicted Covenant.\n\nFinally their leader nodded. \"Let it be so. Branl of the _Haruchai_ , accept Lostson Longwrath's flamberge in the name of ancient friendship and faith. May you find worth in it\u2014aye, and give it worth as well\u2014to redeem the tale of a loved Giant thoughtlessly betrayed.\"\n\nBranl's reply was to take the longsword in both hands. Briefly he swung it around his head as if to demonstrate that he was equal to its heft. Then he stepped back from Longwrath's corpse, making room for Covenant.\n\nStave watched, expressionless as any of his kinsmen. Nevertheless he conveyed the impression that he approved.\n\nIt was time. Covenant had made a promise. Trembling, he drew out Joan's ring on its chain. With the ring's uncompromising circle in one hand, he raised High Lord Loric's _krill_ over the dead.\n\n\"Lostson Longwrath,\" he began. For the sake of the Giants, he strove to speak formally. \"Parents who cherished you named you Exalt Widenedworld, but they couldn't protect you from being hurt. Forgive one more wound. What you've suffered tears the hearts of your people, and I don't know another way to help them.\n\n\"A natural fire would be better for them, maybe even for you. I know that.\" Long ago, he had summoned the Dead of The Grieve into flames to find their release. \"But we don't have any wood. This is the best I can do.\n\n\"Whatever happens, remember that you saved the Giants who knew you best. None of them wanted this to happen. All of them are grieving.\"\n\nDeliberately Covenant put restraint out of his mind; pushed away his old fears of wild magic that refused control. Kneeling at Longwrath's side, he hammered the _krill_ through armor and raiment into Longwrath's chest.\n\nAt once, the gem blazed with such brightness that it seemed to erupt. Silver incandescence poured over the Giants and the _Haruchai_. It flooded the plain and the temple, drenched Jeremiah, ran up the slope of rubble to the ridge; denied the night. It was not fire, although Covenant thought of it as conflagration, saw it as flame. But it was capable of anything. In the hands of its rightful wielder\u2014sane or deranged, driven by love or _contemptuous of consequence_ \u2014it could shatter the foundations of Time. It made Longwrath's flesh and even his armor burn like kindling.\n\nAnd from the heart of the coruscation, Linden Avery came galloping on Hyn's back with the Staff of Law black as midnight in her hands.\n\n## 12.\n\nAfter Too Long\n\nThe flare of power from the gem resembled a scream. It struck Covenant as if it were tangible, a physical impact. He reeled backward. Quick as gusts, Branl and Stave dodged. The Giants scrambled aside from Linden's wild rush. They barely hauled Cabledarm out of the way in time.\n\nIn full career, Hyn pounded among them, past them, a prow of force cleaving a path for a second rider, a second Ranyhyn. They were halfway to the fane before Linden and her companion could bring their straining mounts to a halt.\n\nFrom atop the construct, Jeremiah flailed his arms with Earthpower blazing in each hand. If he yelled something, anything, Covenant did not hear it. A shock like vertigo seemed to unmoor his mind. He stood on a shattered world\u2014on fragments of comprehension\u2014and did not know what was happening.\n\nLinden\u2014? How\u2014?\n\nLinden hardly appeared to see her son; or she absorbed the sight of him in an instant, recognized that he was safe and whole. Wildly she wheeled as if she had arrived with furies and woe on her heels. The _krill_ 's shining glared like a crisis in her eyes.\n\nBut not alone. Covenant stared after her. Not alone?\n\nHe should have been able to identify that second Ranyhyn, that stallion. But he had no mind and could not think.\n\nThe stranger was singing\u2014or he emanated complex melodies like an aura. And he was not chasing Linden: he was her companion. Together they turned their mounts to confront the Giants and the _Haruchai_ and Covenant.\n\nThen Rime Coldspray called, \"Linden Giantfriend!\" and parts of Covenant's reality fell back into place. When she added, \"Manethrall Mahrtiir, most valiant of Ramen!\" Covenant began to regain his footing.\n\nMahrtiir? No. Impossible. _That_ was not\u2014\n\nOh, God. Blood and damnation.\n\nNarunal. The second horse was Narunal.\n\nNow Covenant recognized Mahrtiir's eyelessness, Mahrtiir's fierce visage. But the Manethrall was altogether changed; fraught with music and theurgy. His bandage was gone. In its place, the ravage which had cost him his eyes had become whole skin, seamless and new. He wore a robe of samite so white and pure that it might have been woven of starlight. Garlands of harmony draped his neck: a wreath of counterpoint adorned his head. And his mien\u2014His familiar combative frown had become radiance. It had become eagerness. Reflecting the _krill_ 's gem, he looked like wild magic cleansed of its extravagance and peril.\n\nIn his hand he carried a sapling\u2014a _sapling_ \u2014as if it were weightless in spite of its root-ball thick with loam and its wealth of new leaves like a gift of verdure to the barren plain.\n\nHis mere presence shed hymns like promises in all directions, and Narunal bore him as if the stallion had been exalted.\n\n\"No,\" Linden answered. She sounded hoarse and ragged, as if she had spent hours yelling\u2014or perhaps sobbing. \"Not Mahrtiir. Not anymore. This is Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir. If he ever gets the chance, he's going to be the Forestal of Andelain and Salva Gildenbourne.\"\n\nThe figure beside her nodded gravely. He may have been humming. Then he turned away as though Linden had introduced him to people who did not interest him. Guiding Narunal with his knees or his music, he rode, stately and ineffable, toward Jeremiah's temple.\n\nLinden remained where she was. Her eyes were full of frenzy. Too much had happened to her. Too much had happened while she was gone.\n\n\"You did\u2014\" She appeared to grope for words as if she had no names for what she saw and felt. \"Covenant, you\u2014\"\n\nYet Covenant faced her like the man who had chosen to forsake her days ago. He should have said something, _wanted_ to speak. Goading himself with curses, he strained to break the logjam of his emotions. But he was still stunned, still floundering.\n\nA _Forestal_? Of course. He had urged her to _Remember forbidding_. How else could she have done it? _Without forbidding, there is too little time_. The magicks of the ancient woodland guardians were not instruments which could be passed from one hand to another. They were inherent. So she had decided\u2014or Mahrtiir had decided for her. The Manethrall of the Ramen had been sacrificed.\n\nAnd Covenant had no idea where she had found the power to transform Mahrtiir; how far into the Land's past she had been forced to travel. Hellfire! It was no wonder that she looked wild, frantic. She had done and endured things which had shaken her heart to its foundations.\n\nHe wanted to ask, Who was it? Who did you find? He had the question ready; but he gritted his teeth against it. She needed something more from him. Something better.\n\nWhile Covenant stood paralyzed, silent and useless, Jeremiah came running from his construct. His hands burned like shouts as he sprinted toward Linden.\n\n\"Mom! You came back!\"\n\nLinden hardly glanced at him. Other concerns already gripped her. Her attention shifted from Covenant to the Giants. Her eyes widened in shock.\n\n\"God!\" she panted. \"What have you done?\"\n\nAbruptly she flung herself from Hyn's back. Unfurling fire as black as the distant storm, she strode toward the Swordmainnir. Toward Cabledarm.\n\nIn that instant, Covenant saw that the grass stains were gone from her jeans. She no longer needed them. And she looked clean, as if she had been refined by fire. Even her hair and clothes\u2014But the tatters of her shirt remained: the tearing of thorns, the bullet hole, the rent hem.\n\nShe ignored his scrutiny, his surprise. Focused on the dying Giant, she advanced as if she meant to hurl an attack.\n\nOnyx Stonemage and Stormpast Galesend flinched reflexively, then stood their ground, upholding Cabledarm between them. The other Giants stepped away to make room.\n\n\"God _damn_ it.\" Linden's voice was a raw mutter, barely audible, as if she did not expect to be heard. \"What happened to you? What have you done to yourself?\"\n\nThen she sent a torrent of flame at the damaged woman. Swift as empathy, she inundated Cabledarm with Earthpower.\n\nShe remained a healer, Covenant told himself, no matter how she judged herself. Wounds came first, pains and afflictions which she was able to treat. She had been through an ordeal: that was obvious. She must have been desperate to do _some_ thing that felt like restitution.\n\nHer effect on Cabledarm was not gentle. It was too urgent, too full of need. And perhaps she had not yet realized that the hindrance of Kevin's Dirt was gone. She seemed to scourge Cabledarm with healing.\n\nThe woman's head jerked back. Twisting against the grasp of her comrades, she gave a groan like a throttled scream. But she was not being harmed. Her pain was the hurt of internal organs violently mended, of bones roughly reset and sealed, of bleeding stanched as if it were being cauterized. When she fainted, her slackness\u2014and the new ease of her respiration\u2014suggested that she had already begun to recuperate.\n\nWatching, Covenant leaned on Branl as if he needed the comfort of the Humbled. He wanted to tell Linden that she was wonderful\u2014that he had been terrified for her\u2014that he was sorry\u2014that the world would _not see her like again_. But still he could not speak. He had no language for the extremity of his heart.\n\n\"That is well done, Linden Giantfriend,\" murmured Coldspray. \"Well done in all sooth. Now only Stave Rockbrother requires similar care.\"\n\nUnsteadily, as if she had assumed Cabledarm's fever, Linden looked around for Stave, who stood on the far side of Covenant's aborted fire. For a moment, she appeared to fix her senses and her bewilderment on the ashen remains of Longwrath's corpse. Her mouth opened for a cry of protest.\n\nThen she must have felt Jeremiah rushing toward her. She spun away from the fallen Giant and the wounded _Haruchai_ to catch her son in her arms.\n\n\"Jeremiah,\" she breathed. \"Oh, Jeremiah. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry that I had to leave you. I'm sorry that you had to do everything without me. You must have felt so abandoned\u2014\"\n\n\"Mom, stop.\" Jeremiah gripping her with flames. \" _I'm_ sorry. I acted like a kid. You did what you had to do, and I didn't even tell you I love you. I didn't tell you I understand.\"\n\nSome distance beyond the gathered company, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir had paused in front of the fane, singing softly, rapt in contemplation.\n\n\"And we did it,\" Jeremiah added. Linden's return appeared to galvanize him. Abruptly he pulled away from her and gestured at the temple. \"We did it right. I mean, the Giants and Stave did it. They were amazing. And they came. The _Elohim_ came. They're inside. Even\u2014\"\n\nThere he faltered. His whole body seemed to clench at the memory of Kastenessen.\n\n\"I believe you,\" Linden assured him. \"I can't see them, but they left traces. They must have gone in to somewhere else, just like you said that they would. It must have been extraordinary.\"\n\nShe was making an effort to affirm her son. Nevertheless her tone was thick with tension.\n\n\"But are you all right? Did anything happen to you?\"\n\nShe must have been able to see farther into Jeremiah than Covenant could. _I'm sorry you didn't kill him_. _I want him_ dead.\n\nJeremiah ducked his head. \"There are worse things than being afraid, Mom. Being useless is worse.\" He indicated the fane again. \"The Giants did that. Stave did it. He and Cabledarm got hurt doing it. All I did was tell them what I wanted. Without them\u2014\"\n\nHelpless as a spectre, Covenant watched and listened. He loathed his silence, but did not know how to break it. Jeremiah did not mention Kastenessen or being possessed. And Covenant had no intention of telling the boy's story for him; betraying the boy's secrets. But he had so many other things to say.\n\n\"I know the feeling,\" Linden replied harshly. \"I've taken terrible chances because I felt that way. You've seen me. But it happens to all of us. We can't do everything alone. Or we can't do enough. Without help, we're all useless.\"\n\nShe was speaking to Jeremiah, but her words\u2014or her anger\u2014may have been directed at Covenant. How often had he said, _Don't touch me_? How badly had he hurt her by leaving her behind?\n\nHe, too, would have failed at everything without help.\n\nHe could almost see Jeremiah's needs aching in Linden's eyes as she turned away from her son. Innominate tensions and uncertainties ruled her. She seemed unable to stop moving.\n\nApparently she was trying to focus her attention on Stave.\n\nThe music emanating from the Forestal had changed. It had assumed a more telic mode, as if he were done with study. He had set his sapling upright directly before the fane's portal. Now he withdrew his hand\u2014and the sapling did not fall. He had already sung its roots into the hard dirt.\n\nStonemage and Galesend continued to support Cabledarm. The rest of the Giants gathered closer to Linden. Cirrus Kindwind rested her hand on Jeremiah's shoulder as if to soothe him until Linden could attend to him again.\n\nWhen Linden looked toward Stave, her gaze snagged on Branl. On the flamberge\u2014\n\nFor an instant, she froze. Fright flared in her gaze. Then her features knotted. From the Staff, she summoned a curling flame; sent fire licking up and down the rune-carved surface.\n\nBitter as bloodshed, she demanded, \"What're you doing with Longwrath's sword? Is that how you're going to kill me?\"\n\nWhat else could she think? Longwrath had tried more than once to cut her down. She had not seen him since the Wraiths had repulsed his desire for her death from Andelain. And the Humbled had distrusted her from the first, in spite of her history. They had threatened and opposed and judged her.\n\nNevertheless Covenant blurted, \"Linden, no.\" Distress broke through the blockade of his silence. Her reaction was too much for him. \"It's not like that.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" She did not glance away from Branl, or quench her power. \"He's wanted me dead ever since I resurrected you. What's changed?\"\n\nWhile she spoke, Covenant seemed to hear her crying, I woke up the Worm! Is no one _ever_ going to forgive me?\n\nYet Branl faced her without expression, without moving. He gave no sign that he regarded her as a threat.\n\n\"He killed Clyme,\" Covenant said in a frayed croak. \"Clyme let _turiya_ possess him. Then Branl killed Clyme. The Raver is gone. Everything's changed.\"\n\nAgain Linden froze. He could not read her.\n\nShe would not have forgotten Honninscrave's sacrifice against _samadhi_ Sheol, _turiya_ 's brother.\n\nNow Covenant felt driven to talk. He yearned to tell her about his alliance with the lurker. He wanted to convince her that she had made the lurker's efforts against the Worm possible. _Writ in water_. When she had eluded the snares of the Feroce, she had saved him and enabled Joan's end and given the Land precious days of life.\n\nBut he restrained himself. He needed to say such things\u2014but explanations of that kind were not what _she_ needed. She had been through too much: her nerves and her heart were too raw. An abstract alliance would not console her.\n\nNear the fane, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's sapling spread new branches and put forth fresh leaves and grew as if the Forestal had compressed years of rain and sun and rich soil into brief stanzas of hymnody.\n\nLinden seemed unable to move. Covenant's revelation must have shaken her conception of the Humbled. But he was not given time to continue. While he groped for better words, words that might ease her, Stave came to stand between Linden and Branl.\n\nImpassive as polished stone, he said, \"Chosen, I am here. I have done as you asked of me.\" Nothing in his gaze or his mien hinted at his intent. \"Now I am in need.\"\n\nDeliberately he showed her his savaged forearm and hand.\n\nOne of the _Haruchai_. Asking for help.\n\nAt the sight, something inside Linden snapped. Stave was her friend, one of the first. He had supported her against the combined repudiation of the Masters\u2014and had paid a cruel price. Her eyes filled with tears: she called up more fire as if her Staff's flames were sobs. But she did not reach out as she had to Bluntfist. Instead she cocooned herself in conflagration. Then she carried the dark blaze of her pain to Stave and wrapped her arms around him.\n\nAnd he returned her embrace as though he had grown accustomed to such familiarity. Accustomed to setting aside his native stoicism.\n\nA sigh of relief passed among the Giants. Jeremiah whispered, \"Mom. Mom,\" as if she made him proud.\n\nWhen she finally let Stave go, she was calmer. Quenching her power, she made the _krill_ 's illumination brighter in contrast. Still her eyes were full of darkness, as if her Staff's stain lingered in them. Trying to imagine how she had gained Mahrtiir's transformation\u2014and how she had managed her return\u2014Covenant shivered. He could only be sure that the cost had been high. But now at last she looked _present_ , as if she had been reclaimed by the time where she belonged.\n\nThat was well. The barriers inside him had broken. He could no longer remain silent.\n\nHe wanted to fall to his knees before her, abase himself somehow, plead with her. But self-recrimination was an expensive indulgence: he could not afford it. Controlling himself, he held her gaze until he was sure that he had her attention.\n\nCaerwood ur-Mahrtiir's sapling had become a young tree. Its leaves were spangled with melody as if the notes of his song were stars. And beneath the expanding spread of the branches, a furze of grass sprouted from the barren ground, punctuated by undefined clumps that might grow into shrubs. A liquid sound ran faintly through his singing like a promise of water.\n\nTo Linden, Covenant said, \"I killed her,\" as if the words burned his mouth, raised blisters on his tongue. \"I killed Joan. I promised myself I would give up killing. Now I hardly do anything else.\"\n\nLike the voice of the night, Branl asserted, \"It was not murder.\" Like an echo. \"It was mercy.\"\n\nStave nodded his assent.\n\nCovenant ignored the _Haruchai_. He concentrated on Linden's frown, and her eyes, and the tightness of her mouth.\n\n\"The Feroce cleared the way. Dozens of them died against the _skest_. Branl and Clyme helped me through a _caesure_ so I could reach her. She was going to finish me, but Mhornym and Naybahn distracted her. I killed her with the _krill_. I didn't know what else to do.\"\n\nLinden seemed to gather darkness where she stood, as if she were pulling the night around her, wrapping herself in shadows. \"Good!\" she snapped: a flare of vehemence like a reiteration of Jeremiah's rage at Kastenessen.\n\nAbrupt anger swelled in Covenant. \"There was a tsunami.\" Joan had suffered too much. \"It could have crushed us.\" Her weakness had not merited the use which Lord Foul had made of her. His voice rose, impelled higher by fury or supplication. \"Branl and Clyme and the Ranyhyn saved me.\n\n\"Hell _fire_ , Linden.\" His own heart was as raw as hers. \"Do you remember Brinn? Now that the Worm's awake, he doesn't have anything else to do. He showed up after the tsunami to tell us _turiya_ was going to possess the lurker. We went to try to stop that from happening.\"\n\nThen he forced himself to stop. In spite of his ire and numbness, he felt Linden withdrawing. She did not step back, but her frown became a scowl as her features closed against him.\n\n\"Why are you angry at me?\" Her voice shook. \"I haven't touched you. I wasn't even here.\"\n\nCovenant swore at his clumsiness, his difficult, stymied honesty. He bit down on his wrath hard enough to draw blood.\n\n\"I'm not angry at you. I'm ashamed. It's not the same thing.\"\n\nJeremiah may have tried to intervene. If so, the Giants kept him quiet.\n\n\"What are you ashamed of?\" Linden sounded impossibly distant, as if she had retreated to a redoubt where he could not hope to reach her. \"You put Joan out of her misery. She wasn't just in terrible pain. She was possessed. Death was the only way to give her any relief. And you stopped her _caesures_. Why is that something to be ashamed of?\"\n\n\"Because I failed!\" Covenant wanted to hit someone, anyone. If he could have felt what he was doing, he would have torn at his hair. Instead he knotted his insensate fingers together and twisted until his wrists ached. \"I wasn't strong enough to handle _turiya_ myself. That's why Branl had to kill Clyme. They both had to compensate for me.\n\n\"And because\u2014\"\n\nSuddenly awkward, he faltered. How could he say what was in his heart? To Linden? Like this? Beyond question, he was not strong enough. If he had ever been brave enough, he no longer remembered how that much courage felt.\n\nThe glittering among the leaves of the ur-Mahrtiir's tree had become a silver penumbra, purer that the brightness of Loric's _krill_ , and more melodious. The tree was a willow, graceful and arching. Soon it would be tall enough to spread its branches in a wide circle that included the fane. Its limbs drooped like weeping, though they grew like gladness. And under its shade, the thin grass was now turf, as lush as the greenswards of Andelain. Bushes grew like adornments under the dangling leaves around the verge of the grass. A delicate rill rippled argent past the Forestal's feet and chuckled away beyond the rubble, wending harmoniously toward the distant Sarangrave.\n\n\"Because?\" Linden prompted like a woman hiding behind a shield.\n\nHe was losing her. He did not know how to bear it.\n\n\"Because I hate the way I treated you! I hate the way I _left_ you. I had to go. I had to go alone. I couldn't risk you against Joan. And you had other things to do.\"\n\nFinally he managed to lower his voice. If he meant to tell the truth, he had to set aside the luxury of shouting; of judging himself.\n\n\"Linden, do you understand that _Kastenessen_ is in that temple? Have you realized yet that Kevin's Dirt is gone? If I hadn't left you behind, none of that would have happened.\"\n\nShe did not react. She had no attention to spare for victories.\n\nGroaning inwardly, Covenant confessed, \"But I shouldn't have treated you the way I did. I was just afraid. I was broken,\" maimed by fissured memories, \"and I didn't know how to live with it. I couldn't ask you to trust me,\" love me, \"because I didn't trust myself, or what I was becoming, or what I had to do. I wasn't sure I would have anything left when I was done. I couldn't say what I really meant.\"\n\nLoric's gem lit a subtle shift in Linden's gaze, a modulation in the darkness. Small black flames coiled like tendrils around her hand on the Staff. Covenant thought that he saw tremors in her shoulders.\n\n\"You told me not to touch you,\" she said as if the words were splinters of glass, sharp enough to pierce and rend. \"Isn't that what you meant?\"\n\n\" _No_.\" He gritted his teeth so that he would not cry out. \"It's what I needed. It's what I knew how to say. I'm a leper, for God's sake. It's how I cope with practically everything. But it is not the truth.\"\n\nNot the whole truth.\n\nShe appeared to be floundering: a drowning woman who nonetheless struggled against her desire to clutch at rescue. So softly that he barely heard her over the labor of his heart, she asked, \"Then what is the truth? What would you have said if you weren't broken or scared?\"\n\nObviously bewildered, Jeremiah watched his mother and his earliest friend. The _Haruchai_ betrayed no reaction; but the Giants gave the impression that they were holding their breath.\n\nDamn you, Covenant snarled at himself. Say it. _Do_ it. She can't read your mind.\n\nWhat did he gain by being a leper if numbness did not dull the edges of his fears?\n\nHis hands shook as he reached up to his neck. Fumbling, he grasped the chain that held Joan's ring under his T-shirt, pulled the chain over his head. For a panicked moment, his eyes failed him: he could not find the clasp. Then his fingers were too awkward to unclose it.\n\nBut he remembered who he was, and why he was here, and what was at stake; and a strange certainty came over him. The clasp seemed to open by itself, as if he had been given a blessing. _Attempts must be made_ \u2014How else could he believe in anything?\n\nHe dropped the chain. Holding the ring between the remnants of his thumb and forefinger, he extended it toward Linden.\n\n\"Linden Avery.\" His voice was hoarse, congested with emotions straining for release. \"I think I've earned the right to give this to anybody I want. But there's nobody else. I love _you_. That's all. I _love_ you. Will you marry me?\"\n\nShe flinched as if he had slapped her. For an instant, she recoiled, startled and uncomprehending.\n\nBut while she froze, caught in a maelstrom of surprise and consternation, disbelief and repudiation and self-doubt, the Forestal's song came clearly through the silence.\n\n\"It is my heart I give to you,\n\nMy blood and sap and bone and root.\"\n\nIn an instant, her turmoil was transfigured. Out of confusion and pain, she gathered herself. Her eyes reflected argent and recognition in patterns that spoke to Covenant. Without glancing at Stave, she tossed her Staff to the former Master. Its fire vanished before he caught it.\n\nHer gaze clung to Covenant's as she drew out his ring, freed it from its chain, discarded the strand as if it had become meaningless. For a few heartbeats, she closed the ring in her fist. Then she opened her hand, held the ring out on her palm.\n\n\" _Yes_.\" That one word seemed to contain her whole heart. \"Thomas Covenant, yes. I don't care what you've done, or what you're afraid of, or what you said days ago. I don't care how broken you were, or what's going to happen to us later. I only care about _now_. I love you.\"\n\nAs if she had summoned him past restrictions more personal than life and death, he started toward her. When he reached her, he took her left hand, lifted it to his lips, then slipped Joan's ring\u2014no, _Linden's_ wedding band\u2014onto her ring finger.\n\nWith this ring I thee wed.\n\n_And betimes some wonder is wrought\u2014_\n\nHe thought that she would offer his ring to the index finger of his halfhand, where he had worn it ever since he had grown gaunt. But instead she claimed his left. To his surprise, his ring finger accepted the band as if damage and scars had made him strong enough to wear white gold where it belonged.\n\n\"I'm yours,\" she murmured through a blur of tears. \"You're the only man I've ever really loved. You're the father Jeremiah should have had. As long as you wear this ring, I'm yours.\"\n\nHe knew what she meant. Long ago, he had surrendered his wedding band to the Despiser.\n\nHe was not going to do that again.\n\nWhen he took her in his arms and kissed her, he was trying to assure her that he would keep this promise.\n\nHer arms were around his neck. She returned his kiss as if she were opening her whole self.\n\nAnd slowly their embrace was transformed. It became a glow of wild magic. Alloyed argent expanded around them, wrapped them in light. Gentle as a caress, it swelled into the night, swirling warmly as it scaled higher and higher until they appeared to stand at the source of a gyre which might reach the stars. The gem of the _krill_ gave answer, as if High Lord Loric's ancient theurgy approved; but the effulgence of Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery out-shone it. Their power lit the battered plain to the horizons, reveled on the faces of the Giants and the _Haruchai_ and Jeremiah, emblazoned the outlines of the fane beneath the willow. Even Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir paused in his fertile labors to contribute a paean like a benediction.\n\nIf Covenant had been inclined to heed them, he would have heard the Giants cheering. He would have seen Jeremiah waving flares of Earthpower and grinning. He might have noticed Stave's brief, unconflicted smile.\n\nBut Covenant was kissing Linden. At that moment, nothing else mattered.\n\nhen he was finally able to look around, he saw that the Forestal had fashioned a bower.\n\nThe willow had grown as tall as a Gilden. Spangles of song lingered on its leaves, bedecked its branches with bright silver like the glimmering of unendangered stars. Illumination under the canopy of the boughs seemed to hold the memory of wild magic made tender by acquiescence. The tree stood directly before the fane's portal: its drooping arch almost concealed the construct. In the tree's shade, luxuriant grass cushioned the ground like a profusion of pillows.\n\nThe plashing runnel was now a grateful brook. It seemed to carry light and music with it as it chimed out across the plain. And near the edges of the circle, where the leaves trailed along the grass, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir had invoked _aliantha_. A score or more of the holly-like shrubs with their viridian berries ripe surrounded the greensward, abundant as a feast.\n\nThe relative privacy of the bower suggested a form of sustenance that Covenant needed more than food. Perhaps that was the Forestal's intent. The heat in Linden's eyes affirmed that she felt as Covenant did. He was in a trembling hurry.\n\nBut the company had other needs: those took precedence. The privation of the Giants was extreme. They had given their last strength\u2014and then had given more. Covenant himself wanted more than the unsatisfying aliment of _ussusimiel_. Linden had probably gone longer without food. And Jeremiah was avid for treasure-berries.\n\nFor the sake of everyone with him, Covenant schooled himself to eat and drink and wait. When Linden smiled ruefully, he tried to match her.\n\nSpeaking for her comrades, the Ironhand gave thanks to the Forestal. They all bowed as if they declined to prostrate themselves only because they lacked the strength to rise again. Then they picked their fill of _aliantha_. The seeds they scattered around the plain and in the hollows like prayers for the Land's future. More boisterously, Jeremiah followed their example. As for the _Haruchai_ , Branl stood apart from the company as if all of his lacks had been satisfied by Longwrath's flamberge; but Stave ate without hesitation and offered the former Manethrall his gratitude.\n\nConsidering that they were Giants, inclined to relish the bounty of their own relief, Rime Coldspray, Frostheart Grueburn, and the others finished their meal quickly. They spent only a few moments thanking Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir. Then they passed beyond the thick willow-trunk to reenter the fane, taking Jeremiah with them so that Covenant and Linden would have some semblance of privacy.\n\nStave also went into the construct, bowing first to Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir, then to Covenant, finally and most deeply to Linden. However, Branl remained. \"Ur-Lord,\" the Humbled said with his usual absence of inflection, \"the return of the Chosen is a cause for gladness in itself, and is more so because she has restored a Forestal to the Land. Yet in one respect, it is misfortune. The Giants have been denied their _caamora_.\"\n\nTo the sudden inquiry of Linden's expression, he explained, \"The ur-Lord sought to relieve their sorrow by drawing flame from Longwrath's remains. Your arrival interrupted his efforts. Now Longwrath is naught but ash, and we have no wood.\"\n\nWhile Linden winced in regret, Branl addressed Covenant once more. \"Among Giants, denied lamentation is an enduring distress. Other tasks we have in abundance. And doubtless the Swordmainnir will be prompt to set aside their needs. Nonetheless I urge you to seek some blaze in which they may ease their loss.\n\n\"I am a Master of the Land,\" he said as if he were merely reciting a formula rather than acknowledging a profound change. \"I bear the taint of the unwelcome which the Giants have received at our hands. I would make amends, but have no means to do so.\"\n\n\"Oh, stop,\" Covenant protested. \"I forgot about that. We all had too much going on. But of course you're right. I\"\u2014he glanced at Linden\u2014\"we won't forget again.\"\n\n\"We won't,\" Linden affirmed. \"And I won't forget what you've done. I haven't been fair to you. I should have known better.\"\n\nInstead of nodding to her, as he had done so often in the past, Branl bowed. And when he had shown the same respect to both Covenant and Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir, he left the bower between the hanging branches to stand guard outside.\n\nAlone with the Forestal, Covenant and Linden faced each other as if they had lost the ability to look anywhere else; but they did not move.\n\nBriefly Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir sang words that Covenant recognized.\n\n\"I am the Land's Creator's hold:\n\nI inhale all expiring breath,\n\nAnd breathe out life to bind and heal.\"\n\nThen he faded into his music as if he had made himself one with the willow and the boughs, the leaves and the bedizening melody. In a moment, he was gone.\n\n\"Covenant\u2014\" Linden bit her lip, twisted the ring on her finger. \"I have too much to tell you. And there are so many things I\u2014\"\n\nHe interrupted her with a grin that felt like a grimace. \"Don't you think it's about time you stopped calling me 'Covenant'?\"\n\n\"Thomas, then,\" she offered. \"Thomas. Thomas of my heart.\"\n\nHe would have accepted anything, but he was grateful that she did not choose to call him _Tom_.\n\nWhen he opened his arms, she came to him like an act of grace.\n\nhen they were done, they lay relaxed on billows of grass, covered by the soft radiance of the bower. For a time, they talked casually, softly, reminding themselves of each other. But then they turned to more serious concerns.\n\nCovenant had his own questions, but Linden spoke first. Somber with doubt, she asked him what he thought about Jeremiah.\n\nHe sighed to himself. \"You mean, not counting the fact he's actually _with_ us? After what he's been through? It's amazing he can so much as speak, never mind design that sanctuary for the _Elohim_. He's already done a world of good. If you want more, you should talk to him.\"\n\nShe certainly needed to know how much her son had inherited from Anele. She needed to know about Kastenessen.\n\nShe cuffed him lightly. \"That's not an answer.\"\n\n\"I know. But I'm serious. He should tell his own story. He doesn't want to, but he should. Maybe you'll have better luck than I did.\"\n\nLinden gnawed at her lower lip for a moment. \"I'm not sure that I have the right to pry. He's already pushed me away more than once. I might do more harm than good.\"\n\nCovenant shrugged against her head on his shoulder. \"I'm not sure anybody has the right. Maybe prying does more harm than good. But look at it this way. He's too young for his years. He's had experiences that could cripple an adult, and he's never had a chance to grow into them. Parts of him are still a kid.\" And parts of him remembered the _croyel_.\n\n\"Sometimes kids need their parents to pry. Sometimes I think Roger wouldn't be such a mess if his mother ever took an interest in him.\"\n\nCovenant himself had never been given an opportunity with his son.\n\nLuminous in the warmth of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's music, Linden rolled over to rest her hands on Covenant's chest, prop her chin there and study his face.\n\n\"Thomas, what happened to you? What did you do after you left? How did you do it? What healed your mind? How did you change how Branl thinks?\"\n\nHe winced reflexively. But he did not refuse to answer. Eased by her love, he was able to describe the days that he had spent away from her.\n\nWhen he was done, she hugged him hard and wordlessly. For a time, she seemed to take his anguish and dread from him; and he thought about nothing except her.\n\nAfterward they rested. But neither of them slept.\n\nIn a more playful mood, she asked, \"So why aren't you growing a beard? You're human now. All the way human. As far as I can tell, the Arch of Time has lost its hold on you. Why isn't your beard growing?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" he admitted. \"If I ever did, it's gone. But if I had to guess\u2014\"\n\nBriefly he rubbed at his cheeks, pushed his fingers through his transformed hair. \"You didn't have access to my physical self. That part of me died so long ago there was nothing left. And yet here I am. You must have created me out of my self-image.\" He spread his maimed hands. \"Apparently that includes leprosy, but it doesn't include whiskers.\"\n\nLong ago, shaving had been a form of self-abnegation for him, a punitive discipline. He was glad to be rid of the necessity.\n\nStroking her, he said, \"Now it's your turn. Linden, you're a mystery to me. And I don't just mean\u2014\" He gestured to indicate her adored body. \"I don't think I've ever been as surprised as I was when the Feroce offered me an alliance.\" Surprised and dismayed. \"Somehow you did that. Somehow you saved me.\" He would not have reached Joan, or survived his attempt on _turiya_ Herem, without the aid of Feroce. \"But you did more than that. You also rescued Jeremiah.\" When she shook her head, he amended, \"I mean, you gave him what he needed to rescue himself.\n\n\"That would have been enough for anybody else, but not for you.\" Not for a woman who thought so little of herself. \"After you brought Jeremiah here, you went to find the only possible source of forbidding.\" The only hope for the _Elohim_ , and perhaps for the Earth. \"Then you did something even more miraculous. You came back. Without using a _caesure_.\n\n\"Linden\"\u2014he kissed her eyelids, her nose, her mouth\u2014\"you amaze me. I want to know how you did it.\"\n\nHe saw her reluctance. It showed in the way she shifted to nestle against his shoulder so that he could not look into her eyes or watch her face. For a moment, he was afraid again. But then she began to answer, and his fear left him.\n\nBecause he knew the outcome, he listened calmly as she described how the Feroce had tried to lure her into the grasp of the lurker, and how Infelice had striven to prevent Jeremiah from freeing himself in Muirwin Delenoth. Jeremiah's desire to build a construct that might preserve the _Elohim_. The message of the Feroce. Her own decision to enter a _caesure_. Her arms tightened like grief around Covenant as she talked about her second meeting with Caerroil Wildwood, and about Manethrall Mahrtiir's transformation.\n\n\"But I still didn't know how to get back. After what Caerroil Wildwood did for us, the idea of making another Fall horrified me. I would have had to ruin an unconscionable amount of Garroting Deep. But I was desperate to return, and I couldn't wait until we left the forest. I didn't know what to do.\"\n\nCovenant heard the force of that emotional snare in her voice, the intolerable conundrum of being caught between mutually exclusive commitments. He recognized it.\n\n\"Mahrtiir\"\u2014she corrected herself\u2014\"no, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir helped me. You should have seen him, Thomas. He stood here like a king, as if he had earned the right, and he sang things that I couldn't understand until Caerroil Wildwood nodded. Then Wildwood gave me another gift.\"\n\nLike suppressed weeping, she said, \"Oh, Thomas. Caerroil Wildwood said that he was tired of living. Tired of trying. Worn out by losing trees to people and wars. Law was getting weaker, and he knew that he was doomed. He'd faced too much evil. That was why he created Caer-Caveral, and why he made Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir. So that he could finally rest.\n\n\"He told me\"\u2014her voice broke\u2014\"that he still had no answer for the deaths of trees.\"\n\nThen she hurried to finish.\n\n\"Every leaf and branch all around the Howe sounded like it was sobbing, but he had made up his mind. He brought Hyn and Narunal to us. He gave us time to mount. 'By wild magic you came,' he said. 'Wild magic must guide your return.' When we were ready, he did something like what the Mahdoubt did for me. He didn't violate Time, he used everything he was to make an opening.\" Covenant felt her tears on the soft skin of his shoulder. \"Then he pushed us through so that Hyn and Narunal could find the way back.\n\n\"It killed him, just like it killed Caer-Caveral. All of his music and glory and anger and effort seemed to wail. The whole Howe was like a shriek. When we rode away, there was nothing left except screaming.\"\n\nTrying to comfort her, Covenant murmured, \"I wish I could remember.\" He did not care what he said: he only sought to acknowledge her distress. \"While I was still part of the Arch, I probably knew why Caerroil Wildwood decided to let go. Now that's gone. As far as I can tell, you found the only\u2014I don't know what to call it\u2014the only clean way to do what we need. The only safe way. The only way that doesn't change the Land's history.\"\n\nLinden wiped her eyes and nose. Under his caresses, her tension and remorse eased. \"I've been so scared. I didn't know what I was doing. Half of the time, I felt terrified. Otherwise I was just frantic. Jeremiah and the Land and even you needed more from me than I knew how to give. I only did what I did because I couldn't think of anything else.\"\n\n\"Hellfire, Linden,\" Covenant snorted. \"Don't sell yourself short. Miracles are becoming practically normal around here, and most of them are your doing.\"\n\nWhen she felt less troubled in his arms, he asked a different question. \"So how did you get rid of those stains on your jeans?\"\n\nShe lifted her head in surprise. After a moment, she sat up, snatched at her jeans, studied them. \"Oh my God. They're gone. I've had them for so long, I stopped seeing them. They must have faded when Caerroil Wildwood\u2014\"\n\nEyes wide, she faced Covenant. \"What does it mean?\"\n\nHe smiled crookedly. Still hungry for her, he said, \"Maybe Caerroil Wildwood took away those stains because you don't need them anymore. They were a map, and now you've found your way.\" She had found him\u2014or they had found each other. \"Maybe it just means we should try to take advantage of every minute we have left.\"\n\nFor a moment, she appeared to struggle against her uncertainty\u2014or against the particular intensity of his regard. But then she seemed to find that he had said enough. That his response sufficed. Dropping her clothes, she moved to put her arms around his neck.\n\nThat response sufficed for him as well.\n\nventually Linden asked a more difficult question. \"After Lord Foul killed you, you left your ring for me. You wanted me to have it, didn't you? So why haven't I been a 'rightful white gold wielder' all along?\"\n\n\"I'm not entirely sure,\" Covenant admitted. \"Sure, I wanted you to have my ring. But I didn't _give_ it to you. Lord Foul just dropped it. And I was in the same situation with Joan. I only got her ring\"\u2014he stifled a wince\u2014\"because she couldn't hold it any longer. That didn't make me a rightful wielder either.\"\n\nHe had experienced _rightfulness_. He knew what it meant.\n\n\"Now that's changed.\" With a gesture that felt effortless, he drew a brief streak of argent through the air, instantly ready, instantly quenched. \"So here's what I think. It isn't the getting that makes the difference. It's the giving. The choice. And the _kind_ of choice matters. Surrender is one kind. A vow is another. I didn't just give you a white gold ring. I gave you _me_. That's something the almighty Despiser is never going to understand. He's clever as all hell, but he's too self-obsessed or frustrated or maybe too damn miserable to figure out why he keeps losing.\"\n\nThen Covenant thought that he ought to warn Linden. \"But we still have to be careful. I don't have enough health-sense to feel the effects of what I'm doing. And you have the Staff of Law.\" It lay on the greensward beyond their clothes, its black shaft runed with auguries. \"I don't want to say wild magic and Law are antithetical. That's too simplistic. But the energies are incompatible. Wild magic refuses boundaries, and Law is all about boundaries. If you hadn't used the _krill_ when you resurrected me, you would have torn yourself apart. That's the _krill_ 's real power. It mediates contradictions.\"\n\nFor a moment, he thought that he heard the wind outside the bower blustering bitterly against the willow. But the blast did not trouble Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's irenic singing, or ruffle his healing lumination.\n\nStill Covenant did not relax, in spite of his satiation. He sensed something unresolved in Linden\u2014or he knew that in her place he would not be at peace.\n\nAt last, she said, \"Thomas, I love you. I _love_ you. But I did a terrible thing when I forced you back to life. Waking up the Worm was bad enough. The Humbled were right about me. That was a Desecration. But I'm afraid that I did something worse at the same time. Do you remember what Berek said? I've made it impossible to stop Lord Foul.\"\n\nCovenant tightened his embrace as if he imagined that he could protect her. He remembered Berek's assertion perfectly. _He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence_. He recognized her fear.\n\n\"Now we can't save the world. We can't stop the Worm. We can only try to slow it down. Before long, Lord Foul will get his chance to escape.\n\n\"Thomas,\" she insisted, \"I _did_ that.\" In spite of all that she had done, she still found cause to accuse herself. \" _I_ did it.\" Then she admitted, \"But it didn't feel that way. Oh, I didn't care about the consequences. I can't deny that. But was I 'compelled by rage'? I don't think so. I was just desperate. Desperate for you. Desperate for Jeremiah. Desperate for _help_. I didn't know where else to get it.\n\n\"Is that all it takes to ruin everything? Is Lord Foul going to get free because of me? Is the whole Earth going to die because of me?\"\n\nAt that moment, Covenant would have given the remains of his fingers to reassure her. But he did not respond immediately. He had good reason to be cautious. During his early visits to the Land, he had justified himself falsely too often, and the cost of his obfuscations had been too high. And her needs were not his. Her desperation was not the same as his. It was more intimate, or more personal, or simply more consequential. He had only raped Lena and betrayed Elena and destroyed the first Staff of Law. He had not awakened the Worm. In an earlier age, Linden herself had prevented him\u2014\n\nNow he suspected that Jeremiah was more likely to be _compelled by rage_.\n\nHe wanted to say, Maybe you're right. Any one of us can destroy the whole world\u2014if it's _our_ world. All we have to do is destroy ourselves. But he demanded more of himself.\n\n\"Sometimes 'desperate,'\" he began, \"is just a convenient name for being so angry you can't stand it. After everything you went through\u2014after Roger and the _croyel_ and Esmer and Kastenessen and the Harrow and even Longwrath\u2014you finally got to Andelain\"\u2014he winced at the memory\u2014\"and I refused to talk to you. Hellfire, Linden! Only a dead woman wouldn't have been sick with fury.\"\n\nShe hid her face as if she were cowering; as if he had poured acid on her heart. \"Then I've done it. I've doomed\u2014\"\n\nIf she had pulled away from him, he might have cried out. He had hurt her enough to maim the bond which they had only begun to renew. But she still clung to him as if he were all that she had left. She still thought that he had a better answer\u2014or that he _was_ a better answer.\n\nAs gently as he could, he said, \"It's tempting to think that way. It lets us off the hook. If we've already made the only mistakes that matter\u2014or if somehow we just _are_ the only mistakes that matter\u2014we can't be expected to do anything else. But it's not that simple.\n\n\"For one thing, we aren't alone. We're all in this mess together. We're all making decisions and trying to justify the consequences. Whatever you've done, good or bad, you didn't do it in a vacuum. You've been reacting to people with their own agendas and situations you didn't cause. From the start, the Despiser has been pushing you where he wants you to go. And you've had help along the way.\n\n\"And for another\u2014\" Goaded by his own necessary passions, Covenant's voice rose. \"Linden, I just don't _believe_ it. I don't believe Lord Foul can't be stopped. I don't even believe the world can't be saved. Freeing Lord Foul wasn't the only thing Berek talked about. He also said there's _another truth_ on the far side of despair and doom. All we have to do is find it.\"\n\nShe did not react. He could not be sure that she was listening. He might have been speaking to the leaves and boughs, the harmony of gleams, rather than to the woman in his arms.\n\nNevertheless she continued to hold on to him.\n\n_You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world._\n\nBecause she did not let go, he said more.\n\n\"And for another\u2014Oh, hell. I've written entire novels about this. 'Guilt is power. Only the damned can be saved.' Maybe that sounds cynical. Maybe it is. But who else _needs_ to be saved? Who else _can_ be? Not the innocent. They have their own problems.\" He was thinking of the Masters, who thought that rigid purity of service would relieve their ancient humiliation. \"They don't need anything as gracious or just plain kind as forgiveness.\n\n\"So maybe blaming ourselves is a waste of time. Maybe we should just admit that everybody goes wrong. Everybody does damage. That's what being human enough to make mistakes means. And if that's what being human means, then there's really only one question we have to answer. Is making mistakes _all_ it means?\n\n\"If it isn't, then _everything_ counts. Resurrecting me and waking up the Worm. Making love together and killing Cavewights. Hell and blood, Linden! I let my own daughter be sacrificed against She Who Must Not Be Named. And I didn't stop there. I went right up to the most pitiful woman I've ever known and stuck a knife in her chest. If you think I don't feel _bad_ about things like that, you haven't been paying attention. But if everything counts, then guilt is no reason to stop trying for something better.\"\n\nSomewhere among the music of his lights, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir sang, \"It is my heart I give to you\u2014\"\n\nFinally Linden stirred. With small movements, she shifted the position of her arms, adjusted her head on Covenant's shoulder. For a time, she conveyed the impression that she was listening to the Forestal, or to the rebuffed thrash of the winds beyond the bower, or to the restless concern of Covenant's pulse. Then she brushed a delicate kiss across his chest.\n\n\"Here's the funny part,\" she murmured. \"I tried to say practically the same thing to Jeremiah. I used different words, but the point was the same. Maybe I should listen to myself every once in a while. You shouldn't have to make a speech whenever I think that I've done something wrong.\"\n\nSuddenly she yawned. \"If I weren't so sleepy, I would ask you to make love again.\"\n\nEntirely to himself, Covenant released a deep sigh of relief. There were any number of questions for which he had no answer; but for the time being, he was content with the one that she had given him.\n\n_You do not forgive._\n\nPerhaps she did.\n\n## 1.\n\nA Tale Which Will Remain\n\nWeary to the core, and yet eased in more ways than she knew how to name, Linden Avery dozed in Covenant's arms, _Thomas of my heart_. But she did not sleep deeply or long. After a time, a rustle among the willow branches plucked at her attention. She felt the pressure of hooves on the sumptuous grass, followed by the sounds of feeding. Casting a bleary glance over her shoulder, she found horses in the bower.\n\nHyn and Hynyn. Khelen. Rallyn. And the Ardent's mulish steed, Mishio Massima. In this lifeless region, their need for fodder had become imperative.\n\nLinden closed her eyes again, nestled against the anodyne of Covenant's shoulder. Her only true lover\u2014He had never stopped loving her: she believed that now. To some extent, she understood why he had seemed to spurn her days ago. And those aspects of his singular straits that still baffled her did not mar her gratitude. The sensation that he had vindicated her, body and soul, was more profound than her fatigue. It felt numinous and ineffable: a homecoming of the spirit. Every part of him had become as precious to her as a sunrise.\n\nThe ring on her finger resembled certainty. She could have spent days with her husband in the balm of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's bower, and done so gladly.\n\nBut eventually the snorts and snuffles of horses cropping grass prodded her to wonder how much time had passed. Motionless so she would not disturb Covenant, she extended her senses beyond the Forestal's bedizened canopy, and was surprised to discern that dawn was near: the feigned dawn of a sunless day. The fourth day\u2014was it really the fourth?\u2014since the sun had failed to rise.\n\nHer companions had left her alone with Covenant for most of the night. Even Jeremiah\u2014\n\nCurious now, Linden raised her head to look around.\n\nMelodies gemmed the leaves overhead as if they had been set in place to watch over her and Covenant; but of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir there was no sign. He had hidden himself in the fecund intricacies of his hymns. Apart from the horses, she saw only the broad trunk of the tree, and beyond it the fane of the _Elohim_.\n\nGroaning softly, Covenant blinked his eyes open. When his gaze found Linden, he tried to smile: an awkward twist of his mouth. In the delicate light of the Forestal's music, the pale scar on his forehead seemed to glow. It might have been a nascent anadem, an old wound that was slowly becoming a crown. The stark silver of his hair promised flames.\n\nRemembering his ardor, she felt a delicious shiver like an intimation of the life that she wanted to have with him.\n\nAn impossible life while the Worm stalked the World's End, and Lord Foul plotted to reclaim Jeremiah.\n\nCovenant propped himself up on his elbows and looked her over with yearning in his eyes. He seemed to desire every contour. Then he frowned ruefully. Nodding toward the Ranyhyn and Mishio Massima, he muttered in mock-disgust, \"I probably shouldn't say this, Linden, but I don't really like horses.\"\n\nShe laughed softly. \"Neither do I.\" He made her name sound like a cherished endearment. \"But I'm very fond of Hyn,\" she added in case the mare understood her. \"And Khelen, of course.\"\n\nHow could she feel anything other than affection for them?\n\nAs if her response were a cue, Jeremiah called from within the fane, \"Mom? Can we come out? We're hungry. You have all the _aliantha_.\"\n\nShe was on the verge of saying, Sure, honey, when she remembered that she was naked.\n\nStifling a giggle, she answered, \"Give us a minute.\" She looked at Covenant, offered him a lop-sided smile, kissed him swiftly. Then she reached for her clothes.\n\n\"Hellfire,\" he growled under his breath. \"Bloody damnation.\"\n\nHe had not had enough of peace and privacy, or of her.\n\nShe pulled up her jeans, buttoned her shirt without regarding its tears and snags, its neat hole over her heart. Leaving her feet bare to enjoy the lush grass a little longer, she retrieved her Staff. Then she paused to study Covenant.\n\nHis leprosy had worsened in recent days. A slight haze occluded his vision. She suspected that he could not see clearly past twenty or thirty paces. And the numbness of his fingers stretched into his palms toward his wrists. His toes, and patches on the soles of his feet, had no sensation. Now the end of Kevin's Dirt had halted his deterioration. She found no indication that his symptoms were still spreading. Nevertheless he was farther from health than he had been when she had first resurrected him.\n\nHe fumbled into his jeans, worked his T-shirt over his head. While he tugged at the laces of his boots, she asked tentatively, \"Do you want any help, Thomas? I can heal\u2014\"\n\nHe hesitated for a moment, scowled, then shook his head. \"Thanks anyway. I can see well enough.\" He seemed to mean, Well enough for what I have to do. \"And I need my hands like this. The _krill_ gets hot. If I'm in too much pain, I won't be able to hold it.\"\n\nShe considered asking, Why is that important? How much do you know about what we have to do? But she rejected the idea. She did not want an answer: not really. She was in no hurry to think about the Despiser and the World's End.\n\nCovenant gave her a look full of hunger. Then he shrugged and nodded his readiness.\n\nHolding his gaze, she raised her voice. \"Come on out, Jeremiah. All of you. It's time.\"\n\nAt once, Jeremiah emerged from the temple. The sight of him both lifted and soured Linden's spirit. The emotions clenched inside him showed in his aura. He could smile because she had come back for him, and because she and Covenant were finally united\u2014and because he had been able to sleep. But the effects of Kastenessen's possession persisted: he did not know how to relieve them. And he had accomplished his one purpose. In the aftermath, he had lost the eagerness of his talent, the excitement which had driven and protected him. His ruined pajamas and his muddy gaze made him look haunted.\n\nBehind him loomed the Swordmainnir, grinning. Sleep and gladness had refreshed them, and their eyes as they regarded Linden and Covenant seemed to glow with warmth.\n\nRime Coldspray approached first, followed by Cirrus Kindwind, and then by Cabledarm brimming with restored wholeness. The other women carried their depleted waterskins. Among them, Stave walked like a man who had never been harmed.\n\nCovenant rose from the grass to greet them. With a mixture of pleasure and regret, he said gruffly, \"I should probably thank you. But I'm sure you can understand that one night just isn't enough.\" He touched Linden's shoulder briefly. \"I feel like I've been waiting for this my whole life, and now it's over\"\u2014he grimaced\u2014\"unless we can do things that are even more unlikely than what we've already done.\" Glowering like a man who did not know how to smile, he finished, \"Just once, I would like to face a challenge that turns out to be easy.\"\n\nLinden smiled for him. He had given her another gift to counterbalance the night's passing. Indirectly, perhaps, but unmistakably, he had already reassumed his rightful place as the leader of the Land's defenders.\n\n\"Yet betimes, Timewarden,\" replied the Ironhand, \"we are granted ease. To behold you and Linden Giantfriend as you are does not test my heart. It gives only joy.\"\n\nCovenant ducked his head. \"Maybe that's why I've always loved Giants. You remind me\u2014\" He spread his hands as if he had run out of words.\n\nLinden guessed that he was recalling Saltheart Foamfollower; or perhaps Pitchwife and the First of the Search.\n\nBut other matters quickly claimed the attention of the Swordmainnir. They were hungry, of course. And they knew as well as Linden did, or Covenant, that all of the company's deeds so far were only stopgaps. Branl outside the bower would have given warning of any imminent threat; but every peril was growing, and time was running out. With both pleasure and rue, the Ironhand and her comrades turned to Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's abundance of _aliantha_ and clean water.\n\nBefore Jeremiah could join them, Linden stopped him with a hug. \"Can we talk, honey?\" she asked privately. \"I haven't had a chance to hear how you're handling what you've been through.\"\n\nHe avoided her gaze. \"There isn't much to tell, Mom. The Giants and Stave did everything. I mean, pretty much. All I did was organize the pieces and make sure they fit.\"\n\nShe recognized the deflection in his voice, but she did not question it. Instead she insisted mildly, \"I still want to hear about it. This may sound strange, but you probably know me better than I know you. You've been my son for years, but I feel like we've just met. I want to understand how you think. Just give me a minute to finish getting dressed.\"\n\nThe boy acceded with a glum nod.\n\nCovenant left her with Jeremiah, but he did not follow the example of the Giants. While she pulled on her socks and boots, he asked Stave abruptly, \"Is Branl saying anything?\"\n\nStave faced the Unbeliever with his customary lack of expression. \"Ur-Lord, the storm of the Worm's coming approaches. He gauges that an hour remains ere we must flee its ravages.\" The former Master glanced away briefly before adding, \"Should the Worm quicken its rush, we will receive warning.\"\n\n\"Well, damn,\" Covenant muttered. \"I should probably be glad. At least that thing isn't heading for Mount Thunder. But it's _hungry_. It's going to hit hard when it gets here.\"\n\nScowling, he went to the brook for water. Then he moved toward the nearest shrub and began to eat.\n\nLinden winced to herself. Covenant had seen the Worm before: she had not. But she imagined that it was huge and virulent\u2014and she had no idea whether the Forestal would be able to stand against it. The fact that the _Elohim_ were no longer physically present in this manifestation of reality might lessen the Worm's impulse to overwhelm Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir. Or deprivation might make the instrument of the World's End savage.\n\nMore savage than it was already.\n\nShe swallowed an urge to look outside the willow, confirm Branl's perceptions for herself. The Humbled was not likely to be mistaken. And her concern for her son was more immediate.\n\n_There are worse things than being afraid, Mom. Being useless is worse._\n\nAs far as she knew, a sense of purpose was all that had defended him against the cost of his emotional wounds. Now he had nothing to build\u2014and perhaps nothing to hope for.\n\nIf so, she knew the feeling. But she had her faith in Covenant to steady her. And long ago, she had been assured, _You will not fail\u2014_ She wanted to share those gifts with Jeremiah if she could. They were better than despair.\n\nPraying that she would be able to give him what he needed, she beckoned. \"Come on, Jeremiah, honey. Let's go into your temple. We can be alone there.\"\n\nHe flinched. He seemed to hide behind the silted hue of his eyes. His manner said, No, although he did not refuse aloud.\n\n\"I know that you don't want to talk,\" she offered patiently. \"I don't mean to make you uncomfortable. But I'm your mother. Worrying about their children is what mothers do.\n\n\"Come on,\" she repeated. \"If you help me understand, you might find that you feel less alone.\"\n\nJeremiah opened his mouth, closed it again. He looked around at the Giants, and then at Covenant, as if he hoped that one of them would intervene. But the women only nodded encouragement; and Covenant's attention was elsewhere.\n\nThe boy avoided Linden's gaze. Looking truculent and defensive, he joined her. When she turned past the willow trunk toward the fane's opening, he followed, scuffing his feet in protest.\n\nInside the construct, she found bare dirt between crooked walls supporting a ceiling that looked like it might fall on her at any moment. Gaps among the stones let patches of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's shining into the gloom, but that glow did not lift the shadows from Jeremiah's mien. He might have been little more than an emblem of the deeper night awaiting the Earth.\n\nFacing him, she put the Worm out of her mind; braced herself to concentrate on her son. He could not rid himself of his demons if he did not acknowledge them.\n\nHe began before she could choose a question. \"I don't know what you think we have to talk about. I already told you. The Giants and Stave did practically everything. After that\u2014\" A scowl concentrated his features. Its tightness reminded her of the twitch at the corner of his eye when Roger and the _croyel_ had lured her into the past. \"They must have said what happened. The _Elohim_ came. So did Kastenessen. Then Covenant showed up. Infelice took Kastenessen with her.\n\n\"That's _it_. That's all there is. The rest was just waiting for you and trying not to think you were dead.\" From his fists, small flames squeezed between his fingers. A caper of yellow light and shadows up and down his body made him look lurid. As if he were pleading, he added, \"Nothing else matters.\"\n\nLinden waited until he started to squirm under the pressure of her regard. Then she folded her arms over the Staff of Law, held it against her heart, and tried to be gentle.\n\n\"Jeremiah, honey. This isn't doing you any good. I'm your mother. I know that there's more. But there's something that you don't know about me.\"\n\nHer years at Berenford Memorial had taught her more than one way to probe the people who needed her.\n\n\"I'm more like you than you think. There were a lot of things that I refused to talk about. I kept them secret. That hurt me, of course, but I could live with it. The part that I didn't understand\"\u2014the part that she had been fatally slow to recognize\u2014\"was that I hurt my friends at the same time.\n\n\"Now I don't want any more secrets. I kept mine too long, and I finally learned something about them.\"\n\nWhile he stared at her, she told him the truth as if she were tearing away the scab from an unhealed wound.\n\n\"They feel like they protect us\u2014like we don't have to be ashamed of our secrets, or ashamed of ourselves, as long as no one knows about them. We tell ourselves that we're doing the right thing by keeping them. But that isn't true. Mostly we keep them because we don't trust the people who love us. And _that's_ just another way of saying that we don't trust ourselves. We really _are_ ashamed. We think that we're at fault and we're going to be condemned, or that we're weak when everyone else is strong, or that we actually deserve to be in pain and alone.\n\n\"My secrets were different than yours,\" she confessed. \"Of course they were. They're probably even more shameful. And they hurt everything and everyone that I love.\"\n\nEvery death caused by the Worm, every instance of destruction, was her doing: the loss of the sun; the reaving of the heavens. She was only able to live with that fact because Covenant loved her\u2014and because her son's mind had been restored\u2014and because she had friends. And because she did not know what else she could have done.\n\nIn spite of Jeremiah's defenses, she reached him. She felt his sudden uncertainty\u2014his alarm\u2014as if it were physically solid. In some ways, he was indeed younger than his years. Hearing his mother accuse herself made him feel threatened. For years, she had been his foundation. Now he could not be sure of her.\n\n\"Like what?\" he asked in a taut voice. \"What did you keep secret?\"\n\nFrom his perspective, there were too many possibilities. Most of them had the power to undermine him.\n\nLinden did not hesitate; but she could not keep the harshness out of her voice, the implied savagery.\n\n\"Resurrecting Thomas. I knew that I was going to break every Law the Earth absolutely needs to survive, but I kept what I had in mind to myself.\" \u2014 _compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence_. \"I made sure that no one had a chance to stop me. Now it isn't just the world that's doomed. As soon as the Worm gets to the EarthBlood, Lord Foul will be able to escape.\n\n\" _I_ did that, Jeremiah.\n\n\"But I didn't keep what I was going to do secret because I wanted those things to happen. I didn't think about the danger at all. I kept it secret because I was afraid that my friends would interfere. I didn't trust them enough to believe that they would understand, or that they would still be my friends if they knew the truth. And I felt that way because I was ashamed. I was ashamed of not protecting you from Roger in the first place. I was ashamed of letting him and the _croyel_ trick me.\n\n\"We're in this mess right now because I kept secrets.\"\n\nJeremiah nodded, but he seemed unaware of his own response. His eyes were full of dismay. He sounded small and inexpressibly forlorn as he admitted, \"I hate what's happened to me. I hate how _dirty_ the _croyel_ made me feel. I could hide from the pain. I knew how to do that.\" He had concealed himself for most of his life. \"But I couldn't hide from all that sneering.\n\n\"And I hated the way it made me hurt you. I couldn't prevent anything. I hated being too weak to stop it. I wanted to hurt myself, not you.\" Under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir, he had stabbed her hand\u2014\"But I couldn't. I just couldn't.\"\n\nFacing his unshielded need, Linden fought down her yearning to put her arms around him. He was both a child and a young man; but it was the young man who most needed her succor. The child understood too well how to bury himself away. The young man was the Jeremiah who would have to face what was coming. And that Jeremiah would not be consoled by hugs.\n\nBut he was not done. As if he were cutting himself, he said, \"Then Kastenessen took me, and I was helpless again. He reached out and _took_ me like I was nothing. Good for nothing. Useless. And I felt how he felt. He burned every nerve in my whole body until I thought I loved it. I thought it made sense.\n\n\"I'm ashamed of _that_. I _should_ be. I wanted him _dead_ \u2014I want Lord Foul _dead_ \u2014so I don't have to be ashamed anymore. And I don't want to talk about it because talking just makes it more real. It just tells everybody how useless I am.\"\n\nFor a moment, Linden could not respond. Kastenessen had taken him? She nearly cried out. Covenant had not told her. No one had warned her.\n\nHer son must have inherited more than Earthpower from Anele.\n\nI want Lord Foul _dead_. How else did she expect him to feel? She had once been possessed herself. The force of her own desire to see the Despiser's end made her tremble.\n\nNevertheless she had to offer Jeremiah something. She had to try.\n\nHoarse with empathy and suppressed outrage, she asked, \"Don't you think that maybe we all feel that way? He's the Despiser. He's spent eons doing as much harm as he can to the whole world. Don't you think that maybe everyone you know wishes he could be destroyed?\"\n\nQuick as a slash, Jeremiah retorted, \"But you aren't useless! Covenant isn't. The Giants are strong. Stave and Branl are strong. Covenant has his ring. You have a ring and the Staff of Law. I've already used up everything I know how to do. Now I'm just nothing.\"\n\nIt was too much. Without pausing to consider what she said, Linden snapped, \"That's how _I_ feel. _I've_ already used up everything I know how to do.\" Before he could protest or withdraw, she explained, \"Oh, I understand what you're saying. And you're right. Of course you are. There are probably all kinds of things I can do that you can't. But, Jeremiah, _I don't know what they are_. I've done everything I can think of. It doesn't matter how much power I have because I have no idea what to do with it.\" Her son also had power. \"Compared to the Worm\u2014hell, compared to the _Despiser_ \u2014I'm as useless as you feel.\" Deliberately she made her heart as naked as his. \"We have the same problem. What's happening is too big for us. It's just too big.\"\n\nJeremiah did not look at her. He stood half turned away like a boy who wanted to run and hide; a boy who already knew where he could go to feel safe. But he did not go. She felt his attention cling to her while his fears and his pain urged him to flee.\n\n\"Then how?\" he asked like a waif too lonely to wail. \"How do you go on?\"\n\nLinden did not hesitate. \"I've been here before.\" She had come too far to falter now. \"That's the advantage of being older. I've been here before. With Thomas. I've seen what he can do. Maybe _I've_ come to the end of what I can do, but _he_ hasn't. And he doesn't believe Lord Foul can't be stopped. He doesn't even believe the world can't be saved.\"\n\nThinking, Listen to me, Jeremiah. _Hear_ me, she finished, \"As long as that's true, I won't give up. I will not give up.\"\n\nAfter a long moment, she added, \"And I certainly won't give up on you.\"\n\nHis struggle was terrible to watch. He knew how to protect himself. His craving for the sanctuary of graves was visible in the way he stood, in the clench of his fists and the hunch of his shoulders. Sharing herself, Linden had not reassured him: she had precipitated a crisis which he had been fighting to avoid. But he also had reason to know that safety was a trap; that every sanctuary was also a prison. On some deep level, he had chosen to free himself from his long dissociation. More consciously, he had chosen to do what he could for the _Elohim_. He understood the choice that his mother wanted him to make now.\n\nIn the same tone\u2014forlorn and frail and alone\u2014he told her, \"I'll try.\"\n\nThen he let Linden hug him.\n\nWith that she had to be content. Perhaps it was enough.\n\nhen she and Jeremiah left the temple to rejoin their companions, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir stood among them.\n\nAs before, he wore an aura of isolation, of harmonized and hermetic concentration, as if he were essentially alone. His eyeless visage did not regard the Giants or the horses. He appeared to ignore the _Haruchai_ and the Unbeliever. Nevertheless something in his stance or his singing conveyed the impression that he was aware of Linden. Melodies seemed to skirl around her like promises or compulsions.\n\nUnder the gemmed leaves and boughs of the willow, his music sounded like wrath.\n\nCovenant came to her at once, kissed her quickly, studied her with anxiety in his eyes. But she only returned his kiss and nodded: she did not answer his unspoken question. What he wanted to know would have to come from Jeremiah\u2014and at that moment, Jeremiah clearly did not mean to say anything. His face wore a sullen glower which masked his heart.\n\nThe Giants greeted her and Jeremiah with wry smiles and troubled frowns. Instead of asking questions, however, they busied themselves with necessary tasks. They had refilled most of their waterskins. Now they moved among the shrubs, gathering treasure-berries which they placed in the last two waterskins so that the company would not go hungry for a while.\n\nTo Linden, Stave bowed without any visible stiffness. After a moment's consideration\u2014or consultation\u2014he announced, \"Chosen, the storm of the Worm draws nigh. And its course lies directly toward us. We must depart.\"\n\nAh, God. Linden tightened her grip on the Staff until her hands ached. She was not ready\u2014and she had not eaten. Jeremiah had not.\n\nBut Hyn gave a soft whinny as if to confirm Stave's assertion. Facing Jeremiah, Khelen tossed his head and stamped one hoof. Restive and proud, Hynyn waited behind Stave.\n\nIn contrast, the Ardent's spavined horse, with its distinct ribs and slumped back, paid no heed to anything except grass. And Rallyn had already left the bower, presumably to join Branl.\n\nStudying Jeremiah, Covenant's expression settled into its familiar strictness, as exigent as a prophet's. \"I'm sorry, Linden,\" he said, muted and grim. \"We have to get out of here.\"\n\nBefore she could force herself to move, however, the Forestal spoke. He did not change his stance or gaze at anyone; but his song became words, as peremptory as commands. As if he were encouraging haste, he said, \"I have no staff.\"\n\nHe startled Linden; perplexed her. Fortunately Rime Coldspray seemed to understand him instinctively. Without hesitation, she replied, \"Great one, your lack is plain. If you will condone it, I will sever a branch to serve you, though I am loath to harm the loveliness and shelter which you have provided.\"\n\nCaerwood ur-Mahrtiir hummed to himself. After a brief pause, he answered, \"Do so. All of the world's woods know that boughs must fall like leaves\u2014aye, and the grandest of monarchs also\u2014when there is need.\"\n\nThe Ironhand bowed. Hurrying, she thrust her way between the hanging branches and lights to retrieve her stone glaive.\n\nWould a staff be enough? Would the ur-Mahrtiir himself suffice? Linden wanted to believe that. Long ago, the forbidding of the Forestals had blocked the Ravers along the whole length of Landsdrop. But the Worm was immeasurably greater than Lord Foul's most potent servants.\n\nHer hands on the Staff were suddenly damp. Sweat ran like spiders down her spine; like centipedes and maggots. Her flesh had not forgotten She Who Must Not Be Named. Nevertheless the Land's peril compelled her.\n\nHer voice shook as she asked the Forestal, \"Do you need any help?\" She had assured Jeremiah that she would not give up. \"Is there anything that I can do?\"\n\n\"There is.\" Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's music gathered around her. \"The approaching puissance is vast. As I am, I cannot withstand it. I require your strength.\"\n\nInvoluntarily she quailed. Her old friend might need more from her than she knew how to give. But Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir wove the many strands of his music into a soothing counterpoint. He stood directly in front of her now. And as she regarded him, another face seemed to emerge within his, softening his unanswerable visage. Like shadows, blurred and tenuous, the former Manethrall's features joined those of the Forestal.\n\nHumming in a more human voice, he said, \"Yet I have not forgotten you, Linden Avery, Ringthane and Chosen. You bear dooms greater than the fate of the _Elohim_ , or indeed of the world's remaining trees. You must not perish in my aid. I ask only your blessing.\"\n\nMy blessing? She mouthed the words, but made no sound. Oh, Mahrtiir! My _blessing_?\n\nCaerwood ur-Mahrtiir unfurled ancient tunes around him, verse and refrain. \"This invoked bourne of verdure and health is small. By the measure of the world's end, it is little more than vainglory. But I will not have it so. I will not. Here stands the forgotten truth of wood, just as the fane which preserves the _Elohim_ expresses another truth also forgotten. While my bourne endures, it affirms that the Worm and death are not the sum of all things.\n\n\"Linden Avery, Ringthane, friend. Bless this beauty with your strength. Nourish it, that I may suffice in its defense.\"\n\nNow she understood. Relief and sorrow clogged her throat as if she had inherited them from Caerroil Wildwood and his gibbet. She could not speak. But she understood. At one time\u2014a time as forgotten as other truths\u2014she had been a healer. Behind the wrath of the olden Forestals, and the barrenness of Gallows Howe, lay passions of another kind altogether.\n\nWhile her companions waited, staring, Linden stepped back from the Forestal; cleared enough space to wield her Staff. Then she reached into herself, reached into the black shaft defined by runes between bands of High Lord Berek's iron lore, and brought forth Earthpower and Law for their intended purpose: not for battle and killing, but for sustenance and restoration.\n\nThis might be her last chance to use her Staff condignly. From this moment on, she foresaw only strife and carnage; possible Desecrations. With her whole heart, she sought to give her best to Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's bower.\n\nHer health-sense guided her, first into recognition of the thetic nature of the Forestal's harmonies, then into awareness of their interplay, then into sensitivity to their tones and timbres. Her power was as black as the coming storm of the Worm, but it was made for this, God, it was _made for this_. Perhaps her magicks were flames. Perhaps she only imagined them as flames. Nevertheless they suited her purpose. When she had refined her fire to suit the chords and lines of the music which inspired the lush grass and the rushing brook, the willow with its limbs and leaves and glimmerings, the bedizened shade of the sanctuary, she poured out fuligin in the form of vitality.\n\nShe went deep into the dirt to fill it with Earthpower, feed every questing root. Baked and beaten earth she enriched until it became loam. From the soil, she brought Law and energy upward, encouraging sluggish sap, enhancing the hardiness of bark, suffusing boughs and twigs and leaves with anticipation. Among the branches, she added luster to the Forestal's gleams until they shone like refined stars.\n\nEverything that Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir had brought into being, she increased. The willow stretched taller, spread its shelter wider. Bursting from the ground, the brook became a stream gurgling with gladness. Grasses grew like dancing until they twined around the feet and ankles of the company. The faces poised before Linden were lit with spangles like epiphanies.\n\nIn response, the Giants bowed low, too entranced for speech. Covenant's eyes reflected the shining of leaves. Moved in spite of his mood, Jeremiah brought forth gentle flames the color of sunshine from his hands and forearms. Only Stave did not react. He stood with his arms folded as if the sole task required of him was to bear witness.\n\nAnd as Linden worked, the Forestal himself seemed to grow taller. His aura of exaltation and severity expanded until the nearest Giants and even Jeremiah backed away, giving themselves room for wonder. The promise of his mien became a cynosure, as compelling as a demand. Soon his fierce vigor filled the bower.\n\nHe needed only an instrument to wield his will against the Worm.\n\nThen the Ironhand returned, harried by winds, to give Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir what he lacked. While Linden withdrew her power and stepped aside, Rime Coldspray bowed deeply, showing her blade naked in her hands. When the Forestal nodded his consent, she moved to the edge of the bower, readied her glaive.\n\nWith one stroke, she lopped off a limb as tall as she was. As she did so, a sting of pain shot through the music, and the lights of the Forestal's theurgy glittered furiously. But the willow's distress soon passed, leaving a renewed tranquility under the canopy.\n\nLeaves and twigs and all, Coldspray brought the bough to Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir.\n\nThough it was twice his height, he accepted it easily; held it high as if it were the chorus of a hymn. For an instant, all of its leaves quivered. Then they began to glisten as if they were dewed with power.\n\n\"I am armed,\" he sang. \"Let every force and foe which disdains the glory of wood and green be warned. Though I have no forest to sustain me, I will not be thwarted while one tree stands at my back.\"\n\nThrough a quick blur of tears, Linden watched him as if he had been transformed again; as if he had surpassed his given exaltation.\n\n\"Linden,\" Covenant murmured as if he had no other language for what he felt. \"Linden. Hellfire.\"\n\n\"Nonetheless, ur-Lord,\" Stave put in brusquely, \"we must depart. If we do not attain a considerable distance, we will not survive the Worm.\"\n\nCovenant shook himself. He seemed to struggle for words. \"I know. We should go.\"\n\nHis tone said, _Now_.\n\n\"Aye, Timewarden,\" the Ironhand sighed. \"Doom crowds close upon us. We dare the Worm at our peril. We must trust that the Forestal who was once our friend and companion will not fail.\"\n\nMore firmly, she ordered her Swordmainnir to reclaim their armor and weapons. While Linden tried to break free of the spell which Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir had cast on her, the Giants gathered up their stores of water and _aliantha_. Then they ran from the bower.\n\nCovenant came to her with pride in his eyes. Wrapping his arms around her, he assured her softly, \"We can do this. Somehow we can do it. We just have to get started. As long as we're together\u2014\"\n\nHe steadied her. Somehow we can\u2014If the Forestal was strong enough.\n\nAfter a moment, she nodded.\n\nWith an air of regret, Covenant released her.\n\nA heartbeat later, Stave put his hands on Linden's waist and boosted her unceremoniously onto Hyn's back. As her muscles settled into their familiar places astride the mare, the former Master went to help Jeremiah mount. Covenant heaved himself into Mishio Massima's saddle. Stave sprang for Hynyn.\n\nBefore Linden was ready\u2014before she could possibly be ready\u2014the riders surged into motion.\n\nAn alteration in the Forestal's music parted the canopy to the northwest, opening a path out of the bower. Together Covenant and Linden, Jeremiah and Stave rode from shelter and solace into the bleak dawn of a sunless world.\n\neaving the protection of the willow and Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir was like passing from Andelain into the virulence of the Sunbane. Linden and her companions staggered to a halt. The Ranyhyn flinched; rolled their eyes. Mishio Massima shied and crabbed, nearly unhorsed Covenant. Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's music had concealed the extent of the peril. Outside the bower, the storm's scale was unveiled.\n\nIt was enormous.\n\nDuring the night, the blast of presage had reconciled its confusion. Instead of writhing from one direction to another like a beast in agony, it had become a stiff assault from the northeast; a gale arising from the heart of the utter blackness that now loomed into the heavens like the front of an atmospheric tsunami. Eerie ululations like the anguish of ghouls sounded in the distance. Scourged gusts scooped groans from the craters that littered the ground; scaled into wailing on the ragged edges of the belabored ridge. If the Forestal's theurgy had not protected the willow, its leaves would have been torn away, scattered like debris. Boughs would have split like screams.\n\nThat was bad enough; but there was worse\u2014\n\nThe core of the storm was a blare of _might_ that defied perception: too loud to be heard, too dark for vision; too savage to register as anything except horror. But at the fringes of the Worm's approach, thunder crashed, a wild barrage like a convulsion that would never end. It seethed like the collapse of cliffs. Within it, armies of lightning stalked the plain, hammering the earth until the very dirt seemed to erupt and burn. Sudden and erratic, flashes lurid as bruises punctuated the blackness. On either side of the advance, desolations writhed like orgies, articulating the Worm's hunger.\n\nGod in Heaven! Linden had never\u2014\n\nInstinctively she snatched fire from her Staff. The sheer force of the blast threatened to extinguish her mind. But Earthpower sharpened her senses, made her more vulnerable. It seemed to _expose_ her, as if the magnitude of the storm served to measure her inadequacy.\n\nShe had unleashed this doom.\n\nHer strength left her. Her power became dust and ashes in her veins. Her heart lurched to a halt.\n\nCowering into herself, she did not feel the Giants running toward her. She hardly noticed them as they joined her. Their cataphracts would not protect them. Their swords were useless. She could not hear herself gasping, \"Oh, God. Oh, God.\"\n\nIn size, the Worm may have been _no more than a range of hills_ , but it had enough raw force to rive the world.\n\nHow close was it? Two leagues? Three?\n\nDistance meant nothing to such a creature. It was already too near. It would arrive more swiftly than any Ranyhyn.\n\nThen one of the Swordmainnir shouted, \"Behold the Forestal!\"\n\nLike a strike on an anvil, Linden's heart beat again. It began racing.\n\nMahrtiir!\n\nBehind her, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir emerged from his bourne. Bearing his staff like an emblem of defiance, he strode to meet the gale.\n\nHe did not go far. Less than a stone's throw from the battered drape of the willow, he stopped; prepared to make his stand. He must have been singing, but the wind's thrash and groan and howl tore the sound away.\n\nLinden reached out for Jeremiah; caught his arm as if her mere grip had the ability to protect him. When he glanced at her, she saw a wasteland of shock in his eyes. Nothing in his life had prepared him for the magnitude of the Worm's violence.\n\nWhile she held her son, Stave held her. The Giants stared wildly, like women caught in the toils of the Soulbiter.\n\nCovenant struggled to keep his seat until Branl came to his side, helped him control the Ardent's horse. Then the Unbeliever panted hoarsely, \"Run! Hellfire! We have to _run_!\"\n\nTransfixed by Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's daring, Linden could not drag herself away; but Hyn chose for her by surging into motion. Swordmainnir slapped themselves and each other, forced their limbs to move. Branl hauled on Mishio Massima's reins until the horse sprang forward. A stentorian peal from Hynyn seemed to take Khelen by the throat.\n\nThe company broke and ran as if it had been routed.\n\nOn some level, Linden recognized that she and her companions had to do more than simply evade the Worm itself. They had to get beyond the Worm's cloak of power. Those lightnings would sear the flesh from their bones. The winds would rip the riders from their mounts, knock even Giants to the ground. Yet she did not heed such things. Unregarded, her hand lost its hold on Jeremiah. She could not look away from the Forestal.\n\nSmall against the background of the bright willow, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir stood before the blast. It wrenched at him, tried to shred his robe. Shafts of lightning marched closer with every heartbeat. Gales tore the branches of his staff. Still the leaves clung to their twigs: the glitter of song clung to the leaves. With music and wood, he opposed the dark as if he had within him the authority to deny annihilation.\n\nLinden could not believe that he was strong enough. He was a Forestal, transformed scion of a lineage potent against armies and Ravers. His puissance surpassed the Lords of old with all their lore. But the Worm exceeded every other living force. It dwarfed the exertion of wild magic and Law which had plucked the huge creature from its slumber. And Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir could not draw on the spirit of a spanning woodland, the will and energy of trees in their millions. He had only the willow at his back.\n\nThe willow\u2014and the fane with its treasure of _Elohim_.\n\nStill the company ran. Urgent and frantic, straining to their limits, the horses and the Giants ran. Branl warded Covenant. Stave brought Hynyn between Hyn and Khelen, watched over Linden and Jeremiah with his lone eye. Rime Coldspray and her comrades stretched their strides and raced for the horizon, running heavy as boulders, and yet fleet as driven seas.\n\nToo frightened to shout, Jeremiah flailed his arms, flinging streams of Earthpower in all directions as if he sought to haul his companions forward. The storm brushed his theurgy aside like dust.\n\nHolding her breath, Linden watched the Forestal.\n\nHe dwindled with distance, shrank in proportion to the Worm's vastness. As the storm towered over him, an ebon and unanswerable tsunami, his staff's gleaming and the willow's seemed smaller and smaller. They became puny things, ineffable and frail. At any moment, they would be extinguished. In its hunger, the Worm would swat them out of existence and take no notice.\n\nYet Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir stood. He sang, and refused to be silenced. The Worm's tumult was less than a league away, less than half a league; and still he stood. He was more than Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir. He was also Manethrall Mahrtiir, Raman, given to service. He refused as if his _No_ could sway even the unthinking appetite of the World's End.\n\nThunder shook the ground. When Linden risked a glance at the nearest lightnings, the boil of blackness, she saw that the company was too slow. The Giants and the horses were sprinting hard enough to burst the hearts of weaker beings, but they could not run fast enough. The storm was too wide: they had not begun their flight in time to avoid it.\n\nAnd yet the argent of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's forbidding endured.\n\n\"Linden Avery!\" Somehow Stave made himself heard through the chaos of running and winds, lightning and thunder. \"Chosen, attend! The Forestal succeeds! The Worm slows!\"\n\nImpossible! She stared in disbelief. The Forestal could not\u2014\n\nHe could. Caerroil Wildwood and Linden herself had given him enough.\n\nThe storm inundated her senses. Its might blotted out the heavens. Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir's light had become tiny in the face of the tremendous black. Nevertheless she saw the change of pace, not at the storm's core, but at its near edge.\n\nStave was right. The Worm was slowing down. It was actually _slowing down_.\n\nAnd slowing more and more as the Forestal's denial stiffened.\n\n\"Hell and blood!\" Covenant yelled. \"He's doing it! He's by God _doing it_!\"\n\nManethrall Mahrtiir, who had found his heart's desire\u2014and had come back.\n\nIt was not enough. Running as they were, Linden and her companions might escape the storm. If the Worm came to a complete halt\u2014if it paused to confront the Forestal, however briefly\u2014they might evade the lightning; the worst of the vehemence. But that alone would not save them. The World's End might then turn from Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir to follow the scent of EarthBlood. If it did, the storm would leave the bower and the fane intact. Instead it would swing in _this_ direction, away from the ridge. With one lunge, the Worm would send its ferocity raving toward the riders and the Giants. They would die like Joan in her former world, burned by blasts which no mortal flesh could withstand.\n\nStill the Worm _was_ halting. For this one moment, at least, the Forestal sufficed.\n\nWithout warning, Covenant also halted. Wrestling with the reins, he forced Mishio Massima to obey him. While the rest of the company wheeled in confusion, he swung out of the saddle, snatched at the bundled _krill_ , uncovered the blaze of the gem.\n\nWaving his arms, he shouted, \"Get together! As close as you can! I don't know how long Mahrtiir can forbid that thing! We have to get _out_ of here!\"\n\nLinden gaped at him. She felt snared by the Worm and the storm and Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir; unable to break free. But Hyn heeded Hynyn's whinny, or Rallyn's. In a rush, the mare crowded close to Hynyn and Khelen. Frantically the Ironhand and her comrades formed a tight cordon around Linden, Stave, and Jeremiah. Only Covenant and Branl, Mishio Massima and Rallyn stood apart.\n\nBranl had dismounted beside Covenant. With negligent ease, the Humbled tossed Longwrath's flamberge to the nearest Giant. At once, Covenant pitched himself into Branl's arms. As Branl crouched low, Covenant stabbed the _krill_ 's blade into the dirt.\n\nBright silver bloomed from the cut. Sustained by white gold and will, it clung to the ground as though it fed from a trough of oil.\n\nSwift as only the _Haruchai_ could be, Branl carried Covenant around the company while Covenant dragged the point of High Lord Loric's dagger through the earth. And as they moved, the _krill_ gouged a shining line in the earth, a curve becoming a circle.\n\nDirt was not tinder. It was not wood or oil. Nonetheless it held Covenant's power, undaunted by the gale, while the curve extended to enclose the company.\n\nMore quickly than Linden would have thought possible, Covenant and Branl completed their circle.\n\nImmediately the Humbled surged upright. Still carrying Covenant, he sprinted for the horses. Tossing Covenant deftly into Mishio Massima's saddle, Branl leapt for Rallyn's back.\n\nNow the line of light began to gutter and fade. But Covenant did not hesitate. With his left hand, he slapped his wedding band against the dagger's jewel.\n\nSudden incandescence surrounded the company. Without transition, the world vanished.\n\nLinden heard herself cry out for Mahrtiir, but there was nothing that she could do.\n\n## 2.\n\nToward Confrontation\n\nLinden Avery had passed through _caesures_. She had been taken out of her time by Roger Covenant and the _croyel_ , and had been returned by the compassionate lore of the Mahdoubt. The arcane abilities of the Harrow and the Ardent had conveyed her to and from the Lost Deep. Most recently, Caerroil Wildwood's last deed in life had restored her to her present.\n\nNevertheless she was not prepared for the sensations of being rushed out of time and space within a circle of wild magic.\n\nIf she could have stood apart from herself and watched, she might have noted the similarity between this translation and the reflexive evasion of linear time which had preserved her and Anele from the collapse of Kevin's Watch. She might have recognized that she and her companions occupied a void like a bubble in the blood of reality, an embolism that floated on its own currents, ignoring the natural pulse and flood of life. She might have realized that she herself was alight; that Covenant's use of the _krill_ and his wedding band drew a response from her own ring. She might have become aware that she was being reincarnated as much as translocated.\n\nBut she could not stand apart or think. Instead she simply went blank. And after an eternity or an instant, she returned to her mortality with a visceral crash while Hyn pounded beneath her, galloping back into the darkened world.\n\nShe felt blind, blinded, yet she saw everything at once; saw it limned in argent, distinct as a cut against the gloom, as if each detail had been etched in her brain.\n\nLed by Branl on Rallyn and Covenant on Mishio Massima, the company hammered the ground. They had been stationary: now they ran like panic. Fleet and certain, Hynyn kept his position between Hyn and Khelen, Linden and Jeremiah. Stave's flat visage showed no surprise. But Jeremiah reeled on his mount's back, caught off balance: only Khelen's care kept him from falling. Around him, the Giants staggered on the sudden surface. Their eyes rolled: they gasped and gaped. Yet they ran.\n\nTogether they followed the bottom of a wide depression which may once have been a swale, before it was baked dry. Patches of scrannel grass still clung to the dirt, rough-edged and stubborn. Between them, the ground was erratically cobbled with worn stones. Pummeled winds brought whiffs of dampness and rot from Linden's right: a direction which she instinctively knew was north. Ahead of the company, the terrain rose gradually toward a rumpled landscape a league or more distant.\n\nCovenant lurched in his saddle. He had dropped the reins to strike Loric's dagger with his ring. His boots had lost the stirrups. In another instant, he might fall. But then Branl caught Mishio Massima's halter to slow the beast. A heartbeat later, he snatched the _krill_ from Covenant. Covenant slumped forward, clutched at his mount's mane to keep his seat.\n\nThe Humbled had done such things before. He must have done them often.\n\nThe _krill_ 's brightness shrouded the heavens, made night of the twilit morning beyond its ambit. Everything outside its illumination had a look of fatality, of waiting, as if the unnatural dusk masked an ambush.\n\nAs Rallyn and Mishio Massima eased their pace, the other Ranyhyn shortened their strides. Around the riders, Rime Coldspray and her comrades relaxed their haste. Running became trotting; became walking. Covenant pushed himself upright, prodded his boots unsteadily into the stirrups.\n\nWinds boiled among the companions, tangled hair, flicked grit at faces. Here, however, the disturbance in the air was only a faint echo of the Worm's harsh turmoil. As Linden struggled to recover from the shock of translation, her first coherent thought was that the company must have crossed a considerable distance: far enough to pass beyond sight or sense of the Worm's storm. Whatever happened\u2014or had already happened\u2014to Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir and the fane, Linden and her companions had escaped.\n\nBut they had not done so instantaneously. She felt in her nerves that a portion of the morning was gone, perhaps an hour, perhaps more.\n\nHer ring still burned in response to Covenant's burst of wild magic, but its power was fading.\n\n\"Oh, wow!\" Jeremiah panted as if he rather than Khelen had galloped. \"How did he do that? Where are we?\"\n\nEager for solid ground, he leaned forward, swung one leg to slide off his mount.\n\nSilver-edged images lingered in Linden's mind, after-flashes of vision. Darkness clotted the surrounding twilight. Ahead of the company, the slope out of the depression or swale was still a stone's throw for a Giant away. Half buried stones staggered like the remnants of a broken road among stretches of rough grass. The grass blades were more grey than green, a hue like a memory\u2014\n\nLong ago, days or lifetimes in the past, Anele had stood on grass outside Mithil Stonedown. In a rancid voice, he had said, _There is more, but of my deeper purpose I will not speak_.\n\nOn grass that resembled this.\n\nAbrupt connections snapped into focus. Too late, Linden cried out, \"Jeremiah! _No!_ \"\n\nHe reached out and took me like I was nothing.\n\nBut Stave was faster. He seemed to know her thoughts; or he had his own fears. As she began to shout, he vaulted from Hynyn's back. Swift as thought, he caught Jeremiah before the boy's bare feet touched the ground and the grass. With a heave, Stave returned Jeremiah to Khelen.\n\n\"Mom?\" Jeremiah yelped. \"What\u2014?\"\n\nNow a different kind of shock reeled through Linden. Kastenessen was gone\u2014but he had not been Anele's only vulnerability. More than once, another being had possessed the old man.\n\n\"This grass,\" Stave stated flatly, \"is of another kind. That which cloaks the hills about Mithil Stonedown grows more thickly, and remains shorter.\"\n\nAnd nothing had harmed Anele among the lush verdure of the Verge of Wandering. Still\u2014\n\nLinden studied the grass, probed it with her health-sense. \"But it's similar. I'm not sure that it's safe.\"\n\n\" _Mom?_ \" Jeremiah insisted.\n\nThe Giants stared. Some of them gathered nearby. The others seemed content to stand and breathe. None of them interrupted Linden's concentration.\n\nCovenant turned his horse to face her. He watched her as though he knew what was in her heart.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Jeremiah,\" she said, thinking furiously; trying to calm herself. \"I didn't mean to startle you. But I don't know how much you've inherited from Anele. Kastenessen wasn't the only one who could use him. Lord Foul\u2014\" The memory of the Despiser's voice in Anele's mouth ached like a bruise too deep to heal. \"Whenever his feet touched a certain kind of grass, Lord Foul could take him.\"\n\nWhenever the Despiser had felt like taunting her.\n\nEven his aid had been manipulation. True, he had led her to hurtloam. Indirectly he had enabled her to avoid recapture by the Masters. But that ploy had served his purposes as much as hers. If the Masters had been able to prevent her from reaching the comparative sanctuary of the Ramen and the Verge of Wandering\u2014prevent Hyn from choosing her\u2014prevent her from retrieving the Staff of Law\u2014she would never have been able to find Loric's _krill_ and resurrect Covenant. But she also would not have awakened the Worm.\n\n\"I don't want that to happen to you,\" she told her son. \"It was agony for Anele, but at least he knew how to mask himself. There were parts of him that Lord Foul and Kastenessen didn't recognize or couldn't reach. If you have to defend yourself that way\u2014if you go back into hiding\u2014I'm afraid that you won't be able to get out again.\"\n\nHe had no bones with which he might devise another portal. His racecar was gone.\n\nThe troubled silt of Jeremiah's eyes held more than surprise; more than chagrin. Their sullen smolder looked like fury.\n\n\"That doesn't make sense,\" he protested. _I want Lord Foul dead_. \"I stood on grass when we went to the Sarangrave. When we drank at the edge of the marsh. Nothing happened.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Linden admitted. She had not known then that he was vulnerable. \"But maybe that was the wrong kind of grass. And Lord Foul isn't Kastenessen,\" _compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence_. \"He only shows himself when it suits him.\n\n\"We know that he wants you. At some point, he's going to try to take you.\"\n\nShe ached to protect her son; but her warning seemed to miss its target. His expression grew darker.\n\n\"Fine,\" he muttered. \"Let him try. I don't care. Kastenessen surprised me. Lord Foul won't.\"\n\nHis attitude stung her. For the first time in their lives together, she wanted to slap him; to get his attention somehow. But she held back. In spite of her alarm, she could see that he would not heed her: not on this subject, at this moment. His bitterness was too strong. And she knew how he felt. His manner reminded her of herself when she had been about his age, at her mother's abject bedside. If anyone then had told her not to end her mother's life, she would not have listened. Her own distress had ruled her, and she had already chosen her path.\n\n\"Then don't rush into it,\" she replied unsteadily. \"It's going to happen whether you're ready for it or not. And the Despiser is stronger than Kastenessen.\" A lot stronger. \"Give yourself as much time as you can.\"\n\nJeremiah glared at her for a moment. Then he turned his head away. \"Fine,\" he snorted again: a response that gave her nothing.\n\nLinden winced. She did not know what to say. She had been possessed once herself. More than once, she had fled within herself in terror and dismay. She knew at least that much about what he had endured\u2014and what lay ahead of him. But she could not simply _tell_ him what those experiences had taught her, or what they had cost. No description would suffice.\n\nAching for him, she sighed, \"All right. As long as you know what might happen.\"\n\nStill Jeremiah kept his head turned away as if he were thinking about something else; as if in his mind he had left her behind.\n\nKindwind opened her mouth to say something, then reconsidered and remained silent.\n\nNow Covenant came closer, steering Mishio Massima among the Giants. The comprehension in his eyes made Linden want to hide in his arms as if he had the power to spare her; as if his embrace might heal the wound of her son's straits. But when he reached her side, he said nothing about Jeremiah. Instead he announced, \"That was easier than I expected.\"\n\nHe may have been trying to deflect her from her fears.\n\n\"Those translations are draining. I can't even begin to tell you how tired I've been since I went after _turiya_. Branl had to carry me. By the time I got to Kastenessen, I was so exhausted I didn't think I could stay on my feet. But this time\u2014\n\n\"Hellfire, Linden. This time I had help. I felt it. With so many of us, it still should have been difficult, even for a rightful wielder. But you helped me.\"\n\nThen he changed the subject. Without transition, he asked, \"Can you see the stars? My eyes aren't that good anymore.\"\n\nThe stars\u2014?\n\nFor no apparent reason, the Swordmainnir began to relax. The Ironhand nodded. Frostheart Grueburn chuckled softly. Onyx Stonemage, Cirrus Kindwind, and the others looked bewildered for a moment. Then they smiled. They seemed to understand Covenant better than Linden did.\n\n\"The stars, Linden,\" he insisted patiently. \"Are they dying? Are they all dead?\"\n\nAfter an instant like another translocation, she caught up with him. The Giants were shaking their heads, but they let her answer Covenant.\n\nThe stars. When she looked at the sky, she saw that they were fewer than they had been mere days ago. The gaps between them were wider. Nevertheless no more of the forlorn lights were winking out. From horizon to horizon, they remained as bright as supplications in the black heavens.\n\n\"All right,\" she breathed as if she had forgotten to be afraid. \"All _right_. He did it. He's doing it. My God, he's _doing_ it.\"\n\nMahrtiir.\n\n\"No.\" Covenant spoke softly, but he sounded like he was crowing. \"You did that. You. You took Mahrtiir into a _caesure_ and brought back a Forestal. You made him strong enough to forbid the actual Worm of the World's End. Sure, _he's_ saving the _Elohim_. But _you_ made it possible.\"\n\nHe was looking, not at her, but at Jeremiah. He was trying to tell Jeremiah something\u2014\n\nBut he did not wait for some sign that the boy had heard him. Glancing around the cluster of Giants, he pointed at Linden with one foreshortened finger.\n\n\"My wife,\" he pronounced as if those two words were a celebration. \"Anele was right. The world won't see her like again.\"\n\nHe took her by surprise. For a moment, her eyes filled with tears. She could hardly remember being a woman who wept too easily.\n\nWiping her cheeks, she missed Jeremiah's immediate reaction. When she turned to him again, his shoulders were hunched, strangling emotions. \"Fine,\" he rasped yet again. He was talking to Covenant. \"I saved the _Elohim_. Stave did. The Giants did. You did. Mom did. Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir did. That's great.\n\n\"What do we do now?\"\n\nSeveral of the Giants grimaced at his tone. Scowling, Covenant showed his teeth as if he wanted to take a bite out of the boy. But it was Stave who answered.\n\n\"We have shared an abundance of _aliantha_ ,\" he remarked with particular dispassion. \"You and the Chosen have not.\"\n\nThe Ironhand nodded gravely. \"Indeed, Stave Rockbrother.\" At the same time, Cabledarm and Halewhole Bluntfist raised their waterskins.\n\n\"Fortuitously,\" Cabledarm proclaimed to Linden, \"we are Giants, and provident. In addition to water, we bear treasure-berries. They will feed us well enough for the present, and perhaps for the morrow as well.\"\n\nFor a moment, Linden simply stared while her emotions tried to go in too many directions at once. Then she murmured an inadequate thanks.\n\nYet she could not leave Jeremiah as he was, not without offering him some form of acknowledgment. In the act of reaching for Bluntfist's waterskin, she paused. \"But Jeremiah is right. What _are_ we going to do? Saving the _Elohim_ is just a delay. We have to do more.\" With a quick glance at Covenant, she suggested, \"Maybe we can talk about that while Jeremiah and I eat.\"\n\nJeremiah accepted treasure-berries from Cabledarm as if he were turning away. Nevertheless his gaze followed every shift and flicker of Covenant's reaction.\n\nFrowning, Covenant considered Linden's suggestion. After a moment, he muttered uncomfortably, \"We probably should.\"\n\nAt once, the Giants gathered around him. Stave remounted Hynyn, and Branl nudged Rallyn closer. In their disparate fashions, they all needed a sense of purpose as badly as Jeremiah did. A chance to live\u2014or to give the end of their days meaning.\n\nSitting Mishio Massima in the center of the company, Covenant asked Branl, \"How far have we come?\"\n\nThe last of the Humbled shifted his grip on Longwrath's flamberge. \"Not less than a score of leagues, ur-Lord, else we would be able to discern the storm of the Worm.\"\n\n\"Northwest, right?\"\n\n\"Our heading has been chiefly to the west. We stand some small distance from the southmost verge of the Sarangrave. We must pass the wetland to gain Landsdrop and the Upper Land.\"\n\nCovenant nodded. \"And how much time did we lose?\"\n\nBranl glanced at Stave. \"We gauge that our passage has consumed little more than an hour.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" Rime Coldspray assented. \"So it appears to me also.\"\n\nLinden did not bother to concur. While she listened, she concentrated on shaking out berries from the waterskin and tossing them into her mouth; relishing the abrupt tang of energy and health. The seeds she discarded as she ate.\n\nCovenant nodded again. \"Good. Since the Forestal has held on this long, we can at least hope he won't fail. The Worm will move on eventually, if it hasn't already. It's fast, and it'll go faster when it gets closer to _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. But we can be pretty fast ourselves now. Maybe we can get where we're going faster than Lord Foul expects.\"\n\nThe Giants watched him in silence, waiting for an explanation. Like Jeremiah\u2014like Linden\u2014they had come to the end of what they knew how to do. Now they sailed chartless seas and needed a heading.\n\n\"So.\" Covenant seemed to be reasoning aloud, speaking primarily to himself. \"Landsdrop. The Upper Land. Mount Thunder. That's where Lord Foul is. He has to be. He needs to be close enough to She Who Must Not Be Named to take advantage of whatever She does, but not close enough to be in danger himself. And he has to be able to organize his forces, all of which are somewhere inside or near Mount Thunder.\" Then he shook his head. \"Hell and blood. I think that's a mistake.\"\n\nLinden agreed. Of course it would be a mistake to approach Mount Thunder. She did not doubt Covenant, and Jeremiah had to be protected.\n\nBut the Giants passed puzzled glances back and forth; and Rime Coldspray held up her hands. \"A moment, Timewarden, I implore you. Your thoughts out-pace ours. Are you certain of our destination? Have you determined our purpose?\n\n\"Surely it would be folly to hazard Mount Thunder. You speak of She Who Must Not Be Named and other forces. I must also name your fell son, whose command of the Cavewights appears complete. I deem it unwise to trust that his puissance has been diminished by the severing of Kastenessen's human hand.\n\n\"Yet these are lesser concerns. Of greater import is the Worm, a threat to pale all other perils. I know not how we may oppose it, but we can accomplish naught if we do not make the attempt. Therefore surely we must follow, hoping to forestall the Worm from _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. How otherwise may the Land and the Earth and life be preserved?\"\n\nHer comrades murmured their agreement; but both Stave and Branl frowned as if they wanted to challenge the Ironhand's assessment. Jeremiah watched Covenant with an intensity that resembled nausea. His mouth shaped words that Linden could not interpret. They may have been protests.\n\n\"Well,\" Covenant said gruffly. For a moment, he appeared to wrestle with himself. Then he announced with an air of defiance, \"I disagree.\n\n\"I won't try to make your decisions for you. Even Linden and Jeremiah\u2014you all have to do what you think is right. But _I'm_ going to Mount Thunder. I have to try to stop Lord Foul. And I need you with me. I need you all.\n\n\"It's not just that I have no earthly idea what to do about the Worm. That thing is part of the created world. It's inherent to the way this world works. There isn't enough power anywhere to get in its way. But on top of that, I think the Despiser is more important. He's absolutely more important to _me_.\" Passion mounted in him. He did not raise his voice, but it thrummed with intensity nonetheless, with the authority of earned conviction. His whole body seemed to imply imminent wild magic. \"Ever since I first came here\u2014ever since he and the Creator picked me\u2014my life has been about Lord Foul. He scares me worse than any ordinary death, even if the people I love most are the ones who do the dying. I have to face that. I have to do something about it.\n\n\"Sure, if we could stop the Worm, Foul would be stuck in his prison. But we can't, and he won't. Think about that. Think about setting Despite loose in eternity, where it can pollute every new creation just like it's polluted this one. That's bad enough. Hellfire, _that's bad enough_! But it could become even worse. If he gets his hands on Jeremiah, he'll try to trade places with the Creator. He'll try to make a prison that will put an end to the very _possibility_ of creation. He'll wipe out everything that has ever lived, everything that ever might live, every conceivable world.\n\n\"If he can do that, _eternity_ will become the kind of wasteland we've only seen in _caesures_. Then there won't be anything anywhere ever again. Nothing except scorn until even Lord Foul's heart breaks.\"\n\nAmid the shocked silence of the company and Linden's dismay, Jeremiah asked like sneering, \"So your solution is to take me _closer_ to him?\"\n\nCovenant wheeled his mount to face the boy. \"Hell, Jeremiah, he can get you anywhere. All he needs is the right kind of grass and one mistake. Then you'll give him whatever he wants. That won't change if we're a hundred leagues from here fighting the Worm. And you'll never get a chance to find out what how you feel and what you can do are good for.\"\n\nThen he turned Mishio Massima toward Linden. His eyes blazed with need. \"Linden, I'm sorry. I have to do this. Eventually we all have to face the things that scare us most. And I'm not actually convinced that the Worm can't be stopped. I just don't think _we_ can stop it. There's more going on here than just the Worm and Lord Foul and Jeremiah and more enemies than we can count. I don't know what it is, but I don't believe\u2014I don't choose to believe\u2014that the way things look to us right now is the whole story. We have two white gold rings and the Staff of Law and Jeremiah's talent. We have friends who have never let us down. All of that has to be good for something.\"\n\nHe might as well have added, _And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us._\n\nBut he did not wait for a reply. The naked chagrin on Linden's face seemed to drive him away. Again he turned his mount.\n\nTo the Ironhand and her Swordmainnir, he said, \"So, yes. I do want to go to Mount Thunder. In spite of, or maybe because of, all the obstacles you mentioned. That's not the mistake I was talking about. The mistake would be to go there the way damn Foul expects.\"\n\nIn spite of their deliberate dispassion, the approval of the _Haruchai_ was plain.\n\nRime Coldspray held up her hands again. \"Enough, Timewarden.\" She and her comrades studied him with a mixture of rue and wonder. Cabledarm and Latebirth grinned openly. \"We cannot protest such passion. For us, any deed which can be attempted is preferable to one which cannot. If your purpose is clear to you, it will suffice for us. Unless,\" she added, \"Linden Giantfriend reasons against it. Then we will heed her as we have heeded you, and will await the outcome between you.\"\n\nLinden hardly noticed that everyone was looking at her now. She hardly recognized the confusion of dread and hope in Jeremiah's eyes. The light of the _krill_ and Covenant's extravagance filled her mind with gibbering.\n\nNo. Gibbering and carrion-eaters. Not She Who Must Not Be Named. I can't.\n\nAnd not Lord Foul. Not Jeremiah. _His worth to the Despiser is beyond measure_. I can't take that chance.\n\nNevertheless the bright gem of the dagger held her. Covenant's gaze held her. She had never been able to refuse him. From the moment of their first meeting on Haven Farm, he had compelled her by simply being who he was.\n\nFeeling bitter and beaten, she said slowly, \"Don't stop now. Tell us how you think we can get into Mount Thunder. Tell us how you think that's even possible.\"\n\nHe was still her husband.\n\nA sigh passed among the Giants.\n\n\"Mom,\" Jeremiah groaned: a low sound that did not distinguish between protest and relief.\n\nCovenant's eyes did not let Linden go. He spoke to the company as if he were answering only her.\n\n\"I've been inside Mount Thunder twice, and both times I went in by the front door. From the Upper Land along Treacher's Gorge to Warrenbridge, then into the catacombs. _That's_ the mistake. Foul is bound to be expecting us. We need another way in.\"\n\n\"Indeed, ur-Lord,\" remarked Branl. \"It is certain that other passages exist. One enabled the quest for the Staff of Law to evade Drool Rockworm. Another brought Cavewights and your son to assail us. But such paths are known only to the Cavewights. Also they are perilously small, ill-suited to Giants.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Covenant did not glance at the Humbled. All of his attention was fixed on Linden. \"We'll have to try a different approach.\n\n\"Forget the Upper Land. If the Sandgorgons and the _skurj_ were cutting into Salva Gildenbourne back when the Ardent brought us out of the Lost Deep, they'll be near Treacher's Gorge by now. Even if we get into the Wightwarrens ahead of them, they'll be right behind us.\n\n\"I think we should try climbing up from the Defiles Course.\"\n\nNo, Linden repeated. She could not stop herself\u2014and could not find her voice to tell him that he was wrong about her. _No_. What he said made sense. Nothing made sense. She Who Must Not Be Named was too strong for her.\n\n\"The waters are corrupt,\" objected Branl.\n\n\"Well, sure,\" Covenant countered. Every word was addressed to Linden. \"But they must have receded by now. The Soulsease has been pouring into the Lost Deep for days. Until all those chasms and caverns fill up, there won't be any water coming out. Or not much,\" he amended. \"There are probably other sources, but they're nothing like the Soulsease.\"\n\nBranl was not deflected. \"Also the path is unknown. Uncounted millennia of slime and filth and dire poisons will clog the channel. The inhalation of the vapors will cause sickness and death. The Giants will not be spared. The _Haruchai_ will not.\"\n\nAt last Covenant turned away as if Linden's silence and dismay had defeated him. He sounded sour and forlorn as he retorted, \"I'm not worried about the damn _vapors_. Linden has her Staff. We'll be fine. And we'll have another advantage. We'll be close to water.\n\n\"Hellfire!\" The scar on his forehead seemed to bleed silver. It squeezed out of his old wound like sweat. \"We'll be close to the lurker. If we need help, we'll get it. That monster has already staked its life on the alliance. We can do the same.\n\n\"Linden's fate is 'writ in water.' The Ardent told us that. What the hell else do you think he meant? The lurker can't reach the Upper Land, but the Defiles Course opens into Lifeswallower. That's where Horrim Carabal _thrives_.\"\n\nBut Branl did not relent. He and Stave had already shown their approval. Now the last of the Humbled seemed determined to judge Covenant's intentions accurately, as if he agreed with Linden.\n\n\"And also there is the matter of the Cords. They have been conveyed to Revelstone to seek the aid of the Masters. Should they succeed, that aid will not find us at the Defiles Course.\"\n\n\"Don't you think I know that?\" Covenant snapped. \"But they can't help us. If Bhapa and Pahni succeed, the Masters will head for Treacher's Gorge\u2014where they'll be slaughtered. They can't do anything against _skurj_ and Sandgorgons. For their sakes, we have to hope the Cords don't convince them.\n\n\"Whatever happens, we'll have to find the way by ourselves.\"\n\n_Writ in water_. Finally those words reached Linden. She remembered how Covenant had rescued her from her terror of She Who Must Not Be Named. He had gone to that extreme for her: her husband who loved her. How could she fault him for still being a man who went to extremes? When extremes were needed? And she knew that he was right about Jeremiah, although the truth appalled her. Lord Foul could reach him anywhere. The Despiser did not need proximity.\n\nWhile Covenant faced the company with his needs and his pain and his severe convictions, Linden found her voice. But she did not speak to him: she spoke to her son.\n\n\"What do you think, Jeremiah?\" Her voice shook. \"This has got to be harder for you than anyone else.\" He had said as much himself. He had no instrument of power. No weapon, no prowess, no great strength. \"Are you willing to go to Mount Thunder and take your chances?\"\n\nJeremiah's attention seemed to leap at her. \"Sure,\" he returned as if he had never questioned himself. \"Why not? Otherwise we're all just dead. If it's too much for me, I can always hide again. Lord Foul will still be able to use me, but I won't have to feel it. Not like I did with Kastenessen, and he only got me because I didn't expect it.\"\n\nHe gave the impression that he meant, Maybe I don't have to be useless. Covenant said he needs us. But Linden heard more. As if Jeremiah had spoken to her like the _Haruchai_ , mind to mind, she heard him say, I want Lord Foul _dead_.\n\nOh, my son\u2014\n\n\"Linden?\" Covenant asked. Now he sounded deliberately neutral, as if he thought that he had already put too much pressure on her. \"It's up to you.\"\n\nFrom him also, she heard more than he said.\n\nI know what I have to do.\n\nI can't do it without you.\n\nShe recognized the knots that defined his face, the lines like cuts, the clench of understanding and regret. How often had he regarded her like that? When he knew what the Land's need required, and regretted it for her sake rather than his own?\n\n_Eventually we all have to face the things that scare us most_.\n\nA flick of grit forced her to shut her eyes for a moment. She felt suddenly parched in spite of the lingering taste of treasure-berries; scorched by the heat of Covenant's gaze. She had ashes in her veins instead of blood. God, he was a cruel man sometimes. Cruel and terrible and irrefusable.\n\nBarely able to clear her throat, she said, \"You aren't just my husband,\" Thomas of my heart. \"You're Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. And Jeremiah is willing. I'll go with you as far as I can.\"\n\nAt that moment, the sudden lift of relief and hope and even love in Covenant's gaze did not touch her. And she ignored the reactions of the Giants. Their Ironhand had already given her assent. Instead she remembered Berek Halfhand among the Dead.\n\n_He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence_.\n\nThe Lord-Fatherer's pronouncement made her want to weep. He may have been trying to warn Covenant rather than her. He may have been describing Jeremiah.\n\nOr he may have seen the Land's doom in all three of them.\n\nsecond circle of wild magic. A second rush of disorientation. A second reflexive response from Linden's wedding band. Then the horses and the Giants pounded as if they were deranged down the bottom of a ravine that Linden almost recognized.\n\nWeathered hills rose on either side. The cut between them was comparatively shallow, a crooked trough wide enough for the company. The sand and age-smoothed stones of the bottom provided an easy surface for the mounts and the Swordmainnir as they pounded along, slowing with every stride. And ahead of them\u2014\n\nBlack in the unnatural twilight of midday, a stream slid past a widening fan of sand punctuated by the jut of a few boulders. Complaining against rock on the far side, the water flowed down a small canyon that arced around the swath of sand.\n\nAs Hyn's gait eased, and Linden's nerves began to recover from the mad reel of translation, she realized that she did indeed know this place. Here the company had rested days ago. Here she had rejoined her companions after Covenant had retrieved her from nightmares of She Who Must Not Be Named. Here the Ardent had delivered a feast, and had lost his grip on name and use and life. And back there, behind her now, lay the ridge of fouled gypsum where Liand and then Galt had been slain, and Anele had perished; where Esmer had passed away: the crest crowned by cairns. In this low canyon, Covenant had ridden away with Branl and Clyme as if he did not want her love. It was a place of loss and struggle and butchery, a black omen.\n\nThe Ranyhyn must have chosen this destination. As far as she knew, Covenant did not have such control over his translations.\n\nFortunately the company had arrived in a region of calmer winds. The Worm seemed far away, as if it had lapsed back into abstraction.\n\nAs Mishio Massima slowed, Branl took the _krill_ from Covenant, held it up to light the way. Near the water's edge, the horses stamped to a halt. Heaving for air as if they had run for hours instead of moments, the Ironhand and her comrades stopped. Briefly silver glared like frenzy in their eyes. But within moments they began to breathe more easily. As they looked around, they nodded their recognition.\n\nAt the forefront of the company, Covenant practically fell out of his saddle, tottering like a man on the verge of prostration. But his unsteadiness was vertigo, not fatigue. He began to look stronger as he recovered his balance.\n\nStill mounted, Linden did not meet his gaze. She was not ready. She still felt stricken by his intentions and her own acquiescence\u2014and by her son's peril.\n\nAn awkward shrug clenched his shoulders. He left her to herself. Scanning the Giants, he drawled, \"Don't take this the wrong way, but you all look like you need a bath.\"\n\nColdspray gave him a lugubrious frown. \"We are clogged with grime, Timewarden, made filthy by long exertion. Indeed, we are altogether unlovely. How might your observation be interpreted wrongly?\"\n\nHe blinked at her as if he could not think of a response. Then he muttered in feigned disgust, \"Giants.\" More loudly, he remarked, \"God knows _I_ need one. Maybe my eyes are going, but I can still smell myself.\" To Jeremiah, he added, \"Come on. Let's at least try to get clean. Maybe we'll feel better.\"\n\nJeremiah had kept his seat on Khelen as if he were impatient to continue the journey. He avoided Linden's eyes as she avoided Covenant's. But he did not refuse. After only a moment's hesitation, he dropped to the sand. Together he and Covenant splashed into the stream.\n\nLinden held her breath until she saw that Covenant did not take Jeremiah beyond his depth. When could her son have learned how to swim? Then she looked away and made an effort to come to terms with her dismay.\n\nIt rose in her, a pressure that felt too strong to be contained. Covenant was taking Jeremiah to Mount Thunder. To Lord Foul. The hills crouched like threats on either side of the ravine, and on the far bank of the watercourse. The sunless stream looked more like vitriol than water. Beneath its vexed surface, it seemed to imply malice. Overhead the stars glittered as if they were trying to warn her.\n\nIf Jeremiah thought that anger and bitterness would preserve him, he was wrong.\n\nAround Linden, the Giants set aside their swords, then began loosening their cataphracts, shrugging the armor off their shoulders. Of no one in particular, Latebirth asked, \"Does the Timewarden mislike his odor? I cannot discern it. My own aroma precludes other scents.\"\n\n\"Aroma, forsooth,\" snorted Halewhole Bluntfist amid a chorus of muted chortling. \"If that is aroma, I am the suzerain of the _Elohim_. For my part, I do not scruple to name it 'reek.' \"\n\nWhile the other Swordmainnir jested, Frostheart Grueburn came to stand beside Linden. From Hyn's back, Linden only had to lift her head a little to regard Grueburn.\n\nIn contrast to her comrades, Grueburn looked grave, almost somber. Softly she said, \"Linden Giantfriend, perhaps you will consent to speak with me apart from these coistrels. A matter weighs upon my heart. You will do a kindness if you allow me to unburden it.\"\n\n\"All right.\" Linden's clothes were still clean, scrubbed by the benison of Caerroil Wildwood's power. Even her hair was clean. And she welcomed any distraction from herself. \"Let's talk.\"\n\nAs she slipped down from Hyn's back, Stave and Branl also dismounted. At once, the four Ranyhyn turned away from the stream and followed the ravine, taking Covenant's steed with them. No doubt they sought forage.\n\nFrostheart Grueburn loomed above Linden. With her back to the _krill_ , the Swordmain looked benighted, mired in shadows. A lift of her arm suggested the direction taken by the horses.\n\nLinden glanced at Stave. \"Keep an eye on Jeremiah?\"\n\nStave shook his head. \"Branl will do so.\"\n\nThe Humbled was headed toward the stream. There he stopped, watching Covenant and Jeremiah.\n\n\"All right,\" Linden said again. To Grueburn, she added, \"If you don't mind Stave's company.\"\n\n\"My concern is private,\" replied the woman. \"It is not secret. Stave Rockbrother's companionship is welcome at all times.\"\n\nLinden nodded. With Stave a few paces behind her, she accompanied Frostheart Grueburn up the ravine. At every step, she had to resist an impulse to stamp at the sand with her Staff. Did Covenant expect her to face the things that scared her most? She did not know how.\n\nPerhaps a dozen Giantish strides from her comrades, Grueburn halted. For several moments, she stood with her face raised to the sky as if she were studying the stars, or listening to them. When she lowered her head to look at Linden\u2014and past Linden at Stave\u2014her aura was troubled.\n\n\"Linden Giantfriend,\" she said quietly, \"my thoughts are awkward. I am uncertain how to speak of them.\"\n\n\"You're a Giant,\" Linden murmured. \"You'll find a way.\"\n\nGrueburn offered a strained smile. She seemed to shake herself. \"Toward you,\" she confessed, \"I feel more than friendship. Amid the perils of the Lost Deep, and at other times, I have cared for you, as you know. For that reason among many others, your place in my heart is great.\"\n\nWhen the woman paused, Linden said nothing. Grueburn was not waiting for a response. Rather she was hunting for a way to broach her concern.\n\nFinally Grueburn began. \"Some days past, while we traveled together after the Timewarden had parted from us, I chanced to stand with you while you and Stave Rockbrother spoke. Together you considered questions of Desecration.\"\n\nLike a slap of wind, Stave observed, \"Our words were intended for each other alone, Frostheart Grueburn.\"\n\n\"Yet I heard them. From that time to this, I have respected that they were not for me. Nevertheless my thoughts have turned often to matters of Desecration.\"\n\nLinden swallowed a groan. She did not want to talk about such things.\n\nTo Stave, Grueburn continued, \"Here I do not ask you to reveal what you have foreseen, or indeed what your insights may be. I do not seek to probe your heart. I wish to unveil my own.\"\n\nHer response seemed to satisfy Stave.\n\nFrostheart Grueburn returned her attention to Linden. Silver from the _krill_ caught the lines of the Giant's mien. With an edge in her voice, she said, \"You stand at the center of all that has transpired. I do not deem it unlikely that you will continue to do so. Your deeds are potent to cause some futures while ending others. And I say again that you are dear to me. Therefore my spirits were lifted to soaring by the outcome of your union with Covenant Timewarden. I saw gladness in you, the gladness and relief which dismiss Desecration. But now\u2014\n\n\"Ah, now, Linden Giantfriend, some new darkness hovers in you. For that reason, I am troubled. If you will consent to speak of your concerns, you will ease my own. Comprehension will open my ears so that I am again able to hear joy.\"\n\n_In your present state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you. It does not crowd at your back._\n\nLinden bit down on her lip; steadied herself on that small pain. Then she countered, \"What are you afraid of?\"\n\nGrueburn sighed. \"Chiefly I fear that you sail a course which leads to the desecration of yourself. To my sight, it appears that you confront an impossible conundrum. You are a mother. You must preserve your son. Yet you cannot. You cannot ward him from the Despiser's malice. Nor can you ward him from the world's end. His doom\u2014if he is doomed\u2014lies beyond your intervention. His despair\u2014if he falls into despair\u2014is not yours to relieve. And in these straits, it may be that your distress is increased by your union with Covenant Timewarden, for how can a mother know gladness with her husband when her son is in peril? I fear the effect of this conundrum. Linden Giantfriend, I fear it acutely.\"\n\nWhile the woman spoke, Linden turned away. Beat after beat, she thudded one end of her Staff into the sand. She wanted to rebuff Grueburn. The Giant saw her too clearly. Perhaps they all did. But she had talked about _trust_ with Jeremiah; about the implications of withholding the truth. And the Swordmainnir were her friends. They were in as much danger, and had as much to lose.\n\nFacing the darkness, Linden replied, \"I don't know what to tell you. I don't know how to explain it, even to myself.\" Her horror at the idea of approaching Mount Thunder was too intimate to be named. \"But I can tell you this much. Thomas wants to walk right up to his worst fear and look it in the eye, but I'm not like that. Lord Foul isn't my worst fear,\" no matter how much she loved Jeremiah. \"And the Worm isn't. Even having to watch while everyone and everything I care about dies isn't. As long as Thomas is still alive, none of that is inevitable.\n\n\"My _worst_ fear\"\u2014this was as close as she could come to complete honesty\u2014\"is that there may actually be something I could do, and I won't be brave enough to do it.\"\n\nWhen her father had killed himself, she had been too young and little to stop him; but years later, when her mother had begged for death, Linden had done what her mother asked of her. Eventually she had learned to believe that there were worse things than Desecration. Letting the pain _go on_ was worse. It had to be healed. If it could not be healed, it had to be extirpated. And if it could not be healed or cut out, it had to be ended in some other way.\n\nThat \"some other way\" was her real conundrum. And her greatest fear was that she did not have it in her to resolve the contradiction.\n\nShe knew how Kevin Landwaster must have felt.\n\nFor a time, Frostheart Grueburn and Stave answered her with silence. What could they have said? She was who she was. Her fears were her own. But then Stave said like a man who had never known a moment's doubt, \"It is written in water, Linden. Deeds are not stones. Fears are not. And even stone may fail. No outcome is certain.\"\n\nBefore Linden could think of a response, Grueburn began to chuckle. \"Well said, Stave Rockbrother. As ever, Linden Giantfriend misesteems herself. She has restored joy to my ears, though she does not hear it.\"\n\nThen she added, \"Accept my thanks, Linden Giantfriend. You have comforted me. I regret only that you are not likewise comforted.\"\n\nAt once, the woman turned away. Perhaps she sensed that Linden wanted to be alone; that Linden needed time to accept what she had heard and said. Still chuckling, Grueburn went to rejoin her comrades. But Stave remained.\n\nHe said nothing further. For that, Linden was grateful. His presence was enough to remind her that she was not alone. No other answer would suffice unless she found it for herself.\n\nime brought her no clarity; but after a while, she felt steady enough to return to the company. While the stars were dying, they had called to her nerves like keening; like bright supplications. But now they were not vanishing from the heavens. Perhaps as a result, they looked less forlorn to her. They seemed to gaze down almost hopefully, as if they had found something to believe in.\n\nSighing, Linden rested a hand on Stave's shoulder to thank him. Then she began to make her way back to her companions.\n\nBefore she reached them, Covenant came to meet her, still dripping from his immersion. His face was full of shadows because the light of the _krill_ had shifted: Branl had taken the dagger to a nearby hillcrest upstream. Spectral as the elucidation of dreams, argent shone on Covenant's silver hair but left his features in darkness.\n\nAt once, the Swordmainnir withdrew. Some splashed into the water to bathe. Others moved away as if they were making room for Linden and her husband.\n\nWhile she wondered what she could say to him, he took her in his arms. Holding her close, he murmured, \"I'm sorry, Linden.\" His voice was little more than a husky rasp. \"I feel like I've hurt you, but I'm not sure how.\n\n\"I expected you to argue.\"\n\nShe let him hug her for a moment. Then she returned his clasp. \"I've been arguing with myself.\"\n\nHe stepped back enough to look into her eyes. \"What about?\"\n\nShe tried to meet his scrutiny, but her gaze slid away as if she were ashamed. \"I understand what you want to do,\" she told him with a rasp of her own. \"I don't have any better ideas. But you didn't explain what you want from me.\"\n\nOr from Jeremiah.\n\nCovenant's manner said, I don't want anything from you. I just want you. I just need you. But aloud he admitted, \"I know. I couldn't. I can't. It's all so _vague_.\" He rapped his forehead with his knuckles. \"I'm clear about what I have to do. What I have to try to do. But everything else is just impressions, instincts. It's not an accident that you and Jeremiah are here. It's not an accident that we're here together. Hell,\" he snorted, \"I wouldn't be here at all without you. But I have no idea what it means.\"\n\nHe hesitated for a moment. Then he squared his shoulders, shook Linden gently. \"The only thing I'm sure of is that _this_ \u2014the three of us together, with friends to help us\u2014is not what Lord Foul wants. We've already done things he couldn't have foreseen. Now I think we _are_ something he can't foresee.\"\n\nHe almost eased her. She believed in him: now she could almost believe him. But she was still afraid\u2014and she had not told him what she feared. She had not named it to herself.\n\n\"That's not enough,\" she said awkwardly.\n\nI'm not enough.\n\nHis voice hardened. \"Then I'll say something else.\" It set like cooling iron. \"If none of this works out\u2014if everything goes to hell no matter what we do\u2014if the worst turns out to be worse than we can imagine\u2014you might want to remember that we didn't _start_ it. It's the Despiser's doing. We couldn't have prevented anything. All we've ever done is react to what he does.\n\n\"Even if this whole world only exists in our minds\u2014even if damn Foul is just an expression of a part of ourselves we don't like\u2014we can't be blamed for it. We didn't _make_ ourselves. We were born into lives we didn't choose, parents we didn't choose, problems we didn't choose. We aren't responsible for that. We're only responsible for what we do about it.\n\n\"If what we do isn't enough, too bad. Let the Creator worry about what happens next. If he doesn't care, at least he can't accuse us of anything.\"\n\nGentle as a caress, Covenant cupped his palm to the side of Linden's neck and offered to kiss her.\n\nFor a moment, she resisted. He had not given her enough. Nothing would ever be enough. But he had given her what he had. And he was Thomas Covenant, her husband and lover. As much as possible, he was even her protector. And he would do what he could for Jeremiah. She could not refuse him. She did not want to refuse him.\n\nWhile she kissed him, she thought, Thomas of my heart. I can't do this.\n\nBut she imagined that perhaps she could. As long as he never let her go.\n\nong moments passed before she found the strength to step back. She was not done with Covenant. She needed his touch, his arms, his mouth. She could have held him, and been held, as long as time remained in the world. But she was also Jeremiah's mother. Her heart was divided.\n\nIn this, she knew, she was not alone. All hearts were divided, Covenant's as much as hers. She would not have been surprised to learn that his desire for her and his concern for the Land and his need to confront Lord Foul threatened to tear him apart whenever he faltered. But her divisions were more personal. And when she scanned the company\u2014the Giants washing in the stream and those waiting nearby\u2014she saw no sign of her son.\n\nHer stomach tightened reflexively. At once, she turned to Stave. \"Where's Jeremiah? You said that Branl would watch him.\"\n\n\"He does so.\" Stave nodded stolidly toward the shining on the rise beyond Linden. \"The Chosen-son parted from the company to wend upstream. Branl followed at a slight distance. He does not neglect his charge.\"\n\nLinden flung a glance at Covenant; but he shook his head. \"He didn't say anything. I tried to get him talking, but he had too much on his mind.\"\n\nIf something had happened to her son, she would have felt it. Surely she would have felt it?\n\n\"Beyond the hillside,\" Stave continued, \"the boy has discovered a stretch of grass among sheltered stones. It bears some resemblance to that which Anele had cause to fear. There he stands, offering demands and imprecations. Yet naught transpires. For that reason, Branl does not intervene.\n\n\"It appears that your son does not partake of the vulnerability or flaw which exposed Anele to Corruption. We conclude that the boy has inherited only Anele's openness to Kastenessen\u2014a peril which no longer threatens him. His wish to encounter evil is foolhardy, but it does not endanger him.\"\n\n\"Or,\" Linden countered over her shoulder, \"Lord Foul just hasn't taken advantage of it yet.\"\n\nShe was already running.\n\nBoulders like raised fists complicated her path. Possibilities reeled through her. Stave might be right. The gifts and curses which Jeremiah had received from Anele might have strict limits. She was not lorewise enough to know. But she could imagine other explanations.\n\nKastenessen could have used his ability to take Jeremiah at any time, whenever the boy stood on bare dirt. Yet the _Elohim_ had not done so, despite his driving pain and fury. Instead he had waited, bided his time until the opportunity he desired presented itself.\n\nIf he could exercise such restraint, Lord Foul could do so with ease. His malice was colder than Kastenessen's\u2014and far more calculating. The Despiser had allowed Anele to walk on rough grass unpossessed for a considerable distance during Linden's flight from Mithil Stonedown.\n\nYet naught transpires. Linden did not doubt Stave\u2014or Branl. Nevertheless the danger was real. It was always real.\n\nAnd Jeremiah did not understand it. He thought that he would be able to defend himself as long as he was not taken by surprise.\n\nThe slope ahead of her was not steep. And she was too frightened to feel tired. She should have been able to ascend easily, swiftly. Yet she grew weaker as she scrambled upward. Something profound within her had shifted. Her surrender to Covenant's intentions had diminished her. The strength drained from her limbs at every step. Her breathing was a hoarse gasp as she gained the crest.\n\nBranl stood there, gazing at her with only argent in his flat eyes. He might have said something if she had given him a chance, but she forced herself to hasten past him; downward.\n\nShe felt Stave only a few strides behind her. Covenant followed more slowly, accompanied by Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn. But Linden ignored them. Her attention was fixed on Jeremiah.\n\nHe stood in a hollow between hills too old and worn to glower down at him. And he had indeed found grass: a patch of saw-edged grey-green blades growing stubbornly where a cluster of rocks had collected soil from the erosion of the surrounding slopes. In the ghost-light of Loric's gem, those blades looked sharp enough to cut. Everything around Jeremiah was blades: the etched hillsides, the ragged edges of the rocks, the black lift and slice of the stream. To Linden, he resembled a child in the midst of shattered glass, heedless of the danger, about to take a step which would shred his soles.\n\nHe did not see her. She had come from the south, and he was facing the northward crease where the hills slumped to close the hollow. His head was bowed in concentration. Waves of tension made his shoulders twitch: the muscles of his back bunched and released. Between his teeth, he muttered words which did not reach Linden.\n\nShe forced herself to slow down. Yet naught transpires. Stave was right. Branl had seen no reason to take action because there was no reason. Jeremiah was only himself: taut with anger and dread, desperate to prove his worth, but untouched.\n\nShe stopped a few steps away. \"Jeremiah,\" she panted. \"Honey.\" God, she felt so _weak_ \u2014Unmade. As if her refusal to name her greatest fear had been her only source of strength. \"That's enough. You tried. You can stop now.\"\n\nStave arrived at her side. Covenant, the Ironhand, and Grueburn crossed the rise toward her. Coming to bear witness\u2014\n\nBranl trailed behind them, spreading the _krill_ 's light as far as possible.\n\nJeremiah lifted his head. Keeping his back to his mother, he made a scything gesture with his halfhand.\n\nWithout warning, a silent shock jolted the hills. For one small splinter of time, the world's Laws seemed to pause. Linden's heart did not beat. Her lungs did not stretch for air. The stream hesitated in its course, poised and motionless. Stave became one more stone in the hollow. Covenant hung between one downward step and the next. Coldspray and Grueburn froze.\n\nThen a second shock released the hollow. Linden's pulse hit like a blow on an anvil. Covenant lurched for balance. Stave readied himself.\n\nInstantly the air became attar, thick as the smoke of burning flesh, cloying as an inferno of incense. The heavens leaned down on Linden as if they had become lead. Even Stave flinched. Coldspray or Grueburn stumbled. One of them caught Covenant. Branl started downward with the _krill_ raised.\n\nIn Lord Foul's voice, Jeremiah announced like a grinding millstone, \"It may interest you to know, fools and servants, that your ploy has achieved its purpose. Your edifice stands, a worthy emblem of your wish to oppose me. Yet even there, your deeds work against you. Deprived of _Elohim_ , the Worm hastens onward. It _hastens_ , fools! The hour of my many triumphs approaches. You cannot thwart it.\"\n\n\"Branl!\" Covenant gasped. \"The _krill_. Give me the _krill_!\"\n\nThe Despiser and Jeremiah ignored him. They spoke only to Linden.\n\n\"Nonetheless,\" the crushing voice continued, \"this callow whelp thinks to challenge me. _Me!_ As guerdon for his puerile valor, I have given him a gift which will make him wise in the subtleties of despair. When I have need of him, I will claim him, and no endeavor of yours will suffice to redeem him.\"\n\n_If your son serves me, he will do so in your presence._\n\n\"And you, frail woman\u2014\" Lord Foul's mirth filled the vale. \"You have become the daughter of my heart. In you, I am well pleased. Ere the end, you also will serve me.\n\n\"Thus all things conduce to my desires.\"\n\nCovenant snatched the dagger from Branl. \"Is that what you think, Foul? Have you forgotten what we can do to you? Have you forgotten we're _coming_ for you?\"\n\n\"Forgotten, wretch?\" retorted the Despiser, bitter and gleeful. \"I rely upon it. I forget nothing. I am prepared for you. If you think to confront me, you will discover that your efforts harm only yourself.\"\n\nCovenant did not reply. With the _krill_ gripped in both fists, he advanced like an incarnation of wrath.\n\nInstinctively Linden barred his way. She had no idea what his intentions might be. If she had taken time to think, she would have realized that he would not hurt Jeremiah. He was bluffing again. But she did not think. Jeremiah was her _son_. And she was capable of responses which Covenant could not match.\n\n_Whatever you do to my son_ , she had promised the Despiser long ago, _I'm going to tear your heart out_. Now she knew that she would not. She was not the woman she had once been. Events since her arrival in the Land had taught her expensive lessons. Covenant was still teaching her.\n\nLike Gallows Howe, the world had more important needs than retribution.\n\nNevertheless she did not hesitate. She had made other promises as well, ones that she knew how to keep. With a sweep of her Staff, she unveiled Earthpower and Law.\n\nHer health-sense was precise. Her fire could be equally precise: as refined as a scalpel in spite of its blackness. Just for an instant, she sent it gyring skyward while she prepared it for her purpose; confirmed that it was exact. Then she swung it like the crack of a whip at her son.\n\nIt poured through Jeremiah without touching him. She had tuned her theurgy to the pitch and timbre of Lord Foul's malice rather than of Jeremiah's body, Jeremiah's appalled mind. Her dark flame struck only the Despiser.\n\nShe could do so because Lord Foul's mastery was of an entirely different kind than the _croyel_ 's. That monster had merely reached into Jeremiah; fed on him; used him: it had not existed within him. And his defenses\u2014his dissociation\u2014had protected him. But now he had arisen from his graves. He inhabited himself. That change enabled Linden to distinguish between his reclaimed self and the force which ruled him.\n\nShe may have been as frail as Lord Foul believed. She may indeed have become his daughter in despair. Still she was Linden Avery the Chosen, Jeremiah's mother and Covenant's wife.\n\nIn a burst of conflagration, she banished the Despiser. His malevolence burst and vanished like a punctured bubble. Intangible gales swept away the stench of attar. The laughter of broken rocks dissipated until it was entirely gone.\n\nLike a discarded puppet, Jeremiah collapsed to his hands and knees.\n\nLinden reached him a heartbeat later, dropped her Staff, flung her arms around him. Through his skin, she felt his warmth and dismay, his wholeness, his horror. He strained to breathe as if his lungs were clogged with the sweet, sick odor of a body arrayed for burial.\n\n\"Mom,\" he croaked. \"Oh, Mom. I can feel the Worm. I can _feel_ it. It's going up a cliff. A cliff! And it's going fast. Like the cliff was nothing.\"\n\nThe Despiser's gift.\n\nShivers that began in the marrow of Jeremiah's bones spread through him. Linden hugged him tightly, but could not still his trembling.\n\nLord Foul had taught her son to fear him.\n\n## 3.\n\nSummoned to Oppose\n\nAnother race through the interstices between instants and leagues brought the company to a twisted heave of hills that Linden had never seen before.\n\nShe had no idea how far Covenant's eldritch circle had carried the riders and the Giants. She could be sure only that she and her companions were still on the Lower Land. As Hyn slowed her wild gallop, following Rallyn's lead with Hynyn and Khelen, Linden saw Landsdrop massive on her left, thrusting its crooked rims thousands of feet above its foothills. And in the distance on her right, she caught troubled glimpses of water, grey and dim as tarnished silver: Sarangrave Flat between the barricade of the cliffs and deeper mire of Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp.\n\nOverhead the stars were no longer visible. Thunderheads like clenched fists battered each other back and forth between the cramped horizons, occluding the sky. The weather tumbled in confusion, affronted by the Worm's passing far away. With every sunless hour, the air grew cooler.\n\nAbruptly the company plunged down a steep hillside. Skidding on loose shale, the Giants floundered to keep their balance. Hyn locked her knees for a moment and slid. Then she lifted into a light-footed prance that carried Linden safely.\n\nJeremiah reeled on Khelen, but not because the young stallion had jostled him. Ever since he had regained his feet after his encounter with Lord Foul, the boy had wobbled as if some of his sinews had been cut. His eyes, always changeable, had acquired a nauseated hue. If they reflected his mind, his thoughts were a spew of vomit.\n\nCovenant also reeled. As Mishio Massima lurched to a halt, he pitched from the saddle. But that was an effect of vertigo. Every exertion of wild magic seemed to cast him into a whirlwind.\n\nOn more level ground at the foot of the slope, the company gathered among a few patches of scrub oak clinging to the thin soil between stubborn tufts of grass and weeds. A more gentle hillside lay ahead; yet no one proposed to hurry onward. Covenant had already returned the _krill_ to Branl. Now he folded cross-legged to the dirt, holding his head like a man trying to remember who he was. As before, the Swordmainnir labored for air as if they had been carrying monoliths on their backs.\n\nAlmost at once, heavy raindrops struck Linden's face. Spatters hit randomly around the area, raising small bursts of dust where they found dirt. Soon there would be more. Torrents were coming, a monsoon downpour entirely out of place in this season of the Lower Land.\n\nWincing in anticipation, she nudged Hyn closer to Khelen.\n\nAt the same time, Covenant heaved himself upright. Unsteady on his numb feet, he made his way among the Giants toward Linden and Jeremiah. Droplets ran down his cheeks like sweat.\n\nCarefully he asked, \"How are you doing, Jeremiah?\"\n\nThe boy glared past Covenant. He avoided Linden's concern. \"Stop worrying about me,\" he muttered. \"I'm fine. You can't do anything about it.\"\n\nHis hands still trembled as if he were feverish.\n\nCovenant looked questions at Linden.\n\nShe studied her son. Superficially he was undamaged: that was plain. The distress that appeared to disarticulate him was emotional, not physical. Only his spirit had been harmed.\n\nHe had spent too much of his life hidden: a powerful defense which had both shielded and hampered him. Crouching in his graves had preserved him in some ways, but had not taught him how to weather the Despiser's virulence. Possession and vicious scorn had withered his attempt at defiance.\n\nFrom Hyn's back, Linden reached out to touch Jeremiah's arm, get his attention. \"Is it that bad, honey? Can you talk about it?\"\n\nShe wanted to ask what had impelled him to risk exposing himself to the Despiser, but she suspected that she already knew the answer. He felt useless: he needed to do something that would help him believe in himself again. And Covenant had given him an oblique form of permission or encouragement.\n\n_Eventually we all have to face the things that scare us most._\n\nJeremiah glared at her for a moment, then turned his head away. To the coming storm, he muttered, \"You don't understand. You don't see it. I can't stop. All that power\u2014It isn't just terrible. It's more _real_ than we are. We're all going to die, and I get to watch.\"\n\nScattered raindrops struck at Linden like pebbles. Fiercely she wiped her face.\n\n\"You're right, Jeremiah. I _don't_ understand. But I still know how it feels. I'm not any braver than you are, or stronger, or better. My _God_ , Jeremiah. I let a crazy man stick a knife in Thomas because I couldn't make myself try to stop him. _Turiya_ Raver touched me, just _touched_ me, and I got so scared that I was gone for days. And _moksha_ actually possessed me. I know what that _feels_ like.\"\n\nHow much of her life had she spent ashamed? Despising herself?\n\n\"But I'm still here for the same reason you are. We aren't alone. We are not alone.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" Cirrus Kindwind confirmed softly. \"We have spoken of this, Chosen-son. Giants affirm that joy is in the ears that hear because the telling of our tales binds us one to another. Speaking and hearing, we share our efforts to give our lives meaning.\"\n\nThe rain was falling harder. Soon it would be falling too hard to hear anything; say anything.\n\nThrough a slash of water, Jeremiah whispered, \"But you don't _see_ it. I don't mean anything.\"\n\nHis misery closed Linden's throat. She had no answer for him. She believed in Covenant, but she was afraid to believe in herself. Her greatest fear\u2014\n\nWhile she stumbled inwardly, Covenant put his hand on her thigh. \"We should get out of here.\" Slapping raindrops obscured the severity of his mien, the lines of his willing compassion. \"Maybe we can escape the worst of this storm.\"\n\nAs if he had triggered it, lightning shrieked overhead. Thunder made the air shudder.\n\n\"To my sight,\" Rime Coldspray remarked, pitching her voice to carry, \"the coming downpour does not appear extensive. Nonetheless it will be extreme. The Timewarden counsels wisely.\"\n\n\"Branl!\" Covenant barked over his shoulder. \"How far have we come?\"\n\nThe Humbled sat Rallyn with the _krill_ raised in one hand and Longwrath's sword leaning on his shoulder. \"Our translations have increased, ur-Lord,\" he replied. \"We have traversed nigh unto thirty leagues, and have lost but a portion of the afternoon.\"\n\nStave nodded in confirmation.\n\nLinden tried to remember how much ground the Ardent had covered when he had conveyed the company out of the Lost Deep. Another glare and shout among the clouds distracted her. The rain was becoming a deluge.\n\nCursing, Covenant started back toward the head of the company. Incipient torrents belabored his head and shoulders.\n\nAt once, Branl dismounted. The flamberge he handed to Onyx Stonemage. With Covenant and Loric's dagger, he strode beyond the company.\n\nRain hammered the ground. It beat the dirt to mud. Clotted rills squirmed past the feet of the Giants. Linden felt herself sinking under the weight of the downpour, hunching over her heart. Her son needed help, and she had nothing to give him.\n\nThe Giants braced themselves for a sprint which would have no perceptible beginning: it would simply come over them somewhere within the blank space created by wild magic and Loric's blade. Hyn tossed her head, repositioned her hooves. Khelen snorted a warning at Jeremiah. Lightning ripped through the gloom. Thunder roared against the cliff like the wrath of mountains.\n\nBranl moved swiftly, carrying Covenant. Covenant's line of fire defied the torrents as if dirt and rain were fuel. Flames danced like Wraiths on Linden's wedding band. Reflexively she held the Staff as far away from her ring as she could.\n\nWhen the world vanished, her heart plunged into darkness. She and her companions were taking Jeremiah to Mount Thunder.\n\nTo the Despiser.\n\nHe would relish her son.\n\nithout transition, the horses and the Giants were running as if their lungs would burst. They strained at a steep slope, labored forward against the obstructions of their mortality. Then they pitched down a hillside, plummeting like a landslide.\n\nThere was no rain. The dusk of late afternoon held the world under a sparse sprinkle of stars. Every breath sucked at a humid miasma of putrefaction and worse poisons.\n\nOn the left some distance away rose a high cliff sheer as a cut slab. And water lay _there_ , on the right: the rank wetland of the Sarangrave, brandishing its tortured trees and twisted scrub and fetor. Branches writhed like the beckoning limbs of demons. The companions hurtled toward the Flat as if they aimed to cast themselves headlong into its reek.\n\nThen Covenant heaved on Mishio Massima's reins, yelled at the beast to stop. Rallyn braced his legs against the descent: the Ironhand and her comrades dug in their heels. Stride by stride, the company slowed.\n\nA tree flashed past, and another. Ironwood? Hyn splashed through a stream. A glowering cluster of cypress reached out from the edge of the marsh. Following Rallyn and Covenant's mount, the companions veered away, angling closer to the cliff.\n\nAs Hyn mastered her momentum, Linden realized where she was. Although she had never seen the mountain from this perspective before, she recognized Mount Thunder. In profile, it resembled a titan kneeling against or within Landsdrop with its forearms and torso braced on the Upper Land, facing west. The nearby cliff was a side of the mountain rather than an extension of the great precipice which divided the Land. The hillside down which Hyn moved, trotting now, was one of the titan's calves. The other formed the far side of a valley leading from the base of the cliff into the Sarangrave.\n\nThe valley was wide enough to hold a large herd of Ranyhyn, long enough to accommodate several hundred Masters fighting Cavewights or _kresh_. On the lower slopes and in the bottom grew scattered ironwood trees nourished by streams of fresh water tumbling downward on both sides, north and south. Marsh grasses climbing out of the Flat wrestled for room to grow with bindweed and more noxious plants.\n\nBut the spine of the valley bottom was a riverbed that stank like a sewer.\n\nBlack water viscid as oil, putrid as excrement, ran from a gaping wound in the cliff between the mountain's knees. At one time, the river had thundered from that wound, flushing the bowels of Mount Thunder with the combined waters of the Upper Land, emptying the effluvium of banes and charnels, of disused Wightwarrens and discarded corpses and lakes of acid, into the welcome of the Great Swamp. But now the level had fallen far below the bed's rims. Even augmented by the streams, the Defiles Course barely carried enough water to cover the slimed rocks of its bottom. The wound in the cliff gaped like a waiting maw.\n\nInsects hummed with hunger past Linden's head. Some of them stung. Swarms of midges swirled here and there as if they fed on the odor of excreted toxins. As she rode downward, the cypresses appeared to rise up until they towered above her, avid and polluted. The ironwoods looked mighty, although they would surely have grown taller and broader in a kinder setting. Above them, the cliff extended itself to giddy heights.\n\nEven from lower ground, she could see that the exposed gutrock of the cliff was little wider than the valley between the mountain's calves. Slopes spread up at awkward angles from Mount Thunder's thighs into its back. There the mountainsides were rugged and threatening, riddling with clefts and flaws as if they had been hacked by gargantuan blades: they looked impassable. Nevertheless she suspected that Rime Coldspray and her comrades might be able to climb there, given time\u2014and perhaps rope. Stave and Branl could certainly do so. But Linden herself could not. For her, the higher sides of Mount Thunder were unattainable.\n\nHere she had no choice except to follow Covenant, unless she turned Hyn and fled, taking Jeremiah with her.\n\nIn the valley bottom near the trunk of an ironwood, Covenant finally halted. He handed the _krill_ to Branl; but he did not dismount. Instead he waited, peering into the gullet of the mountain, for the rest of the company to close around him. The tension in his shoulders, and the clutch of his hands on the saddle horn, told Linden that he was holding himself in his seat by force of will. His eyes bled tears as if the stink of the Defiles Course burned them; as if the fetor were remorse.\n\nWhile their respiration eased, the Swordmainnir scanned their surroundings anxiously, considering possible attacks or escapes. In contrast, the _Haruchai_ gauged the terrain with their characteristic dispassion. Alone among their companions, they remembered this place. No doubt their communal memories included recollections of the Defiles Course at its torrential height, when the flood in the lower end of the valley would have reached at least partway up the trunks of the cypresses. But Jeremiah did not lift his head or look around. Muttering to himself, he studied his hands and scowled as if their emptiness angered him.\n\nWhen he had regained his balance, Covenant announced, \"This is it. I guess that's obvious. We should rest while we can. I'm not sure we'll get another chance.\" Coming here had been his decision. Nevertheless his tone was thick with doubt. \"And we should send the horses away. They can't help us now.\n\n\"When we're ready, I'll try to get the attention of the Feroce. I'm hoping they can guide us at least part of the way.\"\n\nForestalling an objection which no one expressed, he added, \"Not that I think they've ever been _in_ Mount Thunder. But they're creatures of water. And not just any water.\" He gestured at the river. \"They thrive in this stuff. Plus they don't need light. Maybe they can lead us far enough to find the Wightwarrens.\n\n\"After that,\" he finished trenchantly, \"we won't need to know where we're going. We'll just have to fight. Eventually the way Foul defends himself will show us where he is.\"\n\nHe may have meant, Show us or herd us.\n\nWhile Linden tried to gather herself, Jeremiah glared at Covenant under his eyebrows. \"It's a waste of time,\" the boy rasped. \"I'm starting to recognize some of the landscape. The Worm is on the Upper Land. Beside a river. We'll still be groping around like we're lost when it reaches _Melenkurion_ Skyweir.\n\n\"And what makes you think you can trust the Feroce?\" He clenched his fists, apparently trying to muster flames. But his access to Earthpower eluded him. Perhaps visions of the Worm blocked it. \"You had an alliance while the lurker was scared. Now the Worm is moving away. Maybe the lurker thinks it doesn't need you anymore.\"\n\nCovenant shrugged. He faced Jeremiah squarely, but did not respond.\n\nFeeling helpless and dismal, Linden asked, \"Thomas, are you sure you want to do this?\"\n\n\"What else are we going to do?\" Leprosy blurred Covenant's eyes like pain or empathy. \"We're here now. If that's a mistake, it won't be my first. Most of what I do in life is just trying to make amends for things I've done wrong.\n\n\"Anyway you heard Jeremiah. We don't have time to try anything different.\"\n\nLinden did not respond. She had already lost this argument.\n\nBut Jeremiah was not done. \"But why bother? I thought I understood. I mean, before I could see the Worm. Now I don't. What's the point? We're all going to die anyway.\"\n\n_I have given him a gift,_ oh, Jeremiah, _which will make him wise in the subtleties of despair._\n\nLinden might have tried to reassure him. Covenant might have. But the Giants silenced them by the simple expedient of bursting into laughter.\n\nTheir loud mirth filled the valley. It seemed to startle the insects. Midges fled for the safety of the wetland's mire. Horseflies and mosquitoes skirled away, whining. Just for a moment, even the stinks of the Defiles Course and the Sarangrave became less daunting.\n\n\"Bravely said, young Jeremiah,\" Grueburn guffawed. \"A fine riposte.\"\n\nLatebirth and Halewhole Bluntfist doubled over, gasping for breath.\n\n\"'But why bother?'\" echoed Cirrus Kindwind. \"Why, indeed? You make sport of our fears, Chosen-son.\"\n\nStormpast Galesend slapped Cabledarm's back. Cabledarm aimed an elbow at Galesend's ribs.\n\nExpecting Jeremiah to take offense, Linden flinched. At the same time, however, she felt a rush of gratitude. Too much had happened since she had last heard laughter.\n\nWhile Jeremiah fumed, the Ironhand struggled for gravity. She scrubbed at her eyes until her humor receded to chuckling bursts. \"All paths lead to death,\" she said when she found her voice. \"This the Worm merely hastens. Nonetheless we must strive. How otherwise will we hold up our heads at the end of our days?\"\n\nLinden watched Jeremiah wrestle with himself. He must have felt mocked. Surely he felt that? But he also loved the Giants. And their mirth was too open-hearted to sound like ridicule. Briefly his mouth twisted: he almost smiled in spite of himself. Then he mustered a conflicted glower.\n\n\"Never mind. I wasn't serious. Have it your way.\"\n\nThat may have been as much grace as he could muster. If so, it was enough for Linden.\n\n\"Well, hell,\" Covenant drawled as the Giants subsided. \"Hellfire.\" Then he fell silent as if he had run out of words.\n\nAs if by mute agreement, Stave and Branl slipped down from their Ranyhyn. If the _Haruchai_ were capable of laughter, Linden had never heard it. Here, however, she caught a glint that looked like amusement from Stave's eye. Branl's manner as he leaned Longwrath's blade against the trunk of the ironwood hinted at the easing of subtle tensions.\n\nWhen Jeremiah dropped, dour and distant, to the ground, and Covenant dismounted, Linden joined them. The unfamiliarity of her wedding band or the aftereffects of wild magic made her finger itch. Holding the Staff in the crook of her elbow, she rubbed absently at the itch while she tried to think of a way to thank Rime Coldspray and her comrades.\n\nTwisting the kinks out of his back, Covenant made his way toward the nearest stream. The Ardent's steed cantered past him to thrust its muzzle into the water, blowing bubbles as it drank. The four Ranyhyn followed more sedately. Hynyn's wonted imperial air was subdued, and Hyn's head drooped as if she were weighted down with farewells. Khelen cast anxious looks at Jeremiah, but did not hang back.\n\nAfter the Swordmainnir had loosened their armor, Onyx Stonemage passed around the remaining waterskins of _aliantha_ : the last meal that Linden expected to eat. Covenant accepted treasure-berries. Even the _Haruchai_ did so. Then Kindwind and Grueburn carried the emptied sacks to another stream.\n\nThe valley's insects had forgotten their fright. A few flying things with stingers found Linden. One raised a welt on the back of her hand: another, on the side of her neck. Irritated by those pangs, and by the region's renewed fetor, she found herself remembering carrion. She remembered _being_ carrion; remembered the howling anguish and condemnation of She Who Must Not Be Named. Remembered Elena\u2014\n\nEntering the maw at the base of the cliff would resemble falling from the Hazard.\n\nSwearing to herself, she called Earthpower from her Staff to heal her little hurts, chase away the insects and the worst of the stenches; cleanse the recall of maggots and lice from her nerves. Then she extended the same small benison to her companions.\n\nJeremiah ignored her gift. Trapped in his own thoughts, he did not appear to feel any physical discomfort. Perhaps the same inheritance which protected him from cold and preserved his bare feet also warded him from stings. Whenever Linden thought that she should talk to him, she discovered that she was not ready. What could she have said? His ability to watch the Worm's progress was a wound for which she had no salve.\n\nLike her companions, she refreshed herself at the stream, ate her portion of the treasure-berries. Then she shared a hug with Covenant; leaned against the stubborn bones of his chest while his stubbed fingers ran awkward reassurance through her hair.\n\nAs the tenuous afternoon dwindled toward evening, vapors began to rise from the waters of the Sarangrave. At first, they were vague, visible only when they caught the light of the _krill_. But gradually they thickened into blots and tendrils of fog. By degrees, opaque arms and sheets found their way into the valley, traced the Defiles Course toward the sides of the mountain. Before long, the fog was a softly roiling wall that veiled the Flat. If it continued to expand, it would soon fill the valley.\n\nAs strands of fog coiled among the sparse ironwoods, the horses took their departure. Mishio Massima simply trotted away, tossing its head as if it had exhausted its patience for riders. The Ranyhyn were more formal. First they gathered around Covenant. As one, they reared, pawing the air as if he had won their approval. Then they separated, Hynyn toward Stave, Rallyn to Branl, Hyn and Khelen to Linden and Jeremiah. Hynyn nuzzled Stave while Stave stroked the stallion's nose. Khelen offered the same gesture of affection to Jeremiah. For a moment, Jeremiah appeared to rebuff the Ranyhyn. Abruptly, however, he flung his arms around Khelen's neck: a boy who did not want to be forsaken.\n\nBranl answered Rallyn's whinny with a salutation as old as the Lords. To Linden, Hyn lowered her head to the ground, bending one foreleg like a curtsey. \"No,\" Linden breathed as she hugged the mare, \"please. We're past that. I should be bowing to you.\"\n\nHyn replied with a soft nicker. The look in her gentle eyes implied sadness, pride, affection, regret, even an atavistic alarm. Nonetheless it seemed to aver that she had not lost faith.\n\nIn homage, the Giants drew their swords. Holding their blades high, they saluted the fidelity and service of the great horses.\n\nAs one, the Ranyhyn turned away. Together they followed Mishio Massima into the fog. If they neighed any last farewells, their calls were swallowed by the brume.\n\nThe stars were gone; masked. Damp vapors blurred the shape of the watercourse. The cliff lost its definition, its implacable rigidity. Around the companions, the _krill_ 's argent reflected back from the fog until they seemed to stand within a cynosure. A beacon. Beyond the light, the rest of the world was reduced to a slow seethe of blankness, moist and clinging.\n\nLinden regarded the fog with fresh apprehension. It seemed to imply perils which would strike without warning.\n\n\"What does it mean?\" demanded Jeremiah hoarsely.\n\n\"It means,\" Covenant replied, a low growl from the back of his throat, \"we've waited long enough.\"\n\nSuddenly brusque, he claimed the _krill_. With Branl at his side, he headed down the valley toward the Sarangrave. Loric's dagger thrust illumination ahead of him. At his back, fog crowded in to enclose the company. Where he stopped, the outermost twigs and boughs of cypresses were visible; but Linden could barely distinguish her companions.\n\n\"I'm here.\" Covenant appeared to shout, but the fog muffled some sounds while it accentuated others. The distant plash of water carried more distinctly than his voice. \"You called me the Pure One. We made an alliance. I've been keeping my part. Now we need to talk. I want the Feroce.\"\n\nWrapped in that fug, Linden found it impossible to believe that any of the Sarangrave's ears would hear him.\n\nDroplets beaded on her skin. The damp seeped through the flaws in her shirt. With her nerves rather than her eyes, she located her son's aura. His emanations conveyed the impression that he was crouching down inside himself; that he feared the touch of the vapors; that he wanted to flee.\n\n\"I discern no cause for alarm,\" Grueburn stated. \"Do our foes deem that mere fog will affright us? We have endured the toils of the Soulbiter, and have emerged scatheless. We are not so blithely overcome.\"\n\nShe may have been trying to comfort Jeremiah.\n\n\"Aye,\" answered the Ironhand. \"Yet fog occludes here as it does in the Soulbiter. Ready yourselves, Swordmainnir. Mayhap this brume is a natural exudation of the wetland. Or mayhap\u2014\"\n\nAround her, Giants tightened their cataphracts, loosened their arms and shoulders.\n\n\"Jeremiah?\" Linden felt an instinctive impulse to whisper. \"Listen to me. Are you listening?\"\n\nStave stood at her back, impassive and silent.\n\nCovenant may have been yelling at the Flat, but his words were lost. The _krill_ 's light did not penetrate the shroud over the Sarangrave.\n\n\"There's no stopping it, Mom,\" Jeremiah replied like a groan. \"You should see what it's doing to the plains.\"\n\nLinden grasped his arm. When he tried to pull away, she tightened her hold. \"I said, _listen_. Maybe there's a way out of what you're feeling. Maybe Foul gave you those visions to distract you. Maybe he doesn't want you thinking about other possibilities. Maybe your real problem is that you don't know how to defend yourself.\"\n\nJeremiah's tone changed. \"Mom?\"\n\n\"You have Earthpower,\" she explained, \"but it isn't a weapon. It's like _orcrest_.\" Or like Anele himself. \"It doesn't protect you. Maybe you wouldn't feel so hopeless if you had a way to fight.\"\n\n\"But I don't.\" In spite of her grip on his arm, he sounded as remote as Covenant. \"I'm useless.\" He may have meant broken. He had learned that his desire to repay the Despiser's malice was a foolish fantasy. \"All I can do is watch.\"\n\n\"No.\" Simply because her son's distress hurt her, Linden wanted to raise her voice. She had to force herself to speak quietly. \"Listen to me, honey. There's always something we can do, even if it's just changing the way we look at what's happening, or the way we look at ourselves.\n\n\"I think I know how you can defend yourself.\"\n\nWith her fingers, she felt his shock. \"How?\"\n\n\"Linden Giantfriend.\" The fog muted Rime Coldspray's tension. \"My heart misgives me. The Timewarden's hopes fail. The Feroce do not come. And this fog\u2014\" She made a spitting sound. \"Stone and Sea! I cannot persuade myself that it is natural. Some evil summons it.\"\n\nLinden closed her ears to the Ironhand. \"Try this.\" She pulled Jeremiah closer. \"Fill your hands with fire. You can do that. I know you can.\"\n\n\"Why?\" He tried to draw back. He had failed earlier. \"What good will that do? You just said\u2014\"\n\nShe cut him off. \"Just _do_ it. Then touch my Staff.\"\n\n\"Mom!\" he protested. \"I can't use your Staff!\"\n\n\"We don't know that yet.\" She strove to sound calm, but she trembled in spite of her efforts. \"We haven't tried it.\n\n\"First your Earthpower. Then my Staff. After that, I'll help you figure out what comes next.\"\n\nThrough her teeth, Coldspray muttered warnings which her comrades did not require.\n\n\"Hellfire,\" Covenant raged in the distance. The _krill_ 's shining throbbed ineffectually. \"I saved you from _turiya_ by God Raver. And I told you not to sacrifice yourself against the Worm. If you got hurt, it wasn't my doing. I kept my part of the deal. I've been keeping it. Now it's your turn.\"\n\nLinden felt his vehemence, but she did not hear an answer. Fog eddied around her head. She could barely make out Jeremiah's features.\n\nHe floundered in her grasp as if he wanted to resist and comply simultaneously. \"Mom\u2014?\" His distress came in bursts. \"I don't\u2014How can\u2014? Don't make me. I\u2014\"\n\nJust for a moment, she feared that she had pushed him too far. He was only a boy. And he had spent most of his life hiding. In effect, he had only known himself for a few days.\n\nBut then he stopped trying to pull away. Flames appeared in his palms as if his skin had caught fire.\n\nThey danced and fluttered, leaned raggedly from side to side like fires in a harsh wind. But they grew stronger as he gained confidence in them. By the measure of his needs, they were little things, no bigger than his hands. The sun-yellow of Earthpower did not push back the fog. Still these flames were _his_. They had been given freely.\n\nYes, Linden thought. If he could do that, he could do more. She would teach him somehow. His own health-sense would guide him if hers did not suffice.\n\n\"Giantfriend,\" the Ironhand insisted. \"Linden Avery.\"\n\n\"Now the Staff,\" Linden instructed Jeremiah, whispering again. \"It's full of possibilities.\" The runes. The iron heels as old as Berek Halfhand. The combined essences of Vain and Findail. Her own love. \"Try to feel them. Maybe they'll answer,\" Earthpower to Earthpower.\n\nShe had her wedding band. Covenant had made her a rightful white gold wielder. Surely she could fend for herself without the Staff of Law?\n\n\"It might not respond right away,\" she admitted. \"It isn't yours. I made it. I have a kind of symbiotic relationship with it. But if you keep trying, you should\u2014\"\n\n\" _Attend_ , Giantfriend!\"\n\nThe Ironhand's shout snatched at Linden. Involuntarily she wheeled away from her son's guttering hands.\n\nAt once, the distinctive reek of gangrene stung her nose. Impressions of necrosis seemed to hit all of her nerves, her whole body. She recognized that smell, those emanations; but for a confused instant, she could not identify them.\n\nThen she saw a lurid swelling of brimstone, a fierce gnash of lava. It was some distance away on the far side of the Defiles Course. Nevertheless it was hot enough to pierce the fog. She remembered roaring ferocity, fangs like scimitars in long rows, terrible jaws.\n\nOh, God\u2014\n\nBeyond her, the Swordmainnir strode down the slope to intercept the attack, spreading out so that they would each have room to strike and dodge. Stave stood a few paces in front of Linden as if he imagined that he could counter one of the _skurj_.\n\nCovenant may have been unaware of the threat behind him. He continued hurling his demands into the shrouded Sarangrave. The _krill_ slashed back and forth: cuts that had no effect. But now he was alone. Apparently Branl trusted that the lurker would not assail the Pure One, even if the monster had withdrawn its aid. With calm haste, the Humbled came back up the valley, gripping Longwrath's flamberge in both hands.\n\n\"Mom?\" Jeremiah called: a small sound like a whimper. \"Mom? What's happening?\"\n\nAbruptly a monster surged up from the eaten ground.\n\nNow Linden saw it clearly. The unthinking creature had devoured its way through the earth to emerge among the roots of an ironwood. Almost immediately, the tree exploded into flames. Bright as a bonfire, and hot as the ravaging of Covenant's home on Haven Farm, it heralded hunger and scoria.\n\nTall and thick as a Giant, the _skurj_ stood in conflagration with half of its full length braced underground. Roaring like an eruption, it twisted from side to side, apparently seeking the scent of its prey. Then it began its rush toward the company, drawing its whole body out of the dirt as it snaked into the valley bottom.\n\nUnder other circumstances, the river might have forced the monster to pause; perhaps to chew its way beneath the watercourse. But the Defiles Course was much diminished. The _skurj_ did not hesitate. Coiling its strength, it launched itself in a brimstone arc above the waters.\n\nIts fury dismissed the fog around it. Even at that distance, Linden felt waves of heat beat against her face.\n\nCovenant's shouting was hoarse and doomed. Still he persisted.\n\nLinden did not think. She had no time. Raising her Staff, she left Jeremiah's side. Black flames like the tails of a scourge pulled free of the wood and whipped around her as she hurried toward the Giants.\n\nStave accompanied her without question. He seemed to have no questions left.\n\n\"Don't move,\" she urged as she passed between Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn. \"I can do this.\" She hardly heard herself. \"Take care of Jeremiah.\" In the back of her mind, she had already begun to pronounce the Seven Words. \"Lord Foul doesn't want him dead, but that monster probably doesn't care.\"\n\nThe _skurj_ was only one.\n\nIn Salva Gildenbourne, one alone had overwhelmed her in spite of her Staff. And during the company's flight toward Andelain, Kastenessen's monsters had been too strong for her. She could not have fought them in the Lost Deep.\n\nSince then, everything had changed. Kevin's Dirt was gone. Kastenessen's passing into the fane of the _Elohim_ had struck manacles from her wrists. While Covenant still believed that the lurker might heed him, she meant to guard his back.\n\n\" _Melenkurion abatha_ ,\" she promised softly while the _skurj_ arose from the riverbank and swept toward her. \" _Duroc minas mill_. _Harad khabaal_.\"\n\nDown the valley from her, Branl did not quicken his pace. He advanced with the remorseless inevitability of a breaking wave.\n\n\"Help her!\" Jeremiah panted at the Swordmainnir. \"That thing is going to _eat_ her!\"\n\nIf the Ironhand or any of her comrades replied, Linden did not hear them.\n\nNow! she told herself. Do it _now_.\n\nGet away from me, you overgrown slug. You cannot have my son! Or my friends. Or my _husband_.\n\nWith the Staff of Law alive and lurid in her grasp, she flung an ebon torrent of Earthpower and Law between the jaws of the _skurj_.\n\nThe creature's body radiated heat, but it did not emit light. All of the monster's radiance came from the cruelty of its fangs. They were lambent and infernal, curved for ripping: they blazed with havoc. Looking into that wide maw was like staring down the gullet of a living cremation.\n\nBut Linden was as ready as she would ever be. Her power was ready. And she was sick of frustration and fear, more profoundly infuriated that she had allowed herself to realize. She felt that she had not struck an effective blow since the day of horror when she had slaughtered uncounted Cavewights with wild magic: sentient creatures whose massacre at her hands still filled her with revulsion. She was by God _ready_ to oppose a monster which sought destruction merely to feed its own worst appetites\u2014and to satisfy a Raver's commands.\n\n_Moksha_ Jehannum had once possessed her. She remembered him vividly. Like Covenant, if only with her Staff, she was done with restraint.\n\nHer dark torrent tore a howl from the throat of the _skurj_. The monster reared back, balancing like a cobra on its length. For a moment or two, long enough for her to shout the Seven Words, it tried to swallow her power; gulp it down as if it were the natural drink of _skurj_. But it could not. Her power shredded its gullet, sent agony inward. Thrashing its head, it clamped shut its mouth, closed its jaws on its horrid lumination. Then it whirled away before she could inflict more pain.\n\nBranl intercepted the _skurj_ smoothly, as if he had foreseen the timing of his strike as soon as he had left Covenant's side. The flamberge was a streak of theurgy in his hands. One stroke cut halfway through the monster's neck.\n\nThen he sprang aside as the _skurj_ became a flailing fountain of blood as bitter as acid. Convulsions writhed through the monster: it seemed to snarl itself in knots. But it could not survive its wounds. While it gaped and snapped at the air, the light of its fangs faded into the fog.\n\nStill Linden did not stop. She had endured too much, and yearned to repay it. Branl had killed the _skurj_ for her: she turned her fire to quench the virulence of the monster's blood.\n\nEven when she had eradicated every spot and spatter from the dirt, she wanted to continue until she had reduced the corpse to ash. But she felt Stave's hand on her shoulder, heard him say, \"Enough, Linden. The monster is slain. Now you must conserve your magicks. Where one _skurj_ arrives, others will surely come.\"\n\n\"No,\" Jeremiah breathed, apparently to himself. \"Not more of those things. I can't stand it. How did it find us?\"\n\nIf he sought reassurance, no one offered it.\n\n\"Aye, Linden Giantfriend,\" rumbled the Ironhand. \"Your prowess raises a paean in our hearts. Yet Stave Rockbrother counsels wisely. In Kastenessen's absence, the _skurj_ are doubtless ruled by _moksha_ Raver. We must believe that a greater force follows this lone creature. We must spare our strength while we may.\"\n\nSomeone should have said that to Covenant. He was still trying to coerce a response from the Sarangrave, hacking at the fog with Loric's _krill_ , and yelling intermittently. The gem's argent spread out until the wetland smothered it. His voice made no sound that Linden could hear.\n\n\"In that case,\" she said as if she had only now begun to understand Rime Coldspray's warning, \"we need to _see_. We can't let whatever comes take us by surprise.\n\n\"Watch for me. I'm going to get rid of this damn fog.\"\n\nThe vapors baffled percipience. Like the Ironhand, Linden did not know whether they were natural or invoked. But she did not care. The fog itself was just suspended moisture. Earthpower and Law would dispel it.\n\n\"That would be a benison in all sooth,\" answered Coldspray. \"Make the attempt, Giantfriend. The Swordmainnir will ward your son.\"\n\nLinden nodded, but she had stopped listening. Again she prepared the Seven Words in her mind. Instinctively she moved away from her companions so that she would have space to work. With only Stave nearby, she tuned her senses to the pitch and timbre of mist. Then she lifted new flames from the Staff and sent them skirling upward.\n\nShe regretted the blackness of her fire. She would always regret it. But she had no idea how to relieve it. The fog was a simpler problem. And her stained theurgy was still Earthpower.\n\nWith her eyes closed, she summoned more and more of her Staff's potential. Her health-sense recognized and measured the vapors: their specific dampness on her skin; their distinctive currents and flavors. As if she were musing to herself, she murmured the Seven Words.\n\nThe only substantial obstacle to her intent was the extent of the fug. It arose continuously from the Flat, curled up into the valley without ceasing. To be rid of it, she had to dismiss it faster than it came.\n\n_Melenkurion abatha._\n\nObliquely she wondered whether it had been invoked by the lurker, perhaps so that the High God of the Feroce would have an excuse for ignoring Covenant's appeal. On a deeper level, she chewed the gristle of Jeremiah's question. She feared that she knew the answer.\n\n_Duroc minas mill._\n\nBut she had work to do and could not afford to distract herself. If more _skurj_ were coming\u2014\n\n_Harad khabaal._\n\nBehind her, the Giants muttered their approval. Stalwart as any of his kinsmen, Stave guarded her back.\n\nWhen she had cleared the air directly overhead, unveiled the stars and the onset of evening, she sent her fire toward the cliff above the Defiles Course; toward the steep slopes on either side of the exposed gutrock.\n\n\"How did it find us?\" Jeremiah repeated. He raised his voice, tried to make his question a demand. \"We can't get away if we don't know how it found us.\"\n\nThe _skurj_ were able to sense exertions of Earthpower; but Linden did not know how far their perceptions reached. Could they detect her power while they were ravaging in Salva Gildenbourne? Detect it past the bulk of Mount Thunder? And arrive so quickly? No: she did not believe it.\n\nShe no longer felt Covenant's irate, tattered summons; no longer sensed the _krill_ 's shining imprecation. Grimly she focused her attention on the Staff of Law and fog.\n\n\"There!\" one of the Swordmainnir barked softly.\n\nA quick pang of alarm disturbed Linden's flames. She bit her lip, resisted her impulse to falter.\n\n\"Where?\" asked the Ironhand. \"My sight has lost its youth. I do not descry\u2014\"\n\nCalm as mist, Stave said, \"Chosen. Direct your strength to the mountainsides beyond the Defiles Course.\"\n\nShe complied at once. _Moksha_ 's forces were more likely to round Mount Thunder from the north than the south.\n\nFresh tension spread among the Giants. Latebirth groaned. Stonemage and Grueburn cursed harshly.\n\n\"Chosen-son!\" snapped Cirrus Kindwind. \"Stand at my back. Move as I move. I will shield you.\"\n\nTo Branl, Coldspray rasped, \"You must defend the Timewarden. We cannot. If the Swordmainnir do not stand together, we will soon fall.\"\n\nLinden opened her eyes, but she did not need them to discern the Sandgorgons. She felt their eager ferocity in every nerve.\n\nThere were\u2014\n\nOh, God!\n\n\u2014at least a score of them. Two score? More?\n\nFatal as a landslide, they sped among lingering streamers of brume, hurtled down the mountainside toward the valley.\n\nOne led the way. It had pulled some distance ahead of the others. Behind it came three, no, four more Sandgorgons. Nimble on the pads of their feet, the strange backward flex of their legs, they cascaded over the rocks. The rest of the monsters followed, a pale rush angling across Mount Thunder's contorted slopes.\n\nFor an instant, Linden froze. How many Sandgorgons had left their home across the seas? More than this? Surely not _more_?\n\nThe company could not survive so many.\n\nWorse, Jeremiah would not be one of the victims. Lord Foul and _moksha_ Raver might not be able to control the _skurj_ ; keep them away from the Despiser's prize. The Sandgorgons were another matter. The shreds of _samadhi_ Sheol animated their minds. They would obey Lord Foul's wishes.\n\nAs if she had taken herself by the throat, Linden let out a black scream against the fog.\n\nThat was as much as she could do. She wanted to strike at the Sandgorgons before they reached the valley, do as much damage as she could from a distance. But she had already caught the reek of more gangrene.\n\nHigh above the Defiles Course, a second chancre had appeared, a second suppuration. The gutrock bled vile fluids like pus.\n\nGod in Heaven! We can't\u2014\n\nRime Coldspray adjusted the formation of the Swordmainnir. With Frostheart Grueburn, Latebirth, and Halewhole Bluntfist, she came to stand in front of Linden. The others positioned themselves to defend Jeremiah. He was trying to shout, but his voice broke into whimpers. Stave waited at Linden's side as if he were resting. In no apparent hurry, Branl returned along the valley bottom toward Covenant.\n\nRagged with strain, Covenant continued yelling at the Sarangrave.\n\n\"Linden Giantfriend.\" The Ironhand sounded almost nonchalant. The prospect of an impossible battle seemed to focus her combative nature. \"The _skurj_ we must entrust to you. If by kind fortune they approach singly, you may perhaps prevail. The Sandgorgons are mighty in all sooth, yet they wield only strength and ferocity. And we also are mighty. We are armed and armored. We will hope to stand against them. If they do not mass for a combined assault\"\u2014she shrugged to loosen her shoulders\u2014\"we will teach them to esteem us.\"\n\nThe pounding of Linden's pulse in her ears measured out Coldspray's words\u2014 _entrust to you._ After that, she recognized only one in three. Still she knew what was required of her.\n\nJeremiah had his defenders. Armed with a sword forged to fight Sandgorgons, Branl would guard Covenant. And Covenant was not helpless. If any residue of his victory over Nom lingered in the minds of the monsters, or in _samadhi_ 's, they might flinch from attacking him. That left the _skurj_.\n\nLinden believed that she could stop them\u2014\n\n\u2014if they came no more than one or two at a time.\n\nFierce and ruddy, a maw full of fangs burst from the granite high in the cliff. With grim satisfaction, Linden saw that the monster was directly above the Defiles Course. The riverbed held much less than its former torrents; but the remaining gush was still _water_ : polluted beyond estimation, yes, and stinking to the stars, but water nonetheless. Her fate was written in it.\n\nSwinging her Staff like the handle of a flail, and hissing the Seven Words past her teeth, she sent barbed fire at the _skurj_.\n\nThe leading Sandgorgon was already nearing the valley. The others did not gain ground, but they followed swiftly.\n\nThinking _Melenkurion_ and _minas_ and _khabaal_ , Linden found that the monster in the cliff had emerged near the limit of her range. She could not hit it hard enough to slay it. But she was fighting now: instinct and desperation guided her. She did not need to kill the monster directly. She could use the river. All she had to do was make the damn thing fall.\n\nDeliberately she harried the creature. She whipped fire at its jaws, made wounds in its gullet. Then she caused one of his fangs to rupture.\n\nRoaring in distress, the _skurj_ thrashed against the rims of its egress. The stone around it cracked and crumbled.\n\nIt was not a thinking creature. It did not observe and take care: it only hunted and fed\u2014and reacted to pain. After a moment, its own writhing broke loose a section of the cliff.\n\nAmid shards of gutrock as loud as thunder, the monster plunged down the face of the precipice.\n\nWhen the _skurj_ hit the Defiles Course, steam erupted from the impact. Fouled water sprayed upward, filled the valley bottom with a rain of poison and acid. But Linden had anticipated that. As the monster fell, she raised a curtain of black flame between her companions and the river. Earthpower burned ruin out of the air. Then, as the corrosive deluge subsided, she turned her fire against the _skurj_ again, burning to trap the monster in the river.\n\nInflicted hurts blocked the monster's escape. It shrieked like shattering as it swallowed spray and splashes, gulped down death. Then it collapsed, steaming furiously; stretched out its length in the current. A moment later, it was dead, and the Defiles Course flowed over it.\n\nLinden wanted a shout of celebration. She looked around for it. But sudden plague-spots dotted the far side of the valley; and more appeared on the near side, within a stone's throw of the company; and the first Sandgorgon raced off the mountainside onto lower ground, charging toward Branl and Covenant.\n\nThe _gaddhi_ of _Bhrathairealm_ had called the Sandgorgons _more fearsome than madness or nightmare_. Baked to an albino whiteness in the Great Desert, the creatures were destruction incarnate. They could pulverize granite with the prehensile stumps of their forearms. And their heads had been formed for battering, lacking eyes or other vulnerabilities. They breathed through slits like gills protected by tough hide on the sides of their heads.\n\nIf that Sandgorgon contrived to strike Covenant, it would snap every bone in his body.\n\nBut Linden could do nothing to defend him. Half a dozen _skurj_ had already thrust their heads and fangs out of the ground. More were close. Frantic and furious, she faced those threats, leaving her husband to Branl.\n\nShe had devised a new defense. Whipping flame from place to place, she concentrated Earthpower on the lambent fangs. From maw to maw, she caused eruptions like bursts of agony along the kraken jaws. Small hurts: the _skurj_ were huge, and their mouths held scores of scimitar-teeth. Nevertheless their pain was acute. It enraged the monsters\u2014but it also distracted them.\n\nIt slowed their emergence from the earth.\n\nGripping her glaive, the Ironhand breathed, \"Well done, Linden Giantfriend. I had not considered such a ploy.\"\n\nIt was no more than a delay, a transient interruption. But it might create openings for the Swordmainnir.\n\nWhile Linden lashed obsidian back and forth, accentuating her efforts with the Seven Words, Covenant and Branl finally turned to face the nearest Sandgorgon. As if they were sure of their strength, they strode to meet the charge. Branl held Longwrath's flamberge poised to slash. Covenant's halfhand gripped Loric's shining dagger by its wrapped hilt.\n\nBehind them came a cluster of Feroce, perhaps ten of the naked child-forms. They held out their hands like gestures of supplication or worship. Rank green flames twisted and flared in each of their palms.\n\nAt their backs, more fog piled out of the Sarangrave, obscuring the perils of the wetland.\n\nThe Sandgorgon gathered itself, sprang over the water. For the flicker of an instant, it vanished below the rim of the riverbank. Then another leap brought it out of the Defiles Course. Silent as the fog, as the boundary between life and death, it sped toward the Unbeliever and the Humbled. Between one stride and the next, it became a juggernaut.\n\nCovenant and Branl did not hesitate.\n\nInstead the creature faltered. Five of its strides from its targets, it jerked to a halt. Its head turned from side to side, scanning with its arcane senses. It seemed to remember Covenant. Its blunt forearms aimed confused blows at the air.\n\nBefore the Sandgorgon could recover\u2014before the thwarted scraps of _samadhi_ Sheol's sentience regained their mastery\u2014Branl delivered a cut that opened the monster's torso from its neck down through its chest to its opposite hip. Blood and strange guts spouted from the wound as the Sandgorgon toppled.\n\nBranl did not pause to regard the corpse. Four more creatures were only heartbeats away. One had already leapt the river. Another was leaping.\n\nBut Covenant turned to the Feroce in spite of his peril. \"That was impressive,\" he growled quietly. \"What did you do?\"\n\nThe Humbled continued his advance. His blade shed blood and strips of flesh as if its old magicks repelled the gore of the Sandgorgon.\n\nIn their one voice, moist and diffuse, the lurker's minions answered, \"We have caused it to remember that it is bestial, a creature of instinct, not of intent. We have caused it to remember that you are mighty. Alas, we are merely the Feroce. We are frail, unworthy to serve our High God. We cannot impose recall upon so many, or upon such savagery.\"\n\nAt the last instant, Branl stepped aside from the first creature, beyond the reach of its arms\u2014but not the length of his sword. The Sandgorgon had no defense as he slid the flamberge across its trunk below its ribs. Reflexively it clamped its forearms over the slash; but they were not enough to keep its life from spilling out.\n\nCovenant nodded to the Feroce. \"Do what you can,\" he said; demanded. \"And tell your High God I need more than just you. I need _him_. I need him _here_. This is what alliances are for. I have to have help.\"\n\nBranl spun into a horizontal cut that bit through obdurate bone, nearly severed the top half of a Sandgorgon's face and skull. But Longwrath's sword caught there, grinding between bones which could have smashed down a wall. The _Haruchai_ could not wrench his blade loose quickly enough to intercept the next creature.\n\nWailing, the Feroce brandished their fires as the third Sandgorgon swung a crushing blow at Branl.\n\nEven his preternatural strength was no match for the creature's. Yet he was _Haruchai_ , and swift. And he had not forgotten the ease with which a Sandgorgon had killed Hergrom, crippled Ceer. He evaded the blow by diving under the creature's arm. It did not touch him.\n\nHe landed on his feet, whirled back toward the creature. But now he was too far away to protect Covenant; and he had to retrieve his sword.\n\nAt the last instant, the theurgy of the Feroce took hold. The monster slowed its rush directly in front of Covenant.\n\nWincing and bitter, he raised the _krill_. The eldritch blade slipped as easily as murder into the Sandgorgon's heart.\n\nBlood sprayed from the creature's gills as it plowed into him. It was already dead. Still the impact sent him sprawling. He lost his grip on the dagger. It tumbled away across the dirt, sending dismembered flashes of argent through the new fog.\n\nFrom the ground, he glared wildly at the fourth Sandgorgon as though he imagined that he could defy it with nothing more than his gaze and his anger. Spangles like glints of frenzy gathered around his wedding band; but he had fallen too heavily to wield them.\n\nLeaping, Branl came down at that creature's back with the full force and magic of his flamberge.\n\nThe Sandgorgon staggered away in a welter of blood and bone. Its legs folded under it. It pounded its featureless face against the valley bottom while its muscles seized. Then it lay still.\n\nMore Sandgorgons were coming: too many. The first of them had reached the valley. In another moment, it would cross the Defiles Course.\n\nBranl appeared to shrug as he reached down to clasp Covenant's hand. In one effortless motion, he snatched the Unbeliever upright. A moment later, he retrieved the _krill_ , returned it to Covenant.\n\n\"Now or never,\" Covenant gasped at the Feroce. He could hardly breathe. Something in his chest felt broken. \"You said the alliance is sealed. We need help _now_.\"\n\nTogether he and Branl resumed their ascent along the valley. He lurched in pain. His companion looked as deadly as Longwrath's sword.\n\nThe Feroce followed at a slight distance. Their fires flared like mewling.\n\nLinden was not watching. She could not. While she harassed _skurj_ furiously, lashing Earthpower and Law at the bright lava of their fangs, another ironwood became instant conflagration. Burning sap burst from its trunk, its boughs, even its leaves. It was close: its heat slapped at her face as an open maw appeared, rabid and ravenous. Uprooted by the monster, the tree pitched down the slope as if it had been hurled aside.\n\nFrantic and off-balance on the cliff edge of her strength, Linden threw obsidian vehemence at the _skurj_.\n\nRime Coldspray stopped her. \"Withhold, Giantfriend! Assail more distant threats. We will oppose those that come near!\"\n\nWhile Coldspray shouted, Latebirth and Bluntfist rushed toward the residue of the blazing tree.\n\nLinden knew that the Ironhand was right. Still she lost herself in a moment of visceral terror. That monster was _close_. It could tear any Giant apart with one bite.\n\nJeremiah called out to her, but his voice seemed to come from the far side of the world. Roaring heat and viciousness muffled every human sound.\n\nYelling the Seven Words like curses, Linden flung the outrage of her heart at other _skurj_.\n\nAt least ten now howled beyond the river. Pustules in the dirt promised more. Joining the creature which Latebirth and Bluntfist faced, four had eaten their way underground to burst upward between the company and the watercourse. Linden started to hurt those four. Then she realized that they were not coming toward her. Instead they swarmed around the first monster which she had slain.\n\nThey were feeding. Eating their dead.\n\nJust for an instant, she believed that she and the Swordmainnir had been granted a respite. But she was wrong. These monsters reproduced by devouring their dead, absorbing the energies of the fallen. Then they split. With sufficient nourishment, one became two. Two might become four\u2014four might become eight\u2014if one dead _skurj_ supplied enough brimstone sorcery.\n\nHorror rattled in Linden's skull. It stung her whole body as if she had been caught in a rain of pebbles. While the monsters arrived faster than she and her companions could kill them, they could not be beaten.\n\nThey were arriving much faster.\n\nShe needed wild magic; needed a dozen staffs like hers; needed help.\n\nThere was no help.\n\nAnd she did not have time to drop her Staff so that she could invoke her ring. Nor did she have the _krill_ or any other catalyst which might ease her access to wild magic. Nor had she learned how to summon silver havoc instantly without aid. If she could have cleared her mind, concentrated her health-sense\u2014\n\nShe was already foundering. Any pause now might be her last mistake.\n\nLatebirth and Halewhole Bluntfist closed on the nearest creature from opposite sides. They endured the heat only because they were Giants. Latebirth lunged a thrust straight into the monster's side. But her thrust was a feint. As the jaws of the _skurj_ reached for her, she jumped back\u2014and Bluntfist rushed in. Raging like the monster, Bluntfist swung a two-handed cut at its neck with all of her mass and her prodigious strength.\n\nUnable to stop itself, the _skurj_ fell onto a second lunge from Latebirth. Her longsword drove between rows of tearing fangs into the back of the creature's throat; into the monster's brain. It collapsed in convulsions.\n\nLinden and Coldspray shouted a warning simultaneously, and Frostheart Grueburn charged; but they were too late.\n\nAnother _skurj_ erupted from the ground almost directly beneath Latebirth's feet. As if it had detected her scent while it chewed through the dirt, it knew exactly where to strike. She was hauling on her sword, pulling it free, when the monster emerged. In one fluid motion, it surged upward and _bit_ \u2014\n\nBluntfist sprang to Latebirth's aid. Grueburn was only three strides away. As if he had forgotten that he was helpless against such foes, Stave followed Grueburn.\n\nThe monster's jaws caught Latebirth below her arms, front and back. Fangs dug into her armor.\n\nLatebirth!\n\nThe hardened stone might have preserved her, at least for a moment; long enough for Bluntfist and Grueburn to arrive. But her cataphract was broken on one side, damaged in battle on the way to Andelain. The monster ripped through it as if it were sandstone; tore her open from chest to spine.\n\nOh, Latebirth\u2014\n\nHer killer was still swallowing blood and organs when Bluntfist and Grueburn hacked its throat to shreds. Fresh gangrene stained the earth around them.\n\n\"Ware, Swordmainnir!\" the Ironhand roared at the dismay of her comrades. \"The _skurj_ must not feed!\"\n\nThey were Giants, familiar with cruel storms and bitter fighting. They knew how to set their griefs and fears aside.\n\nLinden did not. Sick with distress, she sent a raving blast into the first creature that snagged her attention.\n\nIt had begun a leap over the Defiles Course. Half of its length was in the air as Linden's fire poured between its jaws, ran down its gullet. With Earthpower and fury, she ignited an explosion inside the long body.\n\nThen she had to hope that most of the monster would fall into the Defiles Course; that the river would prevent other _skurj_ from feeding. She did not have time to watch. More and more of the horrific serpents had reached the near side of the valley, or had appeared there. Grueburn and Bluntfist whirled away to face another creature. Onyx Stonemage and Stormpast Galesend left their places with Jeremiah, pounded down the slope to challenge a new foe. Stave picked up Latebirth's longsword. Wielding a weapon as tall as himself lightly, as if he had trained in its use for decades, he rejoined Rime Coldspray in front of Linden.\n\nBehind the _skurj_ , a torrent of Sandgorgons raced into the valley, speeding with the single-mindedness of spears toward Covenant and Branl.\n\nFaint amid the tumult, Jeremiah cried, \"Mom, _run_! _We have to run!_ \"\n\nAt every moment, more _skurj_ and Sandgorgons arrived, an inundating wave of monsters. Perhaps Linden would have fled\u2014perhaps the Giants would have\u2014if any of them had believed for an instant that they could outrun the monsters. If any of them had been willing to forsake Covenant and Branl.\n\nFrom the bottom of her heart, Linden brought up a howl of flame:\n\n\"Thomas!\"\n\nHe and Branl had come a third of the way up the valley. There they stopped. Apparently they had decided to stand their ground. Branl moved somewhat apart to accommodate the reach of his sword. Covenant held the _krill_ ready. \"Hellfire,\" he panted at the whimpering Feroce. \"Hellfire.\"\n\nDeliberately he shifted his left hand so that his ring touched Loric's gem. Then he uttered a shout of wild magic that halted the leading Sandgorgons as if he had _forbidden_ them. A dozen paces away, they paused to study him.\n\nOnce long ago he had fought Nom to a standstill. He had not tried to kill the creature; but he had defeated it, forced it to submit\u2014and to listen. He could do more. Yet his power then had not harmed Nom. It did not harm the Sandgorgons now. Their hides had some virtue against wild magic. They could withstand much of his ire. Against so many of them, he would have to unleash far more wrath, more than he could hope to control\u2014\n\nHe might shatter the cliff above the Defiles Course, sealing his only way into the mountain.\n\nWith argent bright in his eyes and silver burning on his scarred forehead as if his mind had become white fire, he ordered the monsters away. In Nom's name, and in his own, he commanded them to depart with their lives.\n\nThey did not acknowledge his authority. They were done with old respect and gratitude. Perhaps they now considered such emotions to be subservience. Instead they heeded _samadhi_ \u2014or _moksha_ Raver speaking to them through _samadhi_ 's remnants.\n\nWhile more monsters sped down the valley, those watching Covenant and Branl changed their tactics. Rather than obeying their instincts, trying to batter or crush any obstacle, they showed that they could think.\n\nFirst one of them crouched: then four more: then a score. One by one, they began hammering the ground with their forearms.\n\nOne was strong enough to cause vibrations that Covenant felt in spite of his numbness. Five made the earth under him shake, dislodged small stones, raised spouts from the dirt. A score\u2014\n\nHe staggered as if he had been taken by vertigo. Flailing to stay on his feet, he had to yank his left hand away from the _krill_. For one heartbeat, two, three, Branl seemed untroubled, as immovable as the roots of a mountain. Then he was compelled to shift his feet, correcting his stance against the tremors.\n\nAs more Sandgorgons arrived, they seemed to understand what the nearer creatures were doing. Without hesitation, they grasped their advantage. Hurtling forward, they struck like albino lightning at Covenant and Branl.\n\nOh, they could _think_ \u2014\n\nYet they remained bestial. _Samadhi_ 's mind was not natural to them, and it endured only in scraps of malevolence. Focusing on their foes, the Sandgorgons did not see a tentacle as thick as an ironwood unfurl itself from the Defiles Course; or they did not regard their peril.\n\nIn spite of his uncertain footing and Covenant's imbalance, Branl wrenched his companion out of the way as the tentacle swept like a scythe at the charging creatures.\n\nThe Sandgorgons were mighty. The lurker was mightier. It roared as if the tumult of fog had been given voice. With one heavy arm, Horrim Carabal blocked the charge. Swift as a spasm, the tentacle coiled around several of the monsters. Then it heaved them into the air.\n\nHowling and savage, the lurker snatched those Sandgorgons to the river and slammed them down; held them under the fouled water.\n\nAt the same time, a second tentacle stretched upward. Guided by the invocations of the Feroce, or by its own instincts, the lurker's arm crashed like a felled tree onto the crouching Sandgorgons.\n\nThat blow scattered the monsters. It stopped the tremors.\n\nIn an instant, Branl recovered. He righted Covenant. Then he rushed into the confusion of the Sandgorgons, delivering cuts like a whirlwind of blades. Some of the creatures lost arms, or forearms. One lost a leg. Two fell dead before the others rallied against the sorcery of Lostson Longwrath's flamberge.\n\nCovenant heard Linden's call then, but he had no chance to answer it. A screech from the lurker warned him. Turning, he saw the torn stump of the lurker's first tentacle writhe above the water, lashing the air with gore. He saw Sandgorgons spring, unharmed, out of the Defiles Course.\n\nAh, hell.\n\n\" _Don't stop!_ \" he yelled at the Feroce. \"I know he's hurt! Hurt is better than _dead_!\"\n\nSummoning himself, he wrapped both hands around the _krill_ once more. Then he moved toward the river. With every step, he mustered more of his power. In his grasp, the dagger seemed to grow longer, brighter, keener. The physical blade remained unchanged, but his wild magic became a longsword implied by Loric's theurgy.\n\nHe remembered the Seven Words. They were of no use to him. They bespoke Earthpower and Law. His force was of another kind altogether. He focused it with curses as familiar as leprosy.\n\nFacing a group of Sandgorgons, with more on the way, he did not hesitate.\n\nHe had slashed one and pierced another before they appeared to realize that he had become dangerous. Suddenly chary, they retreated from the cut of wild magic.\n\nCovenant's world contracted until it contained only Sandgorgons. Somewhere at the edges of his marred vision, innominate shapes swirled in and out of the fog; but he had no time to recognize them. Praying that they were some manifestation of the lurker's magicks\u2014that Branl had not fallen\u2014that Linden could contrive to preserve herself and Jeremiah and the Giants\u2014he anchored himself on his argent blade and assailed the creatures in front of him.\n\nHis wife had cried out to him, but he had not answered. He had only one answer left: one answer\u2014and no opportunity to try it. No way of knowing whether it would suffice.\n\nThe lurker's remaining arm pounded at the Sandgorgons again. Again. Some lurched, apparently hurt. One crumpled and did not rise again. Most withstood the blows as if they lived for such tests of their puissance.\n\nImpassive and lethal, Branl fought on. But his foes had changed their tactics again. He could no longer spin hacking and thrusting among them. Instead they backed away, gained a little distance. Then they spread out to surround him.\n\nAnd from the mountainsides still more Sandgorgons plunged downward. They seemed numberless: a horde of havoc.\n\nHigher up in the valley, Linden flung Earthpower like screams at the _skurj_. Her Staff sent out an unremitting barrage of flame, as black as death in the Lost Deep, and as extravagant as her struggle against Roger and the _croyel_ under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. Theurgy that might have carved gutrock blasted monsters on all sides. Many she hurt, delayed, enraged. Some she slew. But they were creatures of lava, spawned in magma. They could shrug aside appalling quantities of her fire. And more came: so many that her every gasp filled her lungs with brimstone and putrescence. _Moksha_ Jehannum must have brought every living _skurj_ here from their former prison in the far north.\n\nHer horror was gone. She had sweated it out in heat and fury. Spots of anoxia danced across her vision like burgeoning infections. The wood of her Staff bucked and recoiled as though it might break into splinters at any moment. Her pulse had become an undifferentiated stutter in her veins, too ragged and urgent for individual beats. Even Jeremiah's sporadic shouts and warnings did not reach her. There was no room left in her for anything except Earthpower and _skurj_.\n\nShe was failing. For all her frenzy and desperation, her exertions did not suffice. The monsters far outnumbered her abilities. Even if she had been galvanized by the EarthBlood, as she had been under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir, she would have been no match for the host surging against her.\n\nAround her, her friends strove like demons against impossible odds. They fought in pairs, supporting each other: Stonemage and Galesend, Grueburn and Bluntfist. Cabledarm also had left Jeremiah. With Stave like a Giant at her side, she committed all of her strength to the fray. Exchanging feints and cuts, they wrought bloodshed among the monsters. Only Rime Coldspray stayed to ward Linden. Only maimed Cirrus Kindwind watched over Jeremiah.\n\nIn small bursts, momentary and localized, the Swordmainnir succeeded. They appeared to kill or cripple every creature they met. And Stave did as much as any titan\u2014until an untimely snap of jaws broke his longsword. After that, he had no choice except to throw the shard of his blade down the monster's throat, and to withdraw while he searched for some other weapon. His bare flesh could not survive any contact with the monsters.\n\nWithout him, Cabledarm fought alone.\n\nNevertheless the companions were doomed. The _skurj_ were simply too many to be overcome by frenetic Earthpower and a few Giants. And those creatures which did not attack fed. They multiplied. Much of the valley bottom had become a mad seethe of monsters as vicious as scoria, as fatal as the white core of a furnace. Many of the trees had gone up in flames, but their destruction made no difference.\n\nLinden no longer thought. In some sense, she no longer cared. She was too far gone to count her concerns. As far as she knew, her husband and Branl were already dead. She had only moments left. Jeremiah would survive only if Lord Foul or _moksha_ Jehannum turned the monsters aside.\n\nAbruptly Cabledarm went down. She did not rise again. Stormpast Galesend fell with a fountain of blood where her arm had been. One of the _skurj_ pounced on her before Linden could intervene.\n\nInstantly Stave dove into the struggle, claimed Cabledarm's sword. He joined Onyx Stonemage before she was overwhelmed.\n\nStrands of fog tumbled among the combatants, obscured details until crimson and obsidian fires burned holes in the streamers. Through the confusion, Linden saw too many Giants: half a dozen more than there should have been. Giddy with exhaustion and flame, she tried to count. Three Swordmainnir still fought. Coldspray and Kindwind made five. How could there be more?\n\n\"Welcome!\" the Ironhand shouted with a tantara in her voice. \"Well come in all sooth!\" Then she yelled, \"Assume my task, and Kindwind's, that we may give battle!\"\n\nThe others\u2014the _others_?\u2014were not Swordmainnir. Most of them were men. They wore canvas breeches and shirts rather than armor. And they carried no swords. Two had spears. Another appeared to drive an entire spar between the jaws of a _skurj_. Linden saw a collection of billhooks with whetted edges, belaying-pins longer than one of her arms, knouts studded with sharp stones, immense cleavers.\n\nSuch weapons should have been useless here; yet they wrought confusion among the nearest monsters. Billhooks tore open the hinges of jaws, left maws unable to close. Belaying-pins smashed teeth. Knouts distracted creatures while spears stabbed. Cleavers shed blood wherever they could. In spite of their bulk, the Giants moved with the agility of sailors trained to weather hurricanes.\n\nThey were a paltry force against the onslaught of _skurj_. Still they fought as if they were singing; as if they were glad to spend their lives in a hopeless cause.\n\nThe man who had fed his spar to a monster broke free of the battle, came toward Linden and Coldspray. \"Ironhand,\" he panted, grinning. Reflections of Earthpower and lava in his eyes resembled the exultation of hysteria or madness. \"I hear and obey. Stone and Sea! We are lost.\"\n\nRime Coldspray did not pause to acknowledge him. Roaring a Giantish battle-cry, she took her stone glaive into the heart of the turmoil.\n\nTo Linden, the man remarked, \"My name is unwieldy in such straits. For ease of use in peril, I am called Hurl.\"\n\nShe hardly heard him.\n\nA woman with the charred remains of a knout in one hand followed Hurl; hastened past Linden. As soon as the woman neared Jeremiah, Cirrus Kindwind ran to join the Ironhand. Swinging her longsword one-handed, Kindwind dealt furious cuts at every _skurj_ within reach. But she did not pursue her attack on any single creature. Her tactic was speed. Apparently her only objective was to cause pain; to weaken her foes with wounds.\n\nStave also relied on swiftness. Still he fought with the precision of a surgeon. He seemed inhumanly adept at slicing open the hearts of monsters. Somehow he avoided every slash of fangs, every scalding splash of blood, every brimstone touch.\n\nIt was all futile. One of the newly arrived Giants died directly below Linden. She could not save him. She had forgotten the Sandgorgons; forgotten Covenant and Branl. She had nothing left except a kind of autonomic ferocity. She had fought her way beyond the precipice of her strength and power. Now she could only flail and fall.\n\nYet the surprise of more Giants appeared to affect the _skurj_. It altered the focus of their rampage; or they received new commands from the evil which had replaced Kastenessen as their master. Their dim minds\u2014or _moksha_ Raver's\u2014recognized that Linden and the Giants were trivial: puny opponents easily eaten later. A greater enemy awaited their fangs, an antagonist whose power might provide a richer feast. Wild magic might slaughter every one of the monsters; or it might exalt them, if they were able to feed on it.\n\nIn a staggered cadence, as if some _skurj_ were more reluctant than others, they turned toward the lower end of the valley.\n\nThere near the Sarangrave and the Defiles Course, Covenant fought for time. He needed a respite, just a few moments for his only answer. His last gamble. He had to be able to stand back and _concentrate_ \u2014And even then, he might be too late.\n\nBut he could not take the chance while Sandgorgons forced him to struggle for every moment of life.\n\nHe saw Giants now. They seemed to come from nowhere, as if they were an incarnation of the fog. Five, no, six of them, two women, the rest men. Not Swordmainnir. They looked like sailors armed with implements from their ship. Their movements were swift and accurate, but they lacked the fluid poise of warriors.\n\nStill they were apt foes for Sandgorgons, more agile than Covenant, twice Branl's size. One against one, their sheer muscle matched the savagery of the monsters. Their skin was not hide bred in the extremes of the Great Desert and the brutal gyre of Sandgorgons Doom. They could not slough off crushing blows and ruinous waters. But their instincts and reflexes were not hampered by single-mindedness. They fought with intelligence as well as strength; with skills which they had earned in storms.\n\nAnd they did not fight alone. The lurker's tentacle continued its battery, pounding at as many creatures as it could reach. At the same time, Branl seemed to float through the contest as if he served his blade; as if he were a weapon wielded by the eldritch flamberge. If a Giant halted a Sandgorgon with a blow or a cut, the _Haruchai_ arrived bearing death.\n\nAlthough the newcomers were only six, they fought like furies. Their weapons soon failed them. Knives broke on the hides of Sandgorgons. Knouts had no effect. Spears only pierced when they struck perfectly. Still the Giants were Giants, powerful of fist and arm. Few as they were, they thwarted the onrush of monsters.\n\nSomehow the Giants and the lurker and Branl cleared a space around Covenant.\n\nThat should have been enough for him. He had been offered his chance. He only needed to gather himself.\n\nBut his damaged chest sucked air in wracked gasps; and vertigo filled his head as if he stood on an appalling height, peering down into the valley from the fatal slopes of Mount Thunder; and he had never unlearned his fear of unrestrained wild magic. He could too easily imagine shattering the high cliff above the river.\n\nThen he was given more than a momentary reprieve. A kind of convulsion seemed to grip the Sandgorgons as if an invisible hand had taken hold of their minds. They paused; scanned the valley as if they sought more satisfying opponents. An instant later, they wheeled away.\n\nSome of them delivered a last flurry of blows, but soon all of them were pounding back up the valley. Massed and eager, they formed a bleached river pouring irresistibly uphill. At the same time, the _skurj_ began to squirm downward, horrific numbers of the serpent-monsters. As the Sandgorgons ascended, they parted only to let scores of _skurj_ pass among them.\n\nThe attackers had traded targets. The Sandgorgons raced to assail Linden and Jeremiah and the surviving Swordmainnir. A tsunami of _skurj_ plunged toward Covenant and Branl and their unforeseen allies.\n\nCovenant's vision was too badly blurred: he could not tell how many Giants still stood with Linden. He recognized her only by the faltering fever of her Staff, her stained fire.\n\nDamnation. He did not know how she would fare against the Sandgorgons. Even aided by Branl and Giants, he would not be able to withstand the onslaught of _skurj_. Even if he ripped open the mountain\u2014\n\n\" _More!_ \" he cried at the Feroce. \"We need _more_!\"\n\nThe lurker's minions had withdrawn, flinching, toward the Flat. They may not have heard him. They or their High God may have chosen not to hear him.\n\nCursing himself for every lost instant, Covenant dismissed his wild magic longsword. Now or never. What good was leprosy if he could not trust its implications? If it did not enable him to bear what he required of himself?\n\nIn one quick motion, he pulled the blade of the _krill_ across his left palm, drew blood sluggish with dehydration. He had no staff, no instrument of Law. Like Berek Halfhand before him, he needed blood and desperation to accomplish what even wild magic could not. Clenching his cut hand, he slapped red drops against the dagger's gem. Then he flung his gaze upward, past Linden and the onset of Sandgorgons, past the outpouring of the Defiles Course, past the towering cliff to the highest slopes of the mountain. In his mind, he shouted the Seven Words: a prayer that had no voice.\n\nA prayer that meant, _Please_.\n\nAlmost immediately, he was answered.\n\nPower without shape or sound exploded in him, through him, around him. A detonation both silent and invisible shocked the valley from end to end. Theurgy as old as the world seemed to ripple across the fabric of reality. It jolted the Sandgorgons in their strides; bewildered the _skurj_ so badly that some of them turned on each other. Sights that should have been clear blurred and merged. The slopes on both sides of the river trembled.\n\nAfter the concussion came stillness: a quiet so profound that it appeared to stop time. Existence held its breath. The Sandgorgons began strides which they did not complete. _Skurj_ paused with their lurid jaws wide. Fangs or brains forgot themselves. Giants tried to flick glances at each other, or at Covenant, and found that they could not move. Only Branl\u2014\n\nLowering his blade, the Humbled bowed to Covenant as if he understood. As if he approved.\n\nA moment later, the entire sky became thunderheads, black as ur-viles, impenetrable as gutrock. The heavens poised themselves for a blast which would rattle Gravin Threndor to its roots.\n\nAs if on command, the lurker struck. From the Defiles Course, a tentacle lashed at the baffled _skurj_. It wrapped itself around one of the monsters.\n\nShrieking in pain, Horrim Carabal lifted the creature.\n\nThe tentacle caught fire: it burned like aged wood. Rabid flames streaked the air. The lurker's agony must have been extreme: worse than _turiya_ Raver's violation; worse than self-mutilation. Yet the sovereign of the Sarangrave did not let go. Instead it flung the _skurj_ eastward over the wetland.\n\nThat creature did not return.\n\nNor did the lurker. Its arm collapsed into the river, smothered flames in water and corruption. Sounds like the sobbing of marshes roiled through the fog. No other tentacles appeared.\n\nThrough Horrim Carabal's wailing came a deep concussion as unanswerable as a tectonic shift. Mount Thunder itself seemed to howl as gouts of sizzling rock swept downward. Storms boiled lower until they shrouded Gravin Threndor's high crown.\n\nAnd from the depths of the Flat, waters rose against the current of the Defiles Course as if they had been summoned by the mountain. Dark thrashing swelled between the riverbanks.\n\nCovenant hardly noticed the river. Dimly in the distance, he thought that he saw yellow fires break through the clouds. He thought that he saw discrete flames surge lower like the onset of an avalanche. They roared as if the very air had become conflagration.\n\n\"You are answered, ur-Lord,\" Branl announced distinctly. \"A worthy effort in all sooth. How the forces which you have unleashed may combat _skurj_ , who are themselves a form of fire, I cannot conceive. Nonetheless the summons is both valiant and unforeseen. I am proud that I am Humbled in your name.\"\n\nAt last, Covenant began to see the fires more clearly. They looked impossibly far away: too far away to reach the valley before the Sandgorgons and the _skurj_ remembered their savagery. But now he was sure that those flames were Fire-Lions. They embodied Earthpower and Mount Thunder's enduring spirit. They could be as swift as the theurgy which had called them forth.\n\nThe Sandgorgons rallied more quickly than the _skurj_. But the monsters of the Great Desert did not resume their charge toward Linden and her few companions. Their strange senses marked the rush of a new threat. And some deep part of them\u2014an instinct too atavistic to heed _samadhi_ Sheol\u2014responded with eagerness. They had been bred in scorching heat and flaying winds, and had been trapped for millennia within the scouring energies of Sandgorgons Doom. Their urge to prove themselves against any and every foe outweighed _samadhi_ 's urgings. It outweighed self-preservation.\n\nTogether they turned away from Linden, strode deliberately down into the bottom of the valley. There they stood like a wall, awaiting the landslide fury of the Fire-Lions.\n\nThey had already demonstrated that they had no cause to fear the rising waters.\n\nBeasts of flame became torrents on the mountainsides. They spread like wildfires toward the sheer drop above the river.\n\nMuttering mute curses like supplications, Covenant watched the cliff and the Sandgorgons. If _samadhi_ and _moksha_ did not regain control of those creatures\u2014if the uncertainty of the _skurj_ lasted just a little longer\u2014\n\nBehind Covenant, the Feroce gibbered for his attention. \"Pure One, hear us.\" Their pleading was a damp clamor, scarcely audible through the tumult of Fire-Lions, the scald and crash of ancient magicks. \"Our High God's flesh cannot endure the worms of fire. He must not hazard them. Yet the alliance has been sealed. Even in his anguish, our High God upholds it.\n\n\"You must seek higher ground. We have done what we have done. The Feroce can do no more.\"\n\nWhile Covenant stared, stricken witless, Branl called, \"Ur-Lord!\" He sounded uncharacteristically urgent. \"Heed the Feroce! The waters rise!\"\n\n\"Well said, _Haruchai_ ,\" muttered a Giant as he snatched Covenant into his arms. He had a seamed face, and skin toughened by wind and sun, yet he looked as slender as a sapling, or as incomplete, like a man whose body was decades younger than his visage. Nevertheless his muscles were hawsers. \"This fog masks a mounting flood. A tide gathers from the east. Even Giants cannot swim such waters.\"\n\nThe _skurj_ turned away from the cliff, away from the Sandgorgons. Those monsters which had bitten into other _skurj_ , seeking blood and sustenance, ceased their feeding. Rearing like serpents, they brandished their fangs at Covenant; at Branl and six unknown Giants.\n\nTogether the Giants scrambled out from under a breaking wave of reified lava. Covenant dangled, helpless in his rescuer's arms, trying to understand events which had become as sudden as vertigo. At the rear of the group, Branl fought alone, swinging Longwrath's flamberge in a blur of cuts. But he retreated as he slashed, moving quickly without giving the monsters his back. The thunder of the Fire-Lions sounded like ruin, the gutrock rumble of an earthquake powerful enough to tear Landsdrop apart. The tumult of water rising from the Sarangrave resembled the onrush of another tsunami.\n\nAt the full stretch of their long limbs, the Giants raced for the southern rim of the valley. A long stone's throw away, more Giants bore Linden and Jeremiah upward. Swinging a longsword, Stave accompanied them. Branl cut twice more at the nearest creatures, then turned to follow the Giants.\n\nWhen the Fire-Lions met the wall of Sandgorgons, and Horrim Carabal's flood found the _skurj_ , the result was cataclysm. It shook the foundations of the Lower Land for leagues in every direction. Struck by acrid eruptions of steam and fury, the thunderheads became a bludgeoning deluge that seemed to erase the valley from existence. Rain fell like the ultimate darkness.\n\nThen the Giants raised a huzzah, ragged and grateful. The monsters were dying, all of them. Dimly Covenant realized that most of his companions had survived. He had seen Linden's fire before the end. Lord Foul would not have permitted harm to Jeremiah.\n\nCarried by a Giant whom he had never met before, Thomas Covenant felt no relief. He had exhausted himself. Now he was too stunned to feel anything.\n\n## 4.\n\nReluctances\n\nThe downpour lasted until the Fire-Lions were done with the Sandgorgons; until all of the _skurj_ were dead, and the lurker's flood dwindled to the east; until _samadhi_ Sheol's sentience had faded entirely from existence. Then the thunderheads drifted apart as if they had forgotten their purpose. The chill of rain and darkness dismissed the fog. Glittering as if they trembled at what they beheld, stars pricked the night sky with loveliness.\n\nLinden did not see the Fire-Lions depart. For all she knew, they, too, had perished. But she did not think so. Gravin Threndor's ancient fire and glory were inherent to the world, as natural as the Worm. She doubted that they could be unmade.\n\nShe rested under the shelter of an ironwood high up on the side of the valley, as far as possible from the craters and carnage of the battle, the plague-spots like stigmata in the ground, the clinging reek of gangrene. Leaning against the hard trunk with the Staff of Law in her lap, she waited for some semblance of strength to return.\n\nShe was too tired to be afraid. Too drained even to stay on her feet after Hurl had delivered her here. Too depleted to regard Jeremiah, or Covenant, or the Giants. Instead she floated into the lucidity of exhaustion: that numb mind-set in which unbidden thoughts followed their own logic to conclusions that might not have made sense at any other time.\n\n_In your present state, Chosen\u2014_\n\nShe was done with fighting. That much had become clear to her.\n\n_\u2014Desecration lies ahead of you._\n\nGod, she had endured so much violence\u2014From her struggles against Roger Covenant and the _croyel_ to the horrors and killing beside the Defiles Course, she had fought and fought. With wild magic, she had shed the lives of scores or hundreds of misled Cavewights.\n\n_You have become the daughter of my heart_. It was enough. She was done. Ever since Jeremiah's escape from his graves, the foundations of her life had been shifting. They needed to shift further.\n\nShe did not mean that she had given up. Carried along by the syllogisms of prostration, she arrived at convictions which did not imply surrender. She had seen her husband find his way through an appalling conundrum of _skurj_ and Sandgorgons. She had seen Giants appear out of nowhere to hazard their lives; seen the lurker of the Sarangrave set aside its old malevolence and choose to endure terrible pain. Rime Coldspray and four of her Swordmainnir had given battle while three loved comrades were slain. Stave and Branl had fought as though they wielded the prowess of every living _Haruchai_. The fact that Linden and Covenant and Jeremiah were still alive meant many things. It did not entail or require surrender.\n\nBut she could not keep meeting peril with violence, striving to out-do the savagery of Lord Foul's servants and allies. She could not. She needed a different purpose, a better role in the Land's fate. She had passed through the wrath of Gallows Howe to the gibbet's deeper truths; to the vast bereavement which had inspired Garroting Deep's thirst for blood. The time had come to heed the lessons which her whole life had tried to teach her.\n\nIf she did not give up, and did not fight, what remained? She thought that she knew, although she trembled to contemplate it; or she would have trembled had she been less weary.\n\n_There is hope in contradiction._\n\nMaybe that was true. If she did not know how to forgive herself, she could begin by offering other forms of grace to people or beings who needed it more.\n\n_The daughter of my heart?_ she thought. Give me a chance. Let me show you what your daughter has in mind.\n\nShe was still the Chosen. She could make decisions and go in directions which the Despiser might not expect.\n\nAfter that, her helpless clarity looped back to its starting point. She was done with fighting; with violence and killing. One idea at a time, she followed the same logic to the same conclusions. Exhaustion was like that, she knew. Under the right circumstances, it shed a certain amount of light; but its own conditions prevented it from casting its illumination further.\n\nLater Hurl came to her with a satchel of dried fruit and cured mutton. He also offered her a flask of _diamondraught_ diluted with fresh water: enough of the Giantish liquor, he said, to restore her, but not so much that it would impose sleep. And when she had eaten a little and drunk more, she found that she felt strong enough to focus her eyes and look around.\n\nThe survivors were lit like reincarnations of themselves by the silver of the _krill_ in Branl's grasp. Jeremiah's distress called out to her. He sat huddled against the trunk of a tree nearby, but he did not look at her\u2014or at anything outside himself. With his arms wrapped around his knees and his face hidden against his thighs, he rocked back and forth like a child in too much pain. Stave and Cirrus Kindwind stood with him. The Giant murmured reassurances that Linden could not hear. Stave's stance suggested that he was keeping watch.\n\nHurl had joined most of the other newcomers a short distance away. From somewhere\u2014presumably among the fringes of the Sarangrave\u2014they had retrieved sacks bulging with supplies: food and more _diamondraught_ ; other things which they considered necessary, and which they must have carried for many leagues. As Stonemage, Grueburn, and Bluntfist gathered with them, the canvas-clad men and women handed out viands and refreshment.\n\nThe surviving Swordmainnir and several of the other Giants bore oozing scalds. Contact with the blood and entrails of the _skurj_ had burned them. But they were Giants, able to endure fulminating hurts. One and all, they were grieving over their fallen comrades. Yet that hurt, also, they were able to endure, at least for a while.\n\nDown the slope from Linden, Covenant stood with Branl, Rime Coldspray, and another Giant, an implausibly thin man who appeared to speak for the sailors. Like Stave, Branl was unscathed. The hunch of Covenant's shoulders told Linden that he had fallen hard, damaged his chest. Her nerves detected cracked ribs and some dislodged cartilage, but no broken bones. Nevertheless his manner resembled the ravaged hillsides.\n\n\"I swear to you,\" he was saying, \"I thought it made sense. This is what happens when I convince myself I know what I'm doing. Even after Lord Foul touched Jeremiah, I thought we could sneak in here. I'm still not sure we could get in any other way. But this was a disaster.\n\n\"Hellfire, Coldspray! I just about got us all killed.\" To the other Giant, he added, \"If you hadn't showed up\u2014\"\n\nOr if, Linden amended on his behalf, he had not feared his own power; if he had unleashed enough wild magic to cleanse the whole valley. If he had indeed been _done with restraint_. Yet she believed that he had done well to hold back. He had little health-sense, and wild magic tended always to resist control. He might have inadvertently killed his companions.\n\n\"Enough, Timewarden,\" the Ironhand replied, peremptory with fatigue and loss. \"It is bootless to fault yourself for an onslaught which you could not have foreseen. Our peril here was both extreme and bitter. Yet it has not exceeded the hazards of the more direct road. And here we have found aid as unforeseen as our foes.\"\n\nLinden nodded privately. Soon she would have to go to Covenant, if he did not approach her first. She needed his embrace to console her. And she wanted to explain herself as well as she could. She was done keeping secrets, especially from him.\n\nBut her son took precedence. She could only imagine what Lord Foul's visions and his own helplessness had done to him.\n\nShe allowed herself a bit more food, a few more swallows of _diamondraught_ -tinged water. Then she began the immense labor of rising to her feet.\n\nAt once, Stave came to help her. His hand on her arm lifted her, steadied her. His single eye studied her as if she were no longer closed to him. In silence, he supported her toward Jeremiah.\n\nAs Linden approached, Cirrus Kindwind moved away. Clearly she needed the solace of her own people.\n\nEvery step sharpened Linden's perception of her son's despair. Her nerves assured her that his mind was still present. Although he rocked back and forth like an abused child, he had not retreated to his graves. Nevertheless he looked lost in misery.\n\nFor a moment, she paused to think. But she was too tired and sure to reconsider anything. Lowering herself down the Staff of Law, she knelt facing Jeremiah. Then she set the Staff on the soaked ground between them.\n\n\"Jeremiah, honey. Can you hear me? Are you listening?\"\n\nHugging his face against his thighs, he rocked harder.\n\n\"Jeremiah, listen.\" Her voice was a sigh. \"I know it's hard.\" How many times had Thomas said that to her? \"But we're still alive.\" Others were not. \"This isn't the end. We can finish what we started.\"\n\nMuffled by his legs, Jeremiah whispered, \"You can. I can't.\"\n\nLinden searched herself for strength. \"What do you mean?\"\n\nSlowly his head came up as if he were summoning indignation; as if her question insulted him. Memories of Sandgorgons and _skurj_ capered like ghouls in his haunted gaze.\n\n\"Because I can't _do_ anything, that's why.\" He made a visible effort to sound angry, but his voice held only anguish. \"I wasn't even in danger. Foul wants me alive. But there were all those monsters, and I couldn't help you. I couldn't do anything except watch. And even when I did that, I could still see the Worm. Even when Latebirth and Galesend were dying, and it was horrible, and there was blood everywhere, and those fangs. I could still see the Worm. Every minute, it does more damage than all the _skurj_ in the world, and there's nothing I can do.\"\n\n_As guerdon for his puerile valor\u2014_\n\nAching for him, Linden summoned her courage. \"I know. It must have been terrible for you. That's why I want you to take my Staff.\"\n\nShe expected surprise, but he only looked away. \"Why? It won't make any difference. I can't use it. I don't know how. It isn't mine. You'll just have to take it back. You won't have any choice.\"\n\nShe was tempted to reach out and shake him; but she refrained. He was too full of dismay to appreciate what she was offering him. As calmly as she could, she admitted, \"We might have to take turns at first. The Giants and Thomas are hurt. They need me. But you can still get started. And I don't always have to hold it. I can use some of its power without touching it. That doesn't change anything. I still want you to have it. I want it to be yours.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Jeremiah repeated like a groan.\n\n\"Because you need to be able to defend yourself,\" he needed to believe in himself, \"and I don't need it anymore. I have white gold\u2014and I can't use both. No one can. Earthpower and wild magic together are too much. So now I want to learn how to handle my ring. I want you to learn how to use the Staff.\"\n\n\"I can't,\" he said again. \"I don't have any idea\u2014\"\n\n\"Jeremiah.\" She made his name sound like a reprimand. \"We talked about this. Of course you don't know how. But you can learn. You don't even need my help. You have your health-sense and your own power. You can teach yourself.\n\n\"And if you have something else to concentrate on, you might be able to stop seeing the Worm. Earthpower and Law can do all kinds of healing. Maybe they can cure those visions. Maybe they can even keep the Despiser from taking you again.\"\n\nTaking the risk, she finished, \"And maybe you can find a way to make the Staff clean again. I know that I can't. That blackness is too much a part of me.\"\n\nJeremiah stared at her. The bleak torment in his gaze became a muddy roil. Its ambiguous currents twisted in unfamiliar directions, disguising their own depths. For a moment, she feared that he would pull away completely; that she had asked too much of him. That he would choose despair and dissociation.\n\nBut then he reached for her Staff.\n\n\"I'll try. I can't stand the way I am.\"\n\nBlinking at an unexpected sting of tears, she said unsteadily, \"Just remember what I told you. Start with your own Earthpower. Use it to touch what the Staff can do. You should be able to feel it. Then you'll be able to do more. It won't be easy at first. But you'll get better.\"\n\nHe ignored her now. Already distracted, he stroked the written wood, familiarizing himself with its texture, exploring its arcane script. Briefly he considered its iron heels as though they held the secrets he needed. Then he surged to his feet, holding the Staff of Law as if he wanted to swing it around his head.\n\nAh, God. Feeling strangely naked, bereft, like a woman who had just said farewell to her son's childhood, Linden climbed upright. She was grateful for Stave's firm grip on her arm, reliable as a corner-stone; but she had no words to offer her friend. Before she could do or say anything else, she needed to stop weeping.\n\n\"I do not scry, Chosen,\" the former Master remarked without any discernible emotion. \"To my sight, the future holds only darkness. Yet I judge that you have acted wisely. The boy's need is great, and you have other strengths.\"\n\nFortunately Stave did not appear to expect a response. Without a sign from her, he guided her toward Covenant.\n\nAs she drew near, Covenant turned away from Rime Coldspray and the lean Giant. His gaze was feverish with pain, and the lines of his face had been cut deeper: he seemed to have aged years in the past few hours. Even without his memories of the Arch, he bore the burden of too much time. His damaged chest was the least of his hurts. At the core, he was defined by his rage for lepers; for the innocent victims of Despite. He hated the necessary fact that other people suffered so that he might oppose Lord Foul.\n\nWincing whenever his ribs shifted, he held out his arms to his wife.\n\nFearing that she had just sacrificed her son\u2014the first step toward sacrificing herself\u2014Linden stepped into Covenant's embrace as if she were falling.\n\nIt was a mercy that he did not speak. Words were demands. For a few moments, at least, she simply needed to be held. And no one else's arms felt like his. Even Jeremiah's hugs could not comfort her now.\n\nBut as she leaned on Covenant, she felt his injuries more keenly, his bodily hurts and his aggrieved spirit. He held himself responsible for too much. And she had done nothing to ease or heal him.\n\nWith her health-sense, she reached out for the Earthpower of the Staff. As she had done once to relieve a suffering Waynhim, she invoked healing from a distance.\n\nAt first, she focused her heart on the distress in Covenant's chest. But when she had restored the integrity of his ribs and cartilage, she turned the balm of Law on the scalds and exhaustion of the Giants.\n\n\"Thanks, love,\" Covenant murmured when she was done. \"That helps.\" His arms tightened around her.\n\nRime Coldspray and several of the other Giants stood straighter. In spite of their sadness, they smiled.\n\n\"Thomas.\" Linden held Covenant closer. She wished that she could talk to him privately. The things which she had to say were difficult enough: she did not want anyone else to hear them. But she had learned to distrust that impulse. \"I need to tell you something.\"\n\nWhile I still can.\n\nHe released a pent up breath. \"So tell me.\"\n\n\"I love you.\" There was no good way to say it. Words were inadequate. \"I want to help you. I want you to stop Lord Foul. I want the Land to be saved, and the Earth, and the stars, and the _Elohim_ ,\" although she could not imagine how any of those deeds might be accomplished. \"I want Jeremiah safe, and all of our friends, and everything that we've ever cared about.\n\n\"But I'm done fighting.\"\n\nCovenant stiffened as if she had frightened him. His voice was harsh with strain as he asked, \"And you think you have a choice?\"\n\nHe did not let her go.\n\nShe nodded against the thin fabric of his T-shirt.\n\n\"So tell me,\" he repeated through his teeth.\n\nTo make room for what she had to say, she eased away until she could touch his chest. Kissing the tips of her fingers, she slipped them through the old knife cut in his shirt. \"You said it yourself. We have to face the things that scare us the most. There's really no other way. Escape isn't worth what it costs.\n\n\"But the Despiser isn't what scares me the most. Even losing Jeremiah isn't. Or losing you. That might break me, but it isn't my worst fear. And the Worm\u2014\n\n\"Thomas, I've hardly seen the Land the way it was when you fell in love with it. That first time, when we came here together, it was all the Sunbane. And since then, we've lost too much, and I've been going crazy about Jeremiah.\n\n\"Oh, Andelain has changed my life. More than once.\" Glimmermere and _aliantha_ and percipience and the Ranyhyn had all changed her. \"But I simply haven't learned how to care about this world as much as you do. The Worm isn't my worst fear.\"\n\nBefore he could prompt her, she said, \"My worst fear is what I might become. Or what I've already become. I need to face that somehow.\"\n\n\"Then how\u2014?\" Covenant began. But he stopped himself. For a moment, he seemed to scramble like a man who felt the ground shifting under his feet. Then his head jerked up as if his chest had been pierced again; as if she had stabbed him. She felt the jolt of his intuitive leap. \"Oh. _That_ fear. Now I get it.\"\n\nLinden nodded again. Trying to be clear, she said, \"Days ago, you left me because you had to deal with Joan. If we live long enough, I'll have to leave you.\"\n\nAnd her son.\n\nGripping her shoulders, he stared like wild magic into her face. \"That's why you gave Jeremiah your Staff.\"\n\n\"One of the reasons,\" she conceded. Now that he understood, she found it comparatively easy to bear his gaze. \"Earthpower and Law can't help me. I have to use my ring.\"\n\nAt once, he pulled her close again, hugged her as though his heart refused to go on beating without her. \"Hellfire, Linden,\" he breathed. \"That's insane. It might be exactly what we need.\"\n\nShe matched his embrace. \"And I'm the only one who can even try. You said that, too. You have to face Lord Foul. And Jeremiah has to decide for himself. That leaves me.\"\n\n\"I remember,\" he said gruffly. \"I must have been out of my mind.\"\n\nThen he held her at arm's length again so that he could study the doubts and determinations following each other like ocean swells in her eyes.\n\n\"Well, why not?\" he growled. \"I didn't ask you and the First and Pitchwife to do my fighting for me when I decided to give up using power all those millennia ago, but you kept me alive anyway. Maybe I even expected you to do that. Why shouldn't it be your turn now? Sure, we have more enemies this time. But we also have more friends. And I think we're capable of things damn Foul has never seen before. Why shouldn't you get a chance to take your own risks?\"\n\nLinden smiled through a brief relapse of tears. \"I knew that you would understand.\" Then she added, \"But I haven't told Jeremiah. We aren't there yet. We might not live long enough to get there. And he has other things on his mind. I don't want to scare him until I'm sure that he needs to know.\"\n\nCovenant nodded; but abruptly he was distracted. \"I get it.\" He was no longer looking at her. \"But suddenly things aren't as simple as they were a minute ago.\"\n\nWhen she followed his gaze, her heart seemed to stop.\n\nHolding the Staff, Jeremiah had summoned his heritage of Earthpower. Small flames spread from his hands onto the shaft. They traced the cryptic lines of the runes, blossomed briefly on the iron heels, measured the wood.\n\nThey were his\u2014and they were stark black, as dark as ichor squeezed from the marrow of the world's bones.\n\n\"Jeremiah!\" When Linden's pulse resumed its labor, it pounded in her temples, in her ears, at the base of her throat. \"What are you doing?\" She had asked him to change the Staff. Instead her own darkness was changing him.\n\nHe did not glance at her. \"Don't bother me.\" His eyes echoed the hue of his flames. \"I'm trying to concentrate. This is temporary. I mean, I think it's temporary. I just don't know what to do about it yet.\"\n\nScowling to himself, he muttered, \"You're stronger than I thought. I can't figure out how you did it.\"\n\nLinden meant to intervene. She thronged with objections, warnings, supplications. But Covenant stopped her. With his hand on her cheek, he urged her to face him.\n\n\"Leave him alone for a while,\" he advised softly. \"He wants to try. Maybe this is how he has to learn. Maybe he has to go through you to get to himself.\"\n\nCovenant may have meant, Maybe he's starting to face his worst fear.\n\nLinden wanted to believe him, but she could not. Her father had kept her locked in the attic with him while he killed himself. Her mother had begged her to end her life. Linden had given her Staff to Jeremiah of her own free will; but she did not know how to distance herself from his peril.\n\nYet what else could she do? She had already decided to leave him when last came to last. When there was nothing left for her except the dark.\n\nInstead of stopping her son, she clung to her husband as if he were the only defense she had.\n\nut slowly food, diluted _diamondraught_ , and the aftereffects of Earthpower steadied Linden. By degrees, she regained a semblance of calm.\n\nThe same benefits wrought on her companions, the Giants if not the _Haruchai_ , until the frenzy and desperation of battle began to fade. And as the Giants recovered, their need for tales grew.\n\nClearly the newcomers and the Swordmainnir were well known to each other. But much had occurred since they had parted: both groups had much to tell, and to hear. In particular, the sailors wanted to understand the confluence of events which had brought about the crisis of the Defiles Course. Because they were Giants, they knew about Covenant and Linden; but everything that pertained to Jeremiah was a mystery to them. And the Swordmainnir were eager to hear how their people had contrived to arrive when they were most needed.\n\nWhen everyone had eaten, the sailors bundled up their supplies, leaving out a little food in case Linden or Covenant or Jeremiah wanted more. Then the Ironhand announced that the time had come, and her people gathered around her, aching and ready.\n\nLinden stood among them with Covenant behind her, his arms around her. Branl joined Coldspray so that the _krill_ would shed as much light as possible for the Giants. But Jeremiah seemed to have no interest in stories or woe. His immersion in his task was complete, as it always was when he worked on his constructs. His eyes watched flames while his hands made them dance and gambol on the Staff, or gave them shapes that suggested Ranyhyn, flickering portals, evanescent _Elohim_. Gradually he attuned himself. Nevertheless his every expression of magic remained as benighted as the world's doom.\n\nPerhaps to reassure Linden, Stave positioned himself near her son; but he did nothing to distract Jeremiah.\n\nThe Ironhand began by introducing the newly arrived Giants, seven men and four women. Hurl Linden had already met. Their leader was the Anchormaster of Dire's Vessel, the Giantship which had brought the Swordmainnir and Longwrath to the Land. His name was Bluff Stoutgirth, although he was lean to the point of emaciation; and his mien hinted that he was more inclined to hilarity than to command. Here, however, his manner was grave and grieving. His sailors and Rime Coldspray's Swordmainnir had endured much together during their voyage to the Land. They felt their losses keenly.\n\nFor Linden and Covenant, and for the _Haruchai_ , Bluff Stoutgirth named his comrades\u2014Etch Furledsail, Squallish Blustergale, Keenreef, Wiver Setrock, others\u2014but Linden doubted that she would remember them all. Still she was grateful for the knowledge that they had come from Dire's Vessel. That detail made the fact, if not the timeliness, of their arrival comprehensible.\n\nThe Anchormaster offered to tell his tale first. It was, he suspected, both shorter and kinder than that of the Swordmainnir, though perhaps no less unforeseen. With Rime Coldspray's assent, he began.\n\nAfter the departure of the Ironhand's company, Dire's Vessel had remained in the anchorage of ancient _Coercri_ , The Grieve of the Unhomed. For a number of days, the sailors busied themselves with the mundane tasks of repairing and maintaining their Giantship. Then they began to notice changes in the littoral's weather, disturbances in the sea. Storms lashed the coast and disappeared again without apparent cause. Downpours drenched Dire's Vessel out of clear skies. Currents ran awry, heaving the Giantship from side to side until anchors were set at every point of the compass. Still the Swordmainnir did not return. They had vanished among the uncertainties of their quest.\n\nFive mornings ago, however, the sun astonished the crew\u2014Stoutgirth said this with improbable good cheer\u2014by failing to rise. Stars began to disappear from the firmament of the heavens. Mighty swells from the southeast threatened Dire's Vessel's moorings. Such occurrences augured some immense and dolorous ill, but the sailors could not interpret the signs.\n\nYet on the following day a new astonishment appeared. Striding forth from tales many centuries old, a man made himself manifest upon the foredeck of Dire's Vessel.\n\nThat he was a man of immense age was plain. The lines upon his visage were such that they mapped a world. Indeed, his years had been so prolonged that they appeared to erode his substance where he stood. His raiment was ancient, an unkempt robe of indeterminate hue, and his limbs wore hatchments of scars. Yet he bore himself as one who could not be bowed, and his glances had the effect of lightnings.\n\nUnmistakably, Bluff Stoutgirth announced, the man was one of the _Haruchai_. Indeed, he was unmistakably Brinn, the companion of the ur-Lord Thomas Covenant and the Sun-Sage Linden Avery aboard Starfare's Gem: the _Haruchai_ who had become the Guardian of the One Tree.\n\nThe Guardian's tidings were dire in all sooth, Stoutgirth confessed. \"The Worm of the World's End is roused, seeking the ruin of all things. Therefore the One Tree withers. The life of the Earth nears its close.\" Yet when the Giants bewailed their lot, moaning the loss of love and wind and stone, of seas and joy and children, Brinn answered their lament.\n\n\"Yet good may come from loss as it does from gain. The decline of the One Tree has concluded my devoir. I am freed to remember the promises of an earlier age. And the Worm is not instant in its feeding. Life lingers yet in the world's heartwood. This gift is granted to me, that I may expend my waning strength in the Land's service.\n\n\"While I endure, I will guide you, for your aid will be sorely needed.\"\n\nNone aboard Dire's Vessel, the Anchormaster continued, could comprehend that need. Yet their hearts were lifted by the thought that they might yet be of use in the Earth's last peril. In a foreshortened Giantclave, the Master of Dire's Vessel, Vigilall Scudweather, determined that she and a half portion of the crew would remain to tend the Giantship, praying that events would allow them to serve some worthy purpose in their turn. Bluff Stoutgirth and the others prepared such supplies and weapons as they were able to carry swiftly. Then they followed the Guardian of the One Tree from The Grieve into Seareach, tending always to the southwest toward the toils of Sarangrave Flat and the renowned perils of the lurker.\n\nFor a wonder, they passed into and through the Sarangrave unthreatened. Indeed, their course was eased at every obstacle, though they had no understanding of the magicks which relieved their efforts. In another matter, however, fortune gazed less kindly upon them. The Guardian's diminishment was unremitting, and no succor of companionship or repast eased it. During the evening of the day now past, he frayed at last and faded, drifting away along the world's winds. Then the Giants feared that naught remained to thwart the Worm. Yet they persevered, for the Guardian had led them far enough to descry Mount Thunder. They knew their destination. Therefore they hastened onward, denying themselves all sorrow for Brinn _Haruchai_ , until they beheld turmoil upon the mountain. And at the last, fortune smiled once more. The Giants of Dire's Vessel did not come too late.\n\nSo Bluff Stoutgirth ended his tale.\n\n\"Joy is in the ears that hear,\" Rime Coldspray replied formally, \"not in the mouth that speaks. Upon occasion, however, both ears and mouth may know joy, for its causes are plain to all. When we foundered in strife and loss, your coming lifted our hearts. We are Giants and must grieve. Yet we are filled with gladness also. You are a brightness amid the world's dusk.\"\n\nThe other Swordmainnir offered their thanks and pleasure as well. But they fell silent when Covenant began to speak. Holding Linden tightly, he addressed the sailors with a familiar ache in his voice.\n\n\"Brinn talked about a service or boon. Even after he saved my life, he wasn't done. But he didn't tell me what he had in mind. Now I know. You're his last service. His boon. We weren't enough. We needed help. No matter what happens, we're going to need more.\"\n\nLinden nodded. Manethrall Mahrtiir had spoken truly. _And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us_. The Giants of Dire's Vessel had given Covenant time to summon the Fire-Lions.\n\nBut the Swordmainnir did not linger over their gratitude. Their weariness ran deep; and there was much that Stoutgirth and his crew needed to know.\n\n\"As you have surmised,\" the Ironhand began, sighing, \"our tale is both lengthy and unforeseen. It has cost us lives and blood and sorrow. The worth of our deeds is not ours to proclaim. Yet I will trust that worth resembles joy. It will be found in the ears that hear if the mouth that speaks cannot name it.\"\n\nThen Rime Coldspray gave the Giants of Dire's Vessel her story.\n\nAt first, Linden listened uncomfortably. The Ironhand described events and purposes in more forgiving terms than Linden could have managed, especially where Linden herself was concerned. She had to stifle an impulse to add her own stringent counterpoint to the arching cadences of Coldspray's narration. But gradually the Ironhand's tone filled her thoughts, lulling her until she drifted on the currents of Coldspray's voice.\n\nBeyond the reach of the _krill_ 's gem, darkness waited as though the whole truth of the world had become night. Overhead the watching stars seemed too disconsolate to value their hard-earned reprieve. Behind the episodes of Rime Coldspray's tale, the Sarangrave's lapping waters muttered reminders of venom and putrescence. Jeremiah's study of the Staff sent small flames skirling upward, but shed no light.\n\nYet within the ambit of the _krill_ 's argent, Bluff Stoutgirth and his comrades were transfixed. Where the Anchormaster and Hurl appeared to suppress jests at every turn of the tale, Keenreef and Squallish Blustergale looked dismayed to the heart. Etch Furledsail, Wiver Setrock, and one of the women\u2014had Stoutgirth called her Baf Scatterwit?\u2014stared at the Ironhand as if nothing made sense. Together Dire's Vessel's crew evinced every reaction except joy.\n\nNevertheless no one interrupted Rime Coldspray. Even Covenant did not, although he could no doubt have added his own interpretations. Instead he seemed distracted, as if he were thinking about something else.\n\nThen Coldspray was done. A long silence greeted her, until Stoutgirth announced brightly, \"A toothsome tale, Ironhand\u2014a veritable feast of clear peril and ambiguous vindication, strange beings and extravagant exertions. Doubtless we will gnaw upon it, seeking its marrow, while the world endures.\n\n\"Yet you have spoken of worth. For my part, Ironhand, I do not acknowledge it.\" He laughed happily. \"As matters stand, we resemble sailors snared in the ensorcelments of the Soulbiter. There can be no worth in the tale of those who fail and fall unwitnessed, for their doom is not redeemed by the telling of it. We must have boasting, Rime Coldspray! I will not name the deeds of this company worthy until the World's End has been forestalled. Only then may the tale be shared with those able to esteem it.\"\n\nLinden frowned, thinking that the Anchormaster had insulted her friends. But the Giants heard something different in Stoutgirth's assertion; or they heard it with different ears. Several of his sailors laughed, and both Grueburn and Kindwind chuckled.\n\n\"Then,\" Rime Coldspray replied, bemused and rueful, \"we must endeavor to win free of this Soulbiter, that we may thereafter brag of our survival.\"\n\nThe Anchormaster nodded. \"And toward that end, Ironhand, there is a matter which you have not addressed. How do you propose to sail these fatal seas? You have overcome the unwelcome of the _Haruchai_. And your companions are figures of legend, revered among us. Your purpose must be mighty indeed, to gather such a congeries of valor and puissance.\n\n\"Ironhand, what is your intent?\"\n\nColdspray opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. With a bow, she stepped aside, referring the question to Covenant; or perhaps to Covenant and Linden.\n\nCovenant's arms tightened momentarily. In Linden's ear, he whispered, \"This is the hard part of being a leper. I'm going to need your help.\"\n\nStartled, she turned to him with questions in her eyes; but his only response was a twisted smile as he stepped away from her. The sailors and the Swordmainnir towered over him, yet he faced them as though his stature equaled theirs.\n\n\"I hope you aren't expecting me to be sure of anything. We have too many enemies, and they have too much power. And all I really know about the Worm is that we can't stop it. But I don't want to just sit on my hands waiting to die. The Despiser started all this. _Him_ I think we might be able to stop. I want to put an end to his evil.\"\n\nHe pointed at the mouth of the Defiles Course. \"I want to get into Mount Thunder. Up into the Wightwarrens, if that's even possible. That's where Lord Foul is. I want to go find him.\"\n\nBriefly his shoulders hunched as if he were strangling his fears. \"But there's something else I want to do first.\"\n\nWhile the Giants studied him, he gestured Branl to his side. Taking the _krill_ , he held it up in his halfhand by its wrapped blade. Within its silver, he continued.\n\n\"The Ironhand told her story. The Swordmainnir have been through hell and blood ever since they left you. Fighting Longwrath, fighting for Longwrath, they lost Scend Wavegift. Against the _skurj_ , they lost Moire Squareset. And eventually Kastenessen killed Longwrath. All of that was bad enough. But now the toll is even higher.\" Although Coldspray and Stoutgirth had already acknowledged their dead, Covenant insisted on the names. \"Latebirth, Stormpast Galesend, and Cabledarm died for us, and Dire's Vessel lost a man I never even met. You called him Slumberhead, God knows why. He sure as hell wasn't dozing when he gave his life.\n\n\"It's too much. You're Giants, all of you. You can't ask yourselves to carry around that much grief indefinitely. You need a _caamora_. How else are you going to face what's ahead of us?\"\n\nThe Ironhand glanced at her surroundings. \"We have no fire,\" she said harshly, \"if we do not sacrifice yet another tree.\"\n\nAll of the ironwoods set ablaze by the _skurj_ had burned down to ash, or had been extinguished by rain. There was no flame in the valley apart from Jeremiah's experiments.\n\n\"And I won't ask you to do that,\" Covenant assured her. \"I promised you a _caamora_. I intend to keep that promise.\n\n\"When I made it, I thought I could use Longwrath's body. That seemed like a kind of acknowledgment. A way to make something good out of what he went through. But the Giants we've lost here have been mangled by the _skurj_. They already look desecrated. It seems disrespectful to use them.\n\n\"So I'm going to burn myself.\"\n\nTo the sudden alarm of his companions, he added quickly, \"I mean with wild magic. I'm going to light myself and hope that I can burn hot enough to console you.\n\n\"It's wild magic. It drains me. Hell, it even terrifies me. But it won't hurt me. The only danger is that I'll lose control. Too much might do more harm than too little.\"\n\nThen he turned back to Linden. \"That's why I need your help. Your health-sense. I want you to watch out for me. If I start to go too far, I want you to stop me.\"\n\nSeeing the raw need in his scowl, she felt a hammer pound in her chest. How could she stop him? Oh, she believed that he would not be harmed physically. His power was _him_. But the cost to his spirit might be extreme. His reluctance was necessary to him. It counterbalanced his extravagance: it was his way of managing his fear that he might commit havoc. If he damaged his friends\u2014if he damaged _anything_ \u2014he would not be able to forgive himself.\n\nHow could she stop him, except by possessing him?\n\nBut he did not give her a chance to protest, or to ready herself. He ignored the apprehension of the Giants, the doubts. Before they could say that they did not want him to take this risk, he touched his wedding band to Loric's cut gem.\n\nIn the space between instants, he became fire.\n\nShe could still see him. He stood incandescent in the core of a silver conflagration, a blaze like a bonfire barely contained, bound by force of will in the shape of a whirling pillar as tall as any Giant. As he burned, the _krill_ fell from his fingers: he no longer needed it. Flames seemed to burst from every inch of him. They looked pure enough to render his flesh from his bones. Yet he was not consumed. Instead his magicks appeared to exalt him. With wild magic, he could have brought life and time to an end without the aid of the Worm.\n\nNevertheless his power was also a howl. It tormented him. It was the contradiction which lay at the center of his plight in the Land, _the one word of truth or treachery_. Without wild magic, nothing could be redeemed. With it, everything might be damned.\n\nIn spite of her dismay, Linden understood. With wild magic, destruction came easily. _That_ she knew to be true. She had seen it in _caesures_ ; in the reaving of Cavewights. With fire, Covenant looked capable of ripping the stars out of the heavens. She did not know how to watch without weeping.\n\nFor a moment while Covenant blazed, Rime Coldspray and the other Giants hesitated. They did not know him as Linden did, but they could see how his attempt to both exert and restrain himself wracked him. At the same time, however, they recognized what he was offering. Even if they had not heard about the gift which he had once given to the Dead of The Grieve, they would have yearned to seize this opportunity.\n\nHe had chosen to risk himself. How could they refuse him?\n\nAbruptly the Ironhand reached into the whirl of fire, caught Covenant in her huge hands, and lifted him high. There she held him while his flames attacked her flesh as if they threatened to char her bones, reaching for her heart.\n\nHer grasp threatened his concentration; but he did not withdraw his power.\n\nHer pain was severe, as she needed it to be. She required such anguish to cauterize her bereavements. Without the cleansing of fire, her sorrow would have become bitterness. Eventually she would have lost her ability to hear joy.\n\nWhile Coldspray gripped him, Covenant fought to keep his balance between too much and not enough. But when she passed him to Frostheart Grueburn, his self-control faltered. Wild magic mounted higher.\n\nLinden watched him with her own agony. Cries that she could not utter closed her throat. Stave had come to stand at her back. He clasped her shoulders to steady her. Jeremiah had dropped the Staff of Law. He gaped at Covenant with consternation in his silted gaze. But she was aware of nothing except silver fire and Thomas Covenant.\n\nHow much could he endure? Three Swordmainnir remained after Grueburn. Stoutgirth and his crew numbered eleven. They, too, were eager for the healing hurt of a _caamora_. How could Covenant possibly\u2014?\n\nHow could she stop him?\n\nCirrus Kindwind received him from Grueburn, supported him awkwardly with her good hand and the stump of her maimed forearm. She kept him too long, and not long enough. Sensitive to his ordeal, she did not allow herself to anneal her whole lament. When she released him to Onyx Stonemage, she looked incompletely assuaged.\n\nLinden could not stop him. She could not help him. Not without possessing him. By imposing her choices on his. By using her health-sense to enter him as she had once entered Jeremiah; as she had done to Covenant himself several times long ago.\n\n_Good cannot be accomplished\u2014_\n\nHoarse gasps of strain burst between his teeth as Stonemage gave him to Bluntfist.\n\n\"Mom!\" Jeremiah yelled. \" _Do_ something!\"\n\nNear Linden's ear, Stave said sharply, \"Attend, Chosen. Your ring answers.\"\n\nAs soon as he said the words, she felt fire spitting from her wedding band.\n\nShe, too, was a rightful white gold wielder.\n\n_\u2014find another truth\u2014_\n\nIn the small gap of inspiration between heartbeats, she recovered her voice.\n\n\"Put him down.\" From her ring, she drew flames like streamers and wrapped them around her. She spoke fire. \"Put him _down_!\"\n\nThe Swordmainnir knew her too well. They could not resist her. Baffled and uncertain, Halewhole Bluntfist lowered Covenant to the ground.\n\nAt once, Linden rushed to him. Her arms and her love and her shining she flung around him. Then she gave herself to him\u2014or she made him hers. With percipience, she united their powers until she found a way to balance his extremity with her physician's caution.\n\nTogether they stood in conflagration while the Giants of Dire's Vessel crowded around them. Together Covenant and Linden burned as the sailors came two at a time to grip his shoulders or hers; to be flensed by pain and find release.\n\nA curtain of tears fell between Linden and her companions. For a moment, she was blind. She was almost deaf. But then the _caamora_ was done. When she felt the last of the Giants withdraw, she relaxed her fire, taking Covenant's with her. Her ring had answered his: now his answered hers. As if they had briefly become one, they let go of wild magic until they stood, unburned and unburning, in each other's arms.\n\nShe heard the Giants singing; but they seemed impossibly far away, and she did not listen to them. Instead she heeded only the need in her husband's embrace and the relieved beat of his heart.\n\n_There is also love in the world._\n\n## 5.\n\n\"No Prospect of Return\"\n\nAs if the _croyel_ still had the power to dredge up his buried past\u2014or as if Lord Foul had inherited that power\u2014Jeremiah remembered his sisters. Two of them, both barely toddling on their stick-thin legs. There was never enough to eat. Their names were\u2014? Their names were gone. He could not imagine their faces, except as pale smudges lit by the Despiser's bonfire. They had existed in a different world, on the far side of a wall of absence. He was not sure now that they had ever meant anything to him, except as squalling mouths that needed food worse than he did. And yet he remembered that they had been his sisters.\n\nLinden and Covenant did not know that about him. It was his last secret: he remembered his sisters.\n\nA scornful voice told him that he should have done something to protect them.\n\nHe _should_ have, even though he had gone first, he had put his right hand in the fire as soon as his mother finished screaming, and after that he was in too much pain to feel anything else. Even after he had learned how to conceal himself so that those terrible flames could not touch him again, the idea that he should have done something twisted his heart.\n\nWhy was he thinking about this now? It did not make sense. _Protect_ his sisters? _How?_ He was only five. His mother was always praying or crying. Just about the only thing he knew for sure was that he had to be good. He had to do what she told him. He had to obey Lord Foul's eyes in the bonfire. That was what kids did. It was how they stayed alive.\n\nYet they were your sisters, were they not?\n\nI don't even remember their names.\n\nYet you knew their peril, did you not?\n\nI was just a kid. I didn't know anything.\n\nYet you heard your mother's pain, did you not? You understood that fire burns, did you not?\n\nI was only _five_ , Jeremiah tried to protest. I had to obey.\n\nDid you? At such a cost?\n\nI couldn't do anything else! Everything hurt too much!\n\nYet they needed you, did they not? Had you refused the flames, would they not have done likewise? Are you not therefore the cause of their sufferings?\n\nI was just a kid.\n\nYet you are no longer a child.\n\nStop.\n\nAnd are you not as blameworthy now as you were then? For deeds and self-pity which imperil those whom you profess to love, are you not blameworthy still? Did you not reveal their heading and purpose by defying possession? You knew that peril also, did you not?\n\nStop. Yes. Stop.\n\nHow then do you now refuse blame?\n\nJeremiah had no answer for that voice. The sanctuary which he had designed for the _Elohim_ was not an answer. It was no excuse for standing on grass as if he thought that he could outface Lord Foul. He should have protected his sisters. He could not have protected them. He should have done it anyway. He deserved to watch the Worm while Linden and Covenant failed to save the world because of him. He had told Lord Foul where they were.\n\nSo now he concentrated obsessively on the Staff of Law: as obsessively as he had worked on any construct. As soon as he recovered from the surprise of the _caamora_ , the jolt of alarm, he picked up the Staff and resumed his study. Covenant was not hurt. Linden was not. Jeremiah could see that. They did not need him; and he had other things to do.\n\nWhen he held the strange black wood, he felt its possibilities. In a sense, it too was a construct. It was made of parts that he could identify. The living wood. The iron heels full of old magic. The language of the runes. The blackness, Linden's blackness: the deep ebony which had taken over his own Earthpower when he had tried to change it. How those parts interacted was a mystery, but that did not trouble him. How the parts of his own constructs interacted was a mystery. He did not need to think about it. Instead he tried to understand how the parts fit together. He wanted to see the _design_.\n\nIf he could do that, he would know how to use the Staff. He would have power. He would be able to _do_ things. Things that might make a difference. Things that might excuse him.\n\nThings that might silence the scorn in his mind, block visions of the Worm. Then he would have a chance\u2014\n\nLinden had given him that gift. His mother: the one who loved him, not the one who had put her own hand in Lord Foul's bonfire. Studying the Staff, he believed that he would cheerfully kill anybody or anything that tried to hurt her.\n\nBut the design\u2014the secret of Linden's gift\u2014eluded him. No matter how hard he tried, he could not _see_ it. He was beginning to sense some of the Staff's uses. A few of them might even be possible for him. And while he concentrated on those possibilities, Lord Foul's visions lost some of their harrowing vividness, their inevitability, their weight of ridicule. Still the design itself, the key that would unlock the gift, was beyond him. He could not alter the blackness of the flames.\n\nIn his heart, he was still only five.\n\nEventually his efforts to find his way felt less like his familiar obsession with building. They became a kind of fever, a ragged desperation that went nowhere. When Cirrus Kindwind offered him food, he ate. He accepted water. Vaguely he noticed the Swordmainnir and the sailors talking together, adding details and explanations to their stories, discussing the hazards ahead. He heard them decide to give their dead to the river, hoping that the lurker would convey the bodies to the cleaner waters of the sea. He saw Linden and Covenant wander away together\u2014not far, but far enough so they could at least pretend that they were alone. Without thinking about it, he knew that Stave and Branl watched over the whole company. But his real attention remained fixed on the Staff.\n\nIt should have been everything he wanted. Calling upon the resources of Earthpower and Law should have been as natural as reaching out his hand.\n\nIt was not. His ability to raise and shape flames like midnight blossoms mocked him with all that it was not. His fire did not extend his percipience or ease his fatigue. It was too insubstantial for healing. It had no force. And it was always black.\n\nThe laughter in his head derided him. Involuntary glimpses of the Worm made fun of him.\n\nAre you not therefore the cause of their sufferings? How then do you now refuse blame?\n\nThe Staff of Law required a Linden Avery\u2014or a Thomas Covenant\u2014and Jeremiah was just a kid.\n\nFinally he dropped it as if he were merely worn out. With both hands, he tried to scrub the bitterness off his face. Hiding behind a scowl, he gnawed on a dry sausage for a while, drank more water. Then he looked for a patch of level ground where he could stretch out.\n\nAlmost immediately, Linden called, \"Jeremiah, honey. Are you all right?\"\n\nHe wanted to retort, Leave me alone! I don't need you worrying about me. But of course if he said that everybody would know how he felt.\n\nInstead he muttered, \"Just tired, Mom. I need sleep.\"\n\n\"Rest as much as you can.\" Covenant sounded distant. He was thinking about something else. Probably about Linden. \"We're running out of time. I want to start before midnight.\"\n\nFine, Jeremiah thought. _You_ start. I'm going to lie down until somebody takes pity on me.\n\nBut he did not mean that. He meant, I'm lost. I need help. But you can't help me. You've already done everything. The rest is up to me, and I'm not enough.\n\ne expected to lie awake, chewing his misery while voices laughed and the Worm ravaged. But he was more tired than he realized. He surprised himself by falling out of the world.\n\nIn dreams, he watched the stars spin. At first, they wheeled slowly, as cautious and deliberate as if they were performing an unfamiliar dance. Later they moved faster. And as they swirled, they drew closer to each other, contracting their glitter, leaving the rest of the heavens drowned in blackness, as doomed as the Lost Deep. After a while, they began to collide and join. Yet the merging of one distinct gleam with others, and then still others, did not make their shining brighter. Instead their private lives seemed to extinguish each other. Soon hundreds or thousands of them had become one, and that one was scarcely visible: a dying ember in the fathomless ruin of the night.\n\nBut at the same time, that single dulled spark became heavier. Not bigger, no. Just more massive. And it leaned down on Jeremiah, pressed its intolerable weight against his heart. He did not breathe. There was no room in his chest for air. His heart no longer beat. It could not lift blood through his veins under so much pressure. He was becoming the sky, black and blank, infinitely desolate.\n\nHe awoke with an enfilade trapped between his ribs. Memories of bullets whined past him and into him, furious as hornets. Wildly he floundered to his feet, frantic for relief.\n\nHe nearly yelped when Stave grasped his arm.\n\n\"Still your alarm, Chosen-son,\" said the _Haruchai_ , almost whispering. \"There is no imminent peril. Dreams are not omens. They bespeak only your fears.\" Then he added, \"The Chosen slumbers yet, as do the Giants. Only the Ironhand and the Anchormaster stand watch with Branl. We do well to permit their rest.\"\n\nJeremiah resisted an impulse to cling to the former Master. There was no light: Branl must have covered the _krill_. Stave's grip felt like the only certainty in a reality which had lost its moorings. The boy half expected to see the stars continue their shrinking spiral, their fatal deflagration. But of course they remained where they were, clinging to their fate.\n\nThe air was thick with the complex reeks of the Defiles Course and Sarangrave Flat, of ironwood ash and drowned _skurj_ and the charred corpses of Sandgorgons. Around Jeremiah, darkness clotted like blood. It filled every span of ground and hidden niche. When he considered the movement of time, he found that midnight was near.\n\nAs quietly as Stave, he asked, \"Where's Covenant?\"\n\nThe _Haruchai_ pointed down the valley. \"There. He communes once again with the Feroce.\"\n\nJeremiah looked toward the marshy verge of the Sarangrave. At this distance, he could not descry Covenant. There was too much sensory clutter from the restless currents and predators. The lurker still complained over its pains, whimpering wetly. But near the wetland, Jeremiah spotted glints of emerald arrayed as if they had gathered to attend a potentate. Green flames fell and rose like sighs.\n\nBehind them, the Flat stretched eastward, growing darker with every league until its doom became the sky's.\n\nCloser to him lay the benighted shapes of Giants. A few of them slept against the boles of ironwoods near the crest of the slope. They snored and started fretfully, troubled by their dreams. Lower down, but still above the chancres and spilth of battle, the other sailors and Swordmainnir had found patches of ground where they could feign comfort.\n\nOverhead carrion-eaters flapped across the background of the stars. Slaps and splashes from the Flat sounded like feeding. The contorted carcasses of monsters littered the valley-floor like rubble. Bleached in the Great Desert for millennia, the dead Sandgorgons smelled only of sulfur and Fire-Lions. But the gangrene fetor of the _skurj_ clung wherever their blood had been spilled. If many of them had not been sucked into the marsh when the lurker's flood receded, the stench would have been worse.\n\nStanding with Stave in the last night of the Earth, Jeremiah pined for sunshine. He craved one more warm yellow wash of light. Trying to summon clean fire, he filled his palms with flame. But the blackness of his heritage persisted. Covered by darkness, his magicks were visible to ordinary sight only as deeper blots, stark as stigmata.\n\nStave still held his arm. \"Chosen-son.\" The former Master pitched his voice for Jeremiah alone. \"It may be that the task which the Chosen has offered is too extreme. She has asked of you an achievement which has surpassed her. If you will heed my counsel, therefore\u2014\"\n\nThe _Haruchai_ paused, apparently awaiting a response.\n\n\"Please.\" Jeremiah was tempted to snort, Don't bother. You can't help me. Contemptuous laughter echoed in his ears as if it had become a part of him, a cancer too insidious and personal to be cut out. More and more, the coming end seemed like an act of kindness. But he did not sneer at Stave. Any suggestion that did not make him feel smaller\u2014\"I've already tried everything I can think of.\"\n\n\"It is this,\" Stave replied. \"Set aside those tasks which daunt you. As your knowledge of the Staff grows, your strength will also. For the present, strive only to meet present needs. The lacks and requirements of this company are many. Choose among them one which lies within your compass.\"\n\n\"Like what?\" Jeremiah asked. Stave's manner seemed to banish scorn.\n\n\"Chosen-son,\" Stave returned, \"your senses are acute. And you will comprehend that our intended ascent into Gravin Threndor must present grave obstacles. Of these, the first is plain. The air is noisome. It discomfits us where we stand. It will become unendurable within the mountain.\n\n\"The Timewarden conceived that the Chosen would cleanse the air. However, the Staff of Law has now been entrusted to you.\" Stave stooped, retrieved the shaft, held it up. \"Therefore the task falls to you\u2014the task and the opportunity. An increase of strength comes from the use of strength.\"\n\nAs Stave spoke, bursts of surprise like little explosions ran through Jeremiah's veins. He clutched at the Staff. \"The _air_ ,\" he breathed. To his nerves, the atmosphere was as distinct as Earthpower. Its insidious taints were so clear that they were almost tangible. He had wasted so much time and effort. \"Why didn't I think of that?\"\n\nStave shrugged. Finally he released Jeremiah's arm. But Jeremiah hardly noticed. His mind raced. How had he let himself believe that he had to fail? Did the _croyel_ still have that much power over him? Did Lord Foul? Had he simply _assumed_ that the small flames which he could raise from the Staff were trivial? Ineffective because he did not know how to make them clean? Had he _tested_ them?\n\nHe had not. Instead he had let the Despiser and the Worm and even Linden's encouragement distract him. A stupid mistake, as stupid as breaking his own neck by not watching where he put his feet. And stupidity was worse than failure. It was worse than terror: it made him useless.\n\n_The purpose of life_ , Cirrus Kindwind had once assured him, _is to choose, and to act upon the choice_. If he could not do what Linden had asked him to do, he could do something else.\n\nHe could do _something_ that had to be done.\n\nefore long, Covenant started back up the valley, trailed by a cortege of Feroce with their nauseous emerald fluttering like banners. Along the way, Branl unveiled the _krill_. At the same time, Rime Coldspray, Bluff Stoutgirth, and the Humbled made their way down from the ridge of Mount Thunder's calf. Silver spread across the sleeping Giants as the Ironhand and the Anchormaster began to rouse them.\n\nFar back in Jeremiah's thoughts, images of the Worm squirmed. When they broke through his concentration, they stung his heart. Now he thought that he recognized the confluence of the Black River and the Mithil. If so, the Worm had crossed much of the South Plains. Furious as a perfect storm, the incarnate cataclysm flared and thundered ever closer to the hills which had once formed the boundary of Garroting Deep. And beyond the region of the lost forest stood _Melenkurion_ Skyweir. The companions did not have much time left. They had probably rested too long.\n\nBut now Jeremiah could push those nightmare visions away. The fangs that were Lord Foul's eyes, and the memories of the _croyel_ 's feeding, no longer consumed him. He had a job to do, a job he understood. In some ways, it resembled making one of his constructs: it involved pulling bits of good air toward him and rejecting poisons; forming a kind of breathable edifice. That may not have been how Linden cleaned the air, but he knew how to do it. The real challenge would be to _keep_ doing it. It would erode constantly: he would have to rebuild it constantly. And the erosion would get worse as the company moved. Still Stave's suggestion gave him hope. Watching Covenant's approach, Jeremiah felt almost ready.\n\nAbove and around him on the slope, the Swordmainnir shrugged their shoulders into the armor, examined their weapons. Without prompting, Wiver Setrock and the woman called Keenreef portioned out another meal, although their supplies were dwindling. Other sailors complained or jested. Of no one in particular, Baf Scatterwit asked where she was. Sounding sincerely confounded, she wanted to know where Dire's Vessel and her other friends had gone. But when Stoutgirth replied with instructions rather than answers, she complied as if she had forgotten her confusion.\n\n\"She is easily bewildered,\" one of the men\u2014Squallish Blustergale?\u2014remarked casually to Jeremiah, \"yet she is an adroit sailor, quick in every exigency. Aye, and doughty withal. None will outlast her on the sheets, or strive more fiercely when there is need. Also she is gentle in her bafflement. Therefore she is precious among us.\"\n\nFor her, Jeremiah felt a flush of sympathy. He knew too well that an absent mind fostered the illusion of safety\u2014and that the illusion was dangerous.\n\nMuttering to himself, he looked around for his mother.\n\nUntil Covenant had left to summon the Feroce, he and Linden had slept together on a stretch of churned earth thirty or forty paces closer to the high cliff which confronted the valley. She was awake now, brushing dirt from her clothes, combing her fingers through her hair. As she came toward Jeremiah, her right hand clung to her wedding band, turning it around and around her ring finger as if she feared that it would be taken from her.\n\n\"Jeremiah, honey,\" she asked when she drew near, \"were you able to sleep?\"\n\n\"Mom.\" He met her holding the Staff of Law in front of him like a promise\u2014or a defense. \"Don't worry about me. I'm making progress.\" He ducked his head to hide conflicting reactions: eagerness for what he might be able to accomplish; chagrin for what he could not. \"I mean, sort of.\"\n\nHer concern reached out to him. Argent reflections haunted her gaze like the residue of horrors. Wordless and worried, she hugged him tightly. Then she stepped back. \"Remember what I told you. There's no such thing as failure. _Sort of_ progress is better than nothing. Under the circumstances, it's probably impressive. We can only do what we can.\" The ruefulness of her smile twisted his heart. \"I need to remember that myself.\"\n\nBefore he could think of a response, she turned to meet her husband.\n\nCovenant came grimly up the side of the valley, walking like a man who had left behind anything that might have softened his severity, his personal commandments. The time had come to essay Mount Thunder; and Jeremiah could see that Covenant was as afraid as Linden. But for him, strangely, fear seemed to be a source of strength. In the illumination of the _krill_ , his silver hair shone like wild magic, the contained conflagration of his heart.\n\nHe returned Linden's embrace briefly; linked his arm with hers as he approached the Giants. Just for a moment, he looked like he might be on the verge of frenzy or tears. Then his expression hardened. The lines on his face resembled slashes.\n\n\"I talked to the Feroce,\" he announced unnecessarily. \"I guess that's obvious.\" The creatures stood a dozen steps behind him, as timorous as ever, and as compelled. \"They say they've never been inside the mountain. And they don't want to go. They call it a _Maker-place_. Lord Foul's home. It scares them.\n\n\"But the lurker didn't give them a choice. I didn't even have to argue. I only had to promise them that _that_ \"\u2014he pointed down at the gullet of the Defiles Course\u2014\"isn't a Maker-place. It's like the Shattered Hills. It defends Lord Foul, but he doesn't live there. He's somewhere up in the Wightwarrens, probably in Kiril Threndor. The Feroce can help us without going that far.\n\n\"They don't know what we'll find. They aren't sure they'll do any good. But they know water\u2014especially polluted water. They'll try to guide us. And\u2014\" Abruptly Covenant paused. For a moment, he covered his eyes as if he had been assailed by memories too painful to countenance. Then he controlled himself, shrugged stiffly. \"They'll try to make the water remember where it comes from. If they can do that, it might be as good as a map.\"\n\n\"What does he say?\" asked Baf Scatterwit. \"A map? Does he speak of a chart?\" She was becoming agitated.\n\nThe Anchormaster rested a lean hand on her shoulder, murmured a soft command which appeared to soothe her. She smiled at him, nodded, and did not speak again.\n\nIn a taut voice, Covenant finished, \"If what the Feroce can do doesn't take us into the Wightwarrens, we'll have to find our own way.\"\n\nThe Ironhand nodded sternly. \"Then, Timewarden, only two matters remain. You and Linden Giantfriend and the Chosen-son must eat to sustain your strength. And we must look to our survival within the mountain.\n\n\"We are Giants, lovers of stone. We do not fear to attempt the hidden passages. Also the Anchormaster and our comrades of Dire's Vessel will accompany us, for so they interpret the wishes of Brinn _Haruchai_ , the last Guardian of the One Tree.\"\n\nStoutgirth grinned as if he found her assertion risible; but he did not return a jest.\n\n\"Being sailors,\" Coldspray continued, \"they have borne with them a goodly quantity of rope. Such providence will surely serve us well.\"\n\nThe muscles at the corners of her jaw bunched. \"Yet we must breathe. It is certain that the airs within the water's channels will be foul beyond bearing. Ere long, respiration alone will prove fatal.\" Her tone was exposed gutrock. \"Therefore I am compelled to inquire. How can we dare Mount Thunder if we cannot breathe?\"\n\n\"Maybe the Feroce\u2014\" began Covenant darkly.\n\nJeremiah took a step forward. \"Wait.\" His hands itched with anticipation on the Staff. \"I've been working on this.\" He glanced quickly at Stave. \"I'm not sure, but I'm learning. Maybe I can\u2014\"\n\nAbruptly he closed his eyes; forgot words. Now or never. His mother had trusted him with her best instrument of power. If he proved her wrong, he would have to return it. Her hopes for him\u2014and his own\u2014would be gone.\n\nJust for a moment, malice pealed through the dark behind his eyelids. Prove her wrong, puppy? How can you not? You are naught but a tool, a means to an end. Your every deed serves my desires.\n\nBut Jeremiah refused to listen. The whole company was watching. And the Staff was _alive_. In small ways, it answered his Earthpower, his health-sense. He could believe that those responses would grow. And in the meantime\u2014Right here, right now, he could feel the air, taste it; almost touch its nature. He could distinguish between health and sickness.\n\nDeliberately he poured flames into the cups of his hands. Ignoring their taint, he wrapped them around the Staff. Then he asked the wood for more theurgy than his mere body contained. As hard as he could, he concentrated on breathing\u2014\n\n\u2014on pushing away poisons and corruption\u2014\n\n\u2014on rejecting putrescence and vilification\u2014\n\n\u2014and on drawing the cleanliness that remained toward him.\n\nAnd when he knew that he was inhaling and exhaling _life_ , he extended his edifice of good air toward his companions.\n\nSee? he told the mockery inside him. I can do this. I can _do_ it.\n\nThen he opened his eyes to see the effects of his efforts.\n\nLinden gasped as she took an unconflicted breath. \"Jeremiah,\" she murmured. \"My God\u2014\" Covenant filled his lungs and seemed to stand taller, as if the air had confirmed him. He gave Jeremiah a look like a shower of sparks from a whetstone. Rime Coldspray and Bluff Stoutgirth raised their heads, sampled the spread of vitality. Grins like promises showed their teeth. With gestures and relief, they exhorted their comrades to crowd closer.\n\nAs the whole company began to breathe more comfortably, the Ironhand announced, \"This is well done, Jeremiah Chosen-son. I confess that I did not foresee it. If you are able to sustain such exertions\u2014\"\n\nShe swallowed the rest of what she might have said; the questions she might have asked.\n\n\"It'll get easier,\" Jeremiah muttered self-consciously. \"I mean, I think it will. I'm not used to it yet. I just need practice.\"\n\nChuckling, Blustergale swung a clap at Jeremiah's back that would have felled him. But at the last instant, the Giant seemed to recall that Jeremiah was little. His hand patted Jeremiah gently and withdrew.\n\nStave bowed his approval. A tightening at the corner of his mouth hinted at a smile.\n\nBehind Covenant, the Feroce squalled in soft voices, as if they feared to be overheard; but Jeremiah did not know how to interpret their cries.\n\now that he had begun to prove himself, he was eager to try the uncertain ascent along the watercourse. But Rime Coldspray reminded him again that he needed food\u2014as did Covenant and Linden. Reluctantly Jeremiah let go of his magicks.\n\nWhile they ate and drank, the company discussed uncertainties and perils.\n\nThis approach to Mount Thunder's heart was Covenant's idea, but he did not know whether the path of the Defiles Course within the mountain would prove passable. In the past, he had only entered the Wightwarrens from the Upper Land. Certainly the Giants were skilled climbers and delvers. The _Haruchai_ were born to crags and cliffs. And they were adequately supplied for their immediate purpose\u2014or so the Anchormaster asserted. Nevertheless they could imagine obstacles which they would not be able to surmount. Water was water, after all. Under pressure, it could find its way through constrictions which would refuse Giants or _Haruchai_ or Feroce.\n\nIn addition, the Despiser clearly knew where to look for his enemies; and his servants were many. At any time, he might send Cavewights or stranger creatures to waylay the company. Long ago, horrors had formed a large portion of his forces. The companions could not assume that any stretch of their path would be uncontested.\n\nTo all of this, Jeremiah listened without paying much attention. For the moment, at least, he was content with food and the Staff of Law. Finally he knew what he had to do\u2014and how to do it. He had already shown that he could do it. The whole company trusted their lives to him. And Stave had assured him that he would get stronger. He might even learn how to do more than improve the air.\n\nIf Lord Foul tried to take him, sixteen Giants, two _Haruchai_ , and two white gold wielders might be able to protect him.\n\nSo he ate what he was given, and drank water lightly tinged with _diamondraught_ , and tried to mask his impatience while he waited for Mom and Covenant to finish this last meal.\n\nAt last, the company was ready. Keenreef and several other sailors shouldered packs of supplies. All of their quirts and spears had been destroyed, but most of Stoutgirth's crew still carried weapons: billhooks, longknives, belaying-pins. The Swordmainnir had their armor and their blades. And the _Haruchai_ had set aside the characteristic reluctance of their people to rely on weapons. Branl shouldered Longwrath's flamberge, while Stave bore Cabledarm's longsword.\n\nAmong such companions, Covenant and Linden looked small, vulnerable. But there was a dangerous promise in Covenant's eyes. And Linden looked withdrawn. She no longer seemed to care about details like difficult climbing and enemies. Only the way that she twisted her ring around her finger hinted that she was fretting.\n\nFormally the Ironhand drew her stone glaive. Holding it ready, she spoke in a voice of granite.\n\n\"Here we surrender every future which we have imagined for ourselves. We have no prospect of return. Indeed, we cannot trust that we will outlive another day. Our doom is this, that we enter Mount Thunder seeking to confront the most heinous of foes\u2014and yet the Worm hastens toward the World's End many scores of leagues distant, where no deed of ours can thwart it. Thus even the greatest triumphs within the mountain may come to naught, for no life will remain to heed the tale.\n\n\"Nonetheless I proclaim\"\u2014Coldspray swung her sword once around her head, then slapped it into its scabbard on her back\u2014\"that I am not daunted. _I am not daunted_. While hearts beat and lungs draw breath, we seek to affirm the import of our lives. The true worth of tales lies in this, that those of whom they speak do not regard how the telling of their trials will be received. When we must perish, my wish for us is that we will come to the end knowing that we have held fast to that which we deem precious.\"\n\nThen her tone eased. \"Doubtless this is folly. Yet when have our deeds been otherwise? Are we not Giants? And is not our folly the stone against which we have raised the sea of our laughter? What cause have we to feel dismay and hold back, when we have always known that no anchor is secure against the seas of mischance and wonder?\"\n\nPerhaps she would have continued; but the Anchormaster was already laughing. He tried to say something, but the words were lost in broad gusts of glee. For a moment, the other sailors were silent, dismayed by images of futility. But then Baf Scatterwit began to guffaw: the happy mirth of a woman who enjoyed laughing for its own sake. Her laughter broke the logjam of her comrades' fears. Carried along by her open-heartedness, the crew of Dire's Vessel roared as if they themselves were an exquisite jest.\n\nThe Swordmainnir were more restrained. They had lost too many of their comrades. But when Rime Coldspray started to chuckle, Frostheart Grueburn followed her example, and then Cirrus Kindwind. In their subdued fashion, the Ironhand and her warriors shared the delight of the sailors.\n\nPrivately Jeremiah thought that they had all lost their minds. Nevertheless he found himself grinning. He had heard too little genuine laughter in his life; and the mirth of Giants was especially infectious. At least temporarily, it made Lord Foul's scorn and the _croyel_ 's malice seem empty, like taunts from the bottom of an abandoned well.\n\nLong ago, Saltheart Foamfollower had enabled Covenant's victory over the Despiser by laughing.\n\nAs the Giants began to subside, Covenant muttered, \"Stone and Sea are deep in life.\" He seemed to be quoting. \"Two unalterable symbols of the world.\" Then he lifted his head to the dark heavens, the decimated stars. From his ring, a brief flash of silver challenged the night. \"I can't help it. I've always loved Giants. Any world that has _Haruchai_ and Ranyhyn and Ramen and Insequent and even _Elohim_ in it is precious. But there really is no substitute for Giants.\"\n\nJeremiah agreed with him.\n\nThe Ironhand answered Covenant's moment of power with a flash of her teeth. \"Then, Timewarden,\" she said, \"let us now vindicate your love.\"\n\nWith a sweep of her arm, she drew the Swordmainnir and Dire's Vessel's crew with her as she started down the side of the valley toward the throat of the Defiles Course.\n\nJeremiah followed them as if he, too, had been called. With the Staff and his own power, he drew clean air out of the ambient reeks.\n\nAfter a moment, Cirrus Kindwind came to his side. Frostheart Grueburn now accompanied Linden and Stave, and the Anchormaster had claimed a place with Covenant and Branl. Escorted by Giants and _Haruchai_ , Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah picked their way between craters like maws and past rank corpses toward the cave where the Land's most ancient waters carried their burden of poisons and spilled evil into the embrace of the Sarangrave.\n\nApparently the Feroce had anticipated the company's movement. They already stood on the riverbank within an easy stone's throw of the cliff, a cluster of ten small creatures with emerald in their hands and naked fright in their eyes. They did not react as the first Giants approached them. Instead they stood in the stench of the Defiles Course, facing each other and quavering as if their deity had declared them expendable.\n\nBut when Covenant drew near, they turned away from their communion. Flinching, they spoke in their one voice: an eerie sound like squeezed mud, moist and attenuated.\n\n\"We are the Feroce,\" they said as if they were on the verge of weeping. \"We are only the Feroce. At our High God's command, we attempt aid. It exceeds us. We will not suffice.\"\n\nCovenant regarded them like a man who showed no mercy; but his words belied his manner. \"You don't have to suffice. You just have to try. When you can't do any more, you're free to go.\"\n\n\"Then,\" replied the creatures, \"we will begin. We have no wish to prolong our failure.\"\n\nTogether they faced the gaping mouth of the cliff. In a tight cluster, they started toward the deeper dark, a blackness that seemed to mock the _krill_ and the company, the night and the forlorn stars. Although no tangible power compelled them, they moved as if they were being scourged.\n\nCovenant watched them, but he did not follow. Instead he rasped to the Giants and the _Haruchai_ , \"Just remember. White gold is going to be mostly useless, at least for a while. I don't have much control. I'm more likely to cause a cave-in than accomplish anything useful. Plus I can't keep my balance worth a damn. And Linden hasn't had time to learn what she can do. We'll need all the help you can give us.\"\n\n\"This we have foreseen, Timewarden,\" the Ironhand answered calmly. \"If Giants are fools, they are also rock-wise, certain of foot on any stone. With your consent, we will bear you, and also Linden Giantfriend and Jeremiah Chosen-son. In our arms, you will be warded from many perils.\"\n\nNow Covenant looked back at his companions. \"Linden?\"\n\n\"I think it's a good idea.\" She made a palpable effort to sound confident; but Jeremiah heard the congested tension in her voice. \"Grueburn has carried me more times than I can count. I'm not worried about her. And I don't like the way that looks.\" She gestured at the river mouth. \"If nothing else, it's going to be slick.\" Her mouth twisted. \"I would rather be carried. If Grueburn doesn't mind.\"\n\nGrueburn's response was a snorted chortle.\n\nCovenant nodded. \"Jeremiah?\"\n\nJeremiah felt a touch of relief. \"Mom's right. I'm not as strong as I want to be. I mean with the Staff. If I don't have to do my own climbing, I can concentrate better.\"\n\nFor himself, Covenant did not hesitate. To Coldspray, he said brusquely, \"Thanks. I should have thought of that myself.\"\n\nThen he made a visible effort to relax as Bluff Stoutgirth lifted him from his feet.\n\nIn a moment, Jeremiah was sitting on Kindwind's forearm with his back against her breastplate. His lightless flames scurried up and down the length of the Staff. They were weaker than they needed to be, but they gathered enough purity to ease the company's breathing.\n\nFrom her position in Grueburn's clasp, Linden glanced at Jeremiah with an expression which he could not interpret. A warning? A prayer? Was she saying goodbye?\n\nShe had found her own sense of purpose, but he had no idea what it might be.\n\nOne after another, Rime Coldspray and all of the Giants followed the receding green of the Feroce. Holding the _krill_ above his head to extend its illumination, Branl walked close behind the Ironhand near Stoutgirth and Covenant. Stave took a position between Grueburn and Kindwind.\n\nStriding as if they were about to burst into song, the Swordmainnir and the sailors left the world they knew. Beside the Defiles Course, they entered Gravin Threndor and darkness.\n\n## 6.\n\nThe Aid of the Feroce\n\nAs Frostheart Grueburn carried her into the gutrock gullet of the Defiles Course, Linden lost her last glimpse of the heavens. It was cut off as if the whole of the world beyond the immediate channel, the immediate darkness, had vanished. As if the fate of every living thing, of life itself, had been reduced to this: impenetrable midnight; stone as slick as oil or black ice; Mount Thunder's imponderable tons, ominous and oppressive. As if she herself had become nothing more than a burden.\n\nThe decimation of the stars had been a constant reminder of the carnage which the Worm had already wrought. But what had been lost only made what remained more precious.\n\nYet she had set aside her responsibility for the world. She had chosen her task. It was necessary to her, the only choice that offered any hope of forgiveness. But it would not stop the Worm. It would not hinder Lord Foul, or save her friends, or spare her son.\n\nAt first, the watercourse became narrower, ascending in low stages like terraces or past obstructions like weirs. Beyond the Ironhand\u2014beyond Stoutgirth, Covenant, and Branl\u2014the Feroce clambered, elusive as eidolons, over a tumble of boulders barely wide enough to accommodate the Giants in single file. Long ages of poisons and leaking malice had pitted the stone, cut it into cruel shapes, left it brittle with corrosion. But the waters had also caked every surface with slime like scum. And wherever the tumult of the currents had left gaps, necrotic mosses clung, viscid as wax, treacherous as grease. Touching them would be like trailing fingers through pus.\n\nWhile the passage narrowed, however, its ceiling stretched higher. Here the Defiles Course ran down a fissure in Mount Thunder's substance. A few arm spans up the walls, the green of the Feroce gleamed sickly on moisture and moss: the residue of the river's former flow. Above that demarcation, the _krill_ 's argent faded into the dark.\n\nThe crevice was old: far older than Linden's knowledge of the Land. It had endured for eons, perhaps ever since the convulsion which had created Landsdrop. It might continue to do so. Nevertheless the gutrock overhead seemed fragile. The clutter of boulders where the Feroce led the companions demonstrated that stones did fall.\n\nBut the possibility that some tremor might release sheets of rock did not trouble her. She had more urgent concerns. More than the mountain or the darkness\u2014more than slick surfaces and vile moss\u2014she feared the air. It was not merely fetid and hurtful: it was thick with leached evils. Every breath brought dire scents from offal and corpses; from strange lakes of lava and ruin arising from the deep places of the Earth; from the detritus of horrid theurgies and delving. From time and rot and distillation.\n\nAnd from She Who Must Not Be Named. At intervals like the tightening of a rack, Linden tasted hints of the bane's distinctive anguish, terrible and bitter. She could only bear the miasma which she drew into her lungs because Jeremiah was ameliorating it with Earthpower.\n\nEarlier he had sweetened some of the air in the valley. He could not do as much here. The atmosphere was more concentrated. And the fact that his companions were forced to advance one at a time exacerbated his difficulties. He had to push the Staff's benefits too far. As a result, Rime Coldspray and the other Giants in the lead had begun to cough as if they were about to bring up blood. Between their stertorous gasps, Linden heard Covenant wheezing. Some of the Giants in the rear retched. The sounds of their distress rebounded from the walls; multiplied upward until they filled the crevice.\n\nThe air would continue to deteriorate as the company climbed. Leagues of unknown passages, dangerous footing, and pollution lay between the company and the more tolerable atmosphere of the Wightwarrens. And Jeremiah was already faltering.\n\nHe was not ready for this; not ready at all to have twenty-one lives depending on him for every breath.\n\nInstinctively she yearned to reach out for the Staff's resources; to wield them herself. Jeremiah was not far behind her: only Stave followed Frostheart Grueburn ahead of Cirrus Kindwind. Linden could siphon Earthpower and Law from the wood while he held it. Her chest _hurt_. She wanted good air.\n\nResisting her impulse to assume the work that she had given to her son was as painful as breathing.\n\nBut she had surrendered the Staff because Jeremiah needed it more than she did. Eventually he might need it absolutely. He had to become stronger. If she took back her trust prematurely\u2014if she made his challenge easier from the start\u2014she would undermine his efforts to believe in himself.\n\nYet the company was struggling. Sweat ran from Grueburn's face, although the stone and the water were cold as a crypt. Her distress ached through her lore-hardened armor. By degrees, frantic coughing spread among the Giants. In front of Grueburn, Baf Scatterwit was taken by a spasm so fierce that she slipped. She caught herself with both hands, avoided a plunge into the river, but not before her kneecap struck rock with an audible crack. Choking on Giantish obscenities, she hauled herself upright. Then, however, she was forced to halt, hunching over to massage her knee.\n\nFrom Coldspray or Covenant, ragged murmurs passed Linden's name back to her; but she did not need to hear it. She understood. Jeremiah had to do better.\n\n\"Jeremiah, honey.\" She was panting herself. \"You're trying too hard.\" He did not know himself well enough yet. \"It's easier than you think. It's the Staff of _Law_. It was made for this. You don't have to force it. You just have to encourage it. Guide it. Let it express how you feel.\"\n\n\"I can't.\" Jeremiah's protest was thick with dread. \"That doesn't make sense.\"\n\nLinden fought for patience. \"Try it this way. Close your eyes. Forget where you are. Forget what's happening. Forget the Staff, if you can. Concentrate on Earthpower and air, clean air, air that keeps you alive. It's like building one of your castles. You think about what you're making. You don't think about how you make it. The Staff is just a means.\n\n\"You can do this if you trust yourself.\"\n\nShe could almost hear his resolve breaking. \"That doesn't\u2014\" he began to insist. But then he stopped. \"All right,\" he said like a groan. \"I'll try building. That worked before. Just don't blame me if\u2014\"\n\nHe fell silent.\n\nFor a moment, the effects of his theurgy disappeared entirely. Linden drew air like shards of glass into her lungs. All of her muscles seemed to seize at once. Grueburn's gasps sounded like tearing flesh. Along the line, Giants stumbled to a halt, sank to their hands and knees. The _krill_ lit them like spectres, as if they had crossed over into the realm of the Dead.\n\nThe Feroce had caused some of Sarangrave Flat's mud to remember that it was once hurtloam. Covenant had said so. Surely they could do something similar to the air? If he asked them?\n\nThen Linden felt a stronger current of Earthpower emanate from Jeremiah and the Staff. It was tentative at first. It surged and receded. She found one healing breath, lost it again. Nevertheless her heart lifted. His access to the Staff's potential resembled the chamber hidden in her own mind, the room which could open on wild magic. Learning that the chamber existed had enabled her to locate it again. And each time, the search was more familiar. The door opened more easily. The same could be true for Jeremiah, if he refused to panic.\n\nHe was young and gifted. In some respects, his sense of himself was more flexible than hers, less conflicted by an awareness of his limitations. For a heartbeat or two, his power shrank; but it also became steadier. Then better air began to gust outward. Some of it escaped into the empty heights of the fissure. Most of it swept over the company.\n\nLinden snatched freshness into her lungs, fought for it. It was still tainted, but it became cleaner with every breath. Groans of relief spread among the Giants as Jeremiah expanded his efforts. Grueburn seemed to bite off great chunks of air, swallow them gratefully. A fierce grin bared her teeth. Still coughing, Baf Scatterwit started to laugh. One at a time, sailors and Swordmainnir joined her.\n\n\"Well done, Chosen-son!\" called the Ironhand. \"Well done in all sooth! It may be that our cause is doomed. It may be that we will soon perish. Yet miracles abound, and Jeremiah Chosen-son stands high among them.\"\n\nGradually Linden's companions stood straighter. They began to move again.\n\nThe Feroce had not paused. They may not have noticed the company's difficulties. Or they may not have cared. They had their own fears. Perhaps a stone's throw ahead of the Ironhand and Covenant, the troubled green passed from sight beyond a corner. Streaks of argent lit the rubble piled along the river as if the stones had tumbled there from Gravin Threndor's dreams.\n\nAs her respiration eased, Linden thought that she heard thunder.\n\nNo, not thunder. By degrees, the sound clarified itself. It was too wet, too complex, too constant to be atmospheric. It cast spray into the ambit of the _krill_ 's illumination. The company was approaching a waterfall.\n\nWhere the spray brushed her cheeks, it stung.\n\nShe could not gauge the height of the plunge by the timbre of its muffled roar; but she heard neither warnings nor chagrin from the Giants. The Ironhand did not hesitate as she bore Covenant out of sight, leaving Branl behind to light the way.\n\nIn moments, a few sailors and Onyx Stonemage scrambled to Branl's position, followed by Squallish Blustergale and more of the Anchormaster's crew. As Grueburn neared the turn, Linden became more confident that the water did not plummet from a great height. Still her anxiety did not relent until Grueburn carried her past the corner. Then she was able to see that the waterfall was no taller than one Giant standing on the shoulders of another.\n\nShe could not have climbed it. Perhaps Grueburn could not. But here the river's diminishment was obvious. A comparatively narrow gush of water pounded into the deep center of the channel. Beside the river on both sides, eons of a far heavier flow had left more gradual slopes. Broken rocks cloaked in mosses like shredded skin mounted upward in possible increments.\n\nA short way up the rise, Coldspray and Covenant waited for Branl and light. Above them, the Feroce scrambled for the rim as if they were in no danger of slipping. Their emerald glow wavered and gibbered on the walls as they scuttled out of sight. Then their fires faded as if the crevice had opened to accommodate a cavern.\n\nLinden looked back at Jeremiah. The radiance of Loric's gem revealed black tendrils of power like vines curling away from the Staff, making the air precious. As the boy worked, however, a scowl of strain clenched his features, and the wood trembled in his grasp. He was still trying too hard.\n\n\"Are you all right, honey?\" Linden asked over the shout of the water. \"Do you need rest? We should be able to survive for a few minutes.\"\n\n\"Don't bother me.\" He sounded distant, wrapped in concentration. She barely heard him. \"I'm fine.\"\n\n\"The Feroce act like they're in a hurry,\" Covenant offered, \"but I can ask them to wait\"\u2014he glanced at the waterfall\u2014\"once we catch up with them.\"\n\nWhen Jeremiah nodded, Rime Coldspray continued upward. Behind her, Bluff Stoutgirth gestured his crew forward. Moving as surely as the Giants, Branl passed Grueburn and Linden to rejoin the head of the line.\n\nAccompanied by argent, the Ironhand took Covenant past the lip of the fall, out of the harsh spray. At the rim, Branl waited again. Still in single file, Giants made the ascent. Ahead of Grueburn and Linden, Scatterwit limped over the treachery of the stones. She was obviously in pain, yet she chuckled in short bursts as if her damaged kneecap amused her.\n\nThen Grueburn crested the waterfall; and Linden stared in surprise. Ahead of her, _krill_ -light played across the black surface of a lake.\n\nIt may have been vast. The height of the cavern seemed to imply that it was; and the darkness beyond the _krill_ 's reach concealed the boundaries of the water. Liquid obsidian curved away to Linden's left, following the cavern wall out of sight. But ahead and to the right, the lake appeared to have no end\u2014or her senses were confused by intimations of power.\n\nIt was eerily motionless, as still as stone. Water dripped from mosses high on the walls, where until recently the cavern had been filled. Thin trickles fell here and there across the emptiness, perhaps dribbling from stalactites invisible in the dark. But there were no ripples: none at all. And no sounds. Drops struck the lake and were absorbed seamlessly. Water lay flat as glass against the rocks of the verge.\n\nThe Ironhand had halted with Covenant near the curve of the lakefront. One by one, the rest of the company reached them and stopped, peering into the blind depths or the veiled distance. Branl waved Loric's dagger for a moment, watched silver sweep across the immaculate ebony. Then he stepped back.\n\nA leaden silence ruled the cavern. From this vantage, even the waterfall appeared to make no sound. The Giants seemed unwilling or unable to speak. To Linden's eyes, the air over the lake looked as condensed and heavy as sweat.\n\nAgain her health-sense caught hints of She Who Must Not Be Named. Here they were stronger. The spilth of theurgies as old as the mountain\u2014as old as the Land\u2014stained the lake wherever she looked. Implied carrion-eaters tasted her skin.\n\nDistracted by noisome things, she was slow to notice that the Feroce were gone.\n\nGone?\n\n\"Thomas?\" The silence seemed to seal her throat. She had to swallow several times before she could say more than his name. \"The Feroce? Where did they go?\"\n\nRime Coldspray and her comrades scanned the cavern, the lake. Covenant gazed past or through Linden like a man who had lost his sight. \"Into the water.\" His voice sounded preternaturally distinct: precise and defiant. It should have raised echoes. Instead it fell stillborn. \"I don't know why. They didn't say anything.\"\n\n\"I am loath to believe,\" remarked Branl, \"that they have forsaken us.\"\n\n\"As am I,\" Stave agreed. \"They heed their High God.\"\n\nThe Ironhand coughed, cleared her throat. \"Without them\u2014\"\n\nAs if she had summoned them, delicate green flames appeared on the surface near the spot where the cavern's leftward sweep interrupted Linden's view. Untroubled by the waters, the creatures arose under their fires, lifted emerald from the lake. Their passing left no mark on the water's black sheen as they climbed the rocks.\n\n\"Why do you tarry?\" Their damp voice scaled into the heights. \"You must hasten. There is peril, much peril. Are you deaf to majesty? Blind to wonder? You must hasten.\"\n\nTensions ran among the Giants. They prepared to move. But Rime Coldspray stood where she was. From her clasp, Covenant called to the Feroce, \"What's going on? You picked a hell of a time for a swim. Did you wake something up?\"\n\nStudying the lake, Linden saw nothing, heard nothing. She felt only the noxious tickling of centipedes, tentative and eager.\n\n\"Will you not hasten?\" the creatures urged. \"We are merely the Feroce. There is no peril for us. Your lives are forfeit.\"\n\nCovenant appeared to freeze for an instant, startled into incomprehension. Then he snapped to the Ironhand, \"Go!\"\n\nAt once, Coldspray surged ahead over the hazardous stones. Behind her, Giants followed as swiftly as they could. But Baf Scatterwit's cracked knee slowed her. Grueburn waved her free arm, urged Halewhole Bluntfist and the trailing sailors to pass her. Then she drew her longsword; kept pace with Scatterwit. Cirrus Kindwind did the same, bracing Jeremiah with her maimed forearm. Holding Cabledarm's longsword, Stave positioned himself between them and the water.\n\nLinden did not glance at her son. The lake seemed to grip her. There were too many centipedes, more and more of them. Spiders. Maggots. Worms avid to feast on her sins. Only Jeremiah's tendrils of Earthpower and Law shielded her.\n\nA bulge appeared in the water.\n\nNo, not a bulge: a _body_. A stone's throw long. A double arm span wide. Lithe as a serpent, flowing up to bend the surface and then sliding back down endlessly. As dark as the lake, but rife with strength. If it had a head or a tail, Linden did not see them. No slight ripple or splash defined the immense monster's glide.\n\nFrom the rocks ahead of Covenant, the Feroce confessed abjectly, \"We sought to gaze upon our High God's god. We have done so. Its thoughts are broken. They lack glory. Only ruin remains. It will slay you all.\"\n\n\"Hellfire,\" Covenant rasped. \"I suppose even the lurker had to come from somewhere. If that's its mother, I've seen enough. I don't want more.\"\n\nBranl stood at the waterline, poised with the _krill_ and Longwrath's flamberge. Linden felt a throb of wild magic from Covenant's ring. Reflexively her wedding band answered his attempt to prepare himself. Imminent heat and argent chased away the things that scurried across her skin. The long arc of the monster's body continued to flow. If it felt the company's presence, its awareness was hidden in the depths.\n\nLinden tried to focus her attention on her ring, seeking to support Covenant; to dismiss the bane's touch. But she was too close to the Staff. Jeremiah's power seemed to block her, or she blocked herself. Wild magic and Law conflicted.\n\nColdspray and then the Anchormaster rounded the curve. Dire's Vessel's crew hurried after them, crowding close to the cavern wall. Weapons ready, both Stonemage and Bluntfist had taken positions like Branl's near the water's edge, guarding the rear of the company. Scatterwit whimpered as if she feared to be left behind.\n\nThe Feroce had disappeared again. Had they gone ahead? Linden did not know. She struggled to breathe. A moment passed before she realized that the company's alarm had pierced Jeremiah's concentration. He needed help.\n\nHere she could not call upon the Staff without touching it. The throb and itch of her ring interfered. Trepidation interfered. Leaning away from Grueburn's arms, she reached for Kindwind and Jeremiah; but she could not stretch far enough. Then Grueburn shifted closer to Kindwind, and Linden gripped the Staff by one iron heel.\n\nShe did not take it. Instead she added her will to her son's disturbed resolve, reinforced his intentions with her own.\n\nHe gave her a quick glance of thanks. Relieved, he settled back into himself. The pressure of poisons in her lungs eased. All of the Giants seemed to move more quickly. Even Scatterwit's pace improved.\n\n\"Attend!\" Branl called calmly. \"The water rises.\"\n\nLinden twisted her head to look.\n\nOh, shit. Branl was right. Still motionless, still silent, the midnight lake had begun to devour its borders, fed by some source beyond her discernment. It did not lap or splash against the rocks. It simply covered them.\n\nLed by the _Haruchai_ , Grueburn, Kindwind, and Scatterwit passed the curve at the rear of the company. At once, Branl ran ahead, carrying light. Now Linden saw that the cavern narrowed in this direction. The walls leaned closer to each other until they met in a sheet of running water. At first, the sheet appeared sheer, a straight waterfall thinned by its own width. It would be impossible to climb. And there were no slopes leading up to the tunnel that opened three or four Giant-heights above the lake. The Feroce stood facing the cul-de-sac as if they had been thwarted.\n\nBut then Linden saw that the pour of water reflected argent and emerald in a cascade of spangles. Under the waterfall, the stone was broken in scores or hundreds of places, pitted and interrupted wherever erosion and toxins had found flaws.\n\nSurely it would still be impossible to climb? The stone would be slick\u2014\n\nThe lake rose. The added water should have drained away as fast as it came, but it did not. Somehow the lurker's mad god heaved the entire surface higher. Grueburn, Kindwind, and Scatterwit were forced to pick their way closer to the wall.\n\nWithout explanation, Stave sprinted away. Inhumanly sure-footed, he caught up with the Humbled, moved among the Giants. He handed Cabledarm's sword to the Anchormaster. Linden heard him ask for rope.\n\nFavoring her knee, Baf Scatterwit stumbled into the edge of the lake. Her right foot went under. The impact of her weight had no effect on the water's massive lift.\n\nLinden had no idea what would happen then. The lake's power defied her senses. But Scatterwit scrambled out again. She tried to limp faster.\n\nLinden clung to the Staff's heel, struggled to help Jeremiah clean the air.\n\nFrom a sack of supplies, a sailor produced a coil of rope as thick as Stave's arm. He looped one end twice over his shoulder, secured it by tucking it under itself. Immediately he approached the swift sheet of the cul-de-sac. As if the difficulties were trivial, he began to ascend.\n\nWater pounded onto him. It splashed past him without affecting the eerie surface of the lake. He was drenched in ancient corrosives, distilled residues. But they did him no apparent harm. His flesh spurned the mountain's taints.\n\n\"Giantfriend,\" Grueburn rasped: a harsh scrape of sound. With her sword, she gestured at Scatterwit.\n\nLinden glanced in that direction, saw Scatterwit limping more heavily than before. Far more heavily. With every step, she lurched to the right, toward the lake, as if she had lost her balance. She seemed to recover by force of will.\n\nGod\u2014\n\nBaf Scatterwit's right foot had been cut away, severed at the ankle. A clean slice: clean and cauterized. There was no blood. She seemed unaware that her foot was gone. She moved as if only her damaged knee pained her.\n\nLinden started to shout a warning at the Giants; but Grueburn stopped her. Through her teeth, the Swordmain snarled, \"They know.\" Abruptly she slapped her sword back into its scabbard. With her free hand, she supported Scatterwit so that the woman could hurry without toppling.\n\nPanic and Grueburn's rush broke Linden's hold on the Staff. Earthpower and black flame faltered. The air dug a knife into Linden's chest. But Jeremiah tightened his grip a moment later, took up the slack. Complex stresses gleamed on his cheeks and forehead.\n\nBetween one urgent breath and the next, Linden saw Stave rise higher than Rime Coldspray's head. His fingers and toes gripped the damaged stone like claws. Another breath, and he had climbed more than halfway. Then he gained the lip of the tunnel and passed out of sight, trailing the rope behind him.\n\nNow, Linden thought. Now he has to secure it.\n\nThere was nothing that she could do for Scatterwit.\n\nStave did not have time. With Grueburn's help, Scatterwit joined the other Giants. Kindwind and Jeremiah came last. Bluff Stoutgirth gave Scatterwit a look of anguish, then jerked his head away. Other sailors chewed their silence as if they sought to break their teeth. They were all ready. Covenant now clung to Coldspray's back, leaving her arms unencumbered. But the lake still rose. In a few heartbeats, no more, it would threaten the nearest feet. It would sever\u2014\n\nStave's line jerked. At a word from the Anchormaster, Wiver Setrock grabbed it, tested it. Carrying more rope, Setrock swarmed upward, a sailor adept at ratlines and hawsers. Unlike Stave's, his feet slipped here and there; but those momentary skids hardly slowed him. If the corrupted water hurt him, he ignored the pain.\n\nHe reached the lip, vanished into the river's tunnel. Moments later, his line snaked down to his comrades. Then Keenreef and Hurl were climbing, each with new ropes.\n\nThe lake crept higher. The waiting Giants squeezed closer to the wall. Some of them stood in the waterfall, breathing with their mouths covered. The Feroce watched from a short distance. The water came to their ankles, then to their knees; but they did not fear it. Green and silver shone in their limpid eyes.\n\nLinden wanted to tell Coldspray and Kindwind to go next, take Covenant and Jeremiah to safety. But when she tried to speak, her voice failed. She could not imagine how Cirrus Kindwind would bear Jeremiah upward with only one hand.\n\nFrom the Ironhand's back, Covenant asked the lurker's creatures, \"What about you? We need you.\"\n\n\"The Feroce are the Feroce,\" they replied as if that answer sufficed. Sinking at every step, they began to back away. As they submerged, their fires flared briefly on the water, then went out.\n\n\"Hellfire,\" Covenant muttered. \"Bloody damnation.\"\n\nTo Coldspray, the Anchormaster said, \"In such straits, my will commands.\" His tone held an unexpected edge of authority. \"You and Frostheart Grueburn must ascend. Halewhole Bluntfist and Etch Furledsail will assist Cirrus Kindwind.\" He hesitated for an instant, then growled, \"Baf Scatterwit must hold the rear.\"\n\nScatterwit responded with a laugh like the croak of a raven.\n\nOf course, Linden thought bitterly. Scatterwit had been maimed. Therefore she was more expendable than her comrades.\n\nGroaning to herself, Linden worked her way around Grueburn until she reached Grueburn's back. The Swordmain would need both hands\u2014\n\nAbruptly Jeremiah's power evaporated. \"Sorry about this.\" Tension thrummed in his voice. \"I'll get back to it.\"\n\nLifted by Kindwind, he went over her shoulder to her back. As he shifted, he braced the Staff across her breastplate so that he could hold it with his arms on either side of her neck. There he hung, hugging the sides of her chest with his legs. Then he shut his eyes; began to exert Earthpower again. Black flame twisted upward in front of Kindwind's face.\n\nFour lines now dangled from the darkness of the tunnel. At once, the Ironhand, Onyx Stonemage, and two sailors hastened upward. As soon as they were clear, Grueburn started to ascend like a leap of fire. Through tainted torrents, Linden watched Bluntfist and Furledsail support Kindwind.\n\nSomehow Jeremiah continued to pour out Earthpower while water hammered down on him.\n\nThe lake still rose. It was no more than an arm span away from the rest of the Giants. Only Branl stood between them and the fatal surface.\n\nResting his flamberge on his shoulder, the Humbled crouched at the water's edge and prodded the tip of the _krill_ into a stone. There he waited, studying the lake as if he were daring it to touch High Lord Loric's blade.\n\nA moment later, Grueburn carried Linden up into the tunnel into the deeper darkness of the river's passage. At first, she saw nothing. Granite and black water filled her senses. But then Covenant's ring began to emit a soft glow. Strain knotted his forehead, bared his teeth, as he strove to elicit wild magic without losing control. Gradually his conflicted, tenuous light revealed the surroundings.\n\nBeyond its wide mouth above the cavern, the tunnel resembled a chute or flume angling sharply downward from somewhere far above. The diminished river filled its bottom, tumbling loudly over planes like shelves, gouged flaws, indurated obstructions. Covenant's silver bled along the splashing and spray. The Ironhand, Stave, and a few Giants had waded upward, forcing their way against the downrush to make room for their comrades.\n\nThere were no protrusions or stable boulders where Stave and the sailors could have secured their ropes. Instead Keenreef, Hurl, and two comrades anchored the lines by sitting in the river and bracing their feet in cracks and potholes. By plain strength, they supported the Giants ascending through the waterfall.\n\nEarlier Stave must have done the same\u2014\n\nGrueburn and Kindwind led Bluntfist and Furledsail upward. The river fumed against their knees, boiled to carry them away. But they were Giants: they kept their feet. All of the Swordmainnir were in the tunnel. More sailors swarmed up the ropes. By Linden's count, only Scatterwit, Squallish Blustergale, and Branl remained in immediate danger.\n\nThe river here was as corrupt as it had been around the lake. It reeked of the bane's exudations.\n\nAs Grueburn joined the Ironhand, Covenant gave Linden a look like a glare of fever. By its very nature, wild magic resisted restraint. It became more dangerous with repeated use. But Linden could not help him. There was too much Earthpower in the air. The chute constricted it. Reminders of She Who Must Not Be Named assailed her. Her wedding band no longer answered his.\n\n\"It's getting harder,\" Jeremiah groaned. He kept his eyes squeezed shut. \"The Worm\u2014I can see _Melenkurion_ Skyweir.\"\n\nGrueburn and Kindwind stood in the river shoulder to shoulder. Aching to relieve Jeremiah and Covenant\u2014to relieve herself\u2014Linden put her hand on the Staff again, added her determination to her son's.\n\n\"How far?\" she asked him. \"How far away is it?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" Jeremiah was near his limits. \"Close enough.\" Then he added, \"But the Worm is in a river. It isn't moving as fast.\"\n\nLinden closed her eyes as well; listened to the tumid clamor of water. The Worm must have passed the boundary of the Last Hills. It was crossing the wilderland which had once been Garroting Deep. And along the way, it was appeasing its hunger by drinking from the Black River, which took its name from its burden of diluted EarthBlood.\n\nYet the Worm had traversed most of the Land with appalling speed. How much time remained before it forced its way into the depths of the Skyweir? A day? Less?\n\nA moment later, Covenant's wild magic faded. When Linden opened her eyes, she saw silver streaming from the _krill_ in Branl's grasp. It shone on the water frothing down the contorted length of the channel. At the same time, she heard shouts.\n\nHurl called, \"They are safe!\" And the Anchormaster crowed, \"Stone and Sea! We are Giants in all sooth! And the _Haruchai_ are Giants also, in their fashion. We live!\"\n\n\"The lake rises still,\" continued Hurl. \"Indeed, it swells more swiftly. Yet Scatterwit has suffered no further harm. And Blustergale has lost no more than two toes and a portion of a third. Had we been but a heartbeat sooner\u2014\"\n\nBlustergale interrupted him, roaring in feigned indignation. \"There is no pain! None, I say! Is this not an affront to fire the coldest heart? Am I not a Giant, as mortal as any, and as worthy of my hurts? Does the lurker's god think so little of me, or of Baf Scatterwit, or of all here, that it does not deign to cause _pain_?\"\n\nWhile Scatterwit chuckled, Bluff Stoutgirth commanded, \"Enough, Blustergale. Some among us deem toes needful. Demonstrate that you are able to ascend here, and I will suffer your umbrage. Should you slip or falter, however, I will regard you justly chastened.\"\n\n\"The lake rises still,\" Hurl repeated more urgently. \"Badinage and bravado will not slow it.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" the Anchormaster replied, \"and aye again.\" He had recovered his good humor. \"As you have seen fit to chide us, you will remain to mark the water's advance.\" Then he urged his sailors into motion.\n\nLed by Onyx Stonemage, the others thrashed ahead.\n\nBranl approached Coldspray, Grueburn, and Kindwind; Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah. He held Loric's dagger so that its radiance did not shine into his eyes. Shadows obscured his mien as he announced, \"The lake did not heed the _krill_.\"\n\n\"The Feroce were right,\" Covenant grumbled. \"The lurker's god is crazy. That knife can cut anything.\" He peered into the darkness of the chute. \"Now I'm worried. We don't know what's up there. We're going to need those creatures.\"\n\n\"They've come this far,\" Linden sighed. In spite of their fears\u2014\"If they don't rejoin us, it's because they can't.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Tension throbbed in Covenant's voice. His arms were getting tired. He would not be able to cling to the Ironhand's back indefinitely. But Coldspray would need her hands to help her defy the weight of the river. Grueburn and Kindwind would need their hands. \"I just want to bitch for a while.\"\n\n\"Timewarden,\" Rime Coldspray replied like a reprimand, \"your tales are foreshortened beyond sufferance. They are ended ere I am able to hear joy in them. And you employ words strangely. 'Bitch,' forsooth. I will deem it a courtesy if you will refrain until we are better able to heed you.\"\n\nCovenant gave Linden a twisted smile, rolled his eyes. \"Have it your way. I'll do my complaining when we find the damn Despiser.\"\n\n\"And another,\" sighed the Ironhand. \"Is there no limit to your brevity?\"\n\nLinden wished that Covenant could laugh. She wanted to laugh herself. But she did not have it in her. The spray promised carrion. It implied horror. Even in the constriction of the flume, the sensations were oblique. Nevertheless they were getting stronger.\n\now the company did not tarry. A shout from Hurl announced that the lake was nearing the rim of the waterfall. Heaving against the pressure of the river, the Swordmainnir and the sailors fought their way upward. One of the Anchormaster's crew had tied a rope around Baf Scatterwit's waist. Giants ahead of her held the line. And Squallish Blustergale stayed with her, taking some of her weight. Together they struggled along behind their comrades.\n\nLinden's arms ached. Cramps threatened her thighs. Nevertheless riding Grueburn's back was easier than it might have been. All of the Giants moved hunching over, ready to catch themselves if they slipped on slick rocks or secreted moss. Grueburn's posture helped Linden to hang on.\n\nThe passage should have been impossible for the _Haruchai_. Water that reached the Giants' knees struck Stave and Branl above their waists. Nevertheless the two men forged ahead as if they were incapable of faltering. The _krill_ in Branl's grasp did not waver. He and Stave carried their cumbersome swords like men who had spent decades training with such weapons.\n\nBefore long, Hurl called to inform the company that the lake had reached the bottom of the chute.\n\nMuttering elaborate Giantish curses, the Swordmainnir and the sailors continued an ascent that seemed to have no end.\n\nEventually, however, Rime Coldspray came to a widening. There across the centuries the river had eaten deposits of sandstone and shale out of the walls. It had dug a pit in the underlying basalt. The result was a space in which all of the Giants could gather\u2014and a pool deep enough to swallow the _Haruchai_. Fortunately a few boulders clung to the sides. Here and there, stubborn granite ledges protruded from the walls.\n\nColdspray looked a question at Bluff Stoutgirth. When he nodded, she ordered a rest.\n\nGratefully Frostheart Grueburn sloughed Linden onto a boulder. Cirrus Kindwind put Jeremiah down beside Linden, stood straighter to ease the tension in her back. As Coldspray settled Covenant nearby, the Anchormaster arranged Stonemage, Bluntfist, and his crew, some standing to their chests in the pool, others leaning on boulders or propped against the walls. Then he asked for food and clean water.\n\nSailors unpacked chunks of cured beef and mutton, rinds of cheese, bread with the texture of hardpan, dried fruits, waterskins. As they did so, Linden accepted the Staff of Law from Jeremiah and assumed the whole task of purifying the air so that he could rest and eat. He had not questioned her assistance earlier: he was not loath to trust her now. Apparently he was learning to believe that she would not recant her gift.\n\nWhile she had the opportunity, she extended other forms of refreshment to the Giants; eased the trembling of Covenant's muscles; nourished Jeremiah's strength. As if to himself, the boy murmured, \"That's a neat trick. I want to learn it.\" But he did not reach for the Staff. Images of the Worm seemed to glide like ravens across the depths of his gaze.\n\nSome of the waterskins held diluted _diamondraught_. When Linden had swallowed enough to wash the taste of pollution out of her mouth and throat, she joined the Giants eating.\n\nShe had not heard Hurl's voice for a while. Surely he was able to stay above the lake? But if the Anchormaster felt any anxiety on Hurl's behalf, he concealed it with jests.\n\n\"Thomas?\" Linden asked. \"What do you think? How high can that monster lift so much water?\"\n\nHe opened his mouth to answer; closed it again. After a moment, he said, \"By damn.\" Surprise and relief. With the index finger of his halfhand, he pointed down the chute.\n\nIn the distance below the pool, unsteady emerald reflected wetly on the walls.\n\nThe fires of the Feroce were still some distance away, but they were coming closer. And before long, Linden made out Hurl's bulk looming behind them. In the green glow, he looked somehow ghoulish, like an avatar of the Illearth Stone. His grin resembled the grimace of a fiend. Nevertheless he was unharmed.\n\nThe condition of the Feroce was more difficult to gauge. Linden had never been able to sense the nature of their magicks. From her perspective, they seemed smaller, weaker, as if they had been reduced by their immersion in the lake. And when they finally waded into the pool, she saw that they had indeed shrunk. Although they floated effortlessly with their arms and flames above water, they appeared to have drawn into themselves as if their encounter with their High God's god had shamed them.\n\n\"They rose with the lake,\" Hurl proclaimed in a tone of wonder. \"I had surrendered all hope of them. Yet when the lake began to hint that it might recede, the Feroce emerged.\"\n\nThe creatures faced Covenant; but now they did not flinch or cower. Nor did they ask his pardon for their absence. \"We are merely the Feroce,\" they stated. \"We serve our High God. We do not question our worship. Commanded, we obey.\" The strangeness of their shared voice seemed to accentuate the corruption of the atmosphere, the taint of the river, the slick sheen of the walls.\n\n\"But we have beheld our High God's god. He is lessened. Perhaps he is lessened.\" They regarded only Covenant. Even their flames appeared to focus on him. \"Perhaps the Pure One is also lessened.\" Their emerald shone in his eyes. It gleamed like spray on his scarred forehead. \"You must hasten again. We do not question. Commanded, we obey. Yet doubt infects. It spreads. An end draws near. We fear it. It gladdens us.\n\n\"You must hasten.\"\n\n\"Or what?\" Covenant asked carefully.\n\nThe Feroce were no longer afraid\u2014or their fear had become a different form of apprehension. \"We are naught,\" they answered. \"Worship is all things. Or it also is naught.\"\n\n\"Mom?\" Jeremiah breathed. \"What's going on?\"\n\nLinden touched his shoulder to quiet him. She tightened her grip on the Staff.\n\n\"Then forget your High God,\" Covenant said almost calmly; almost mildly. \"Forget our alliance. Forget that Clyme died for it, and the Worm is going to destroy every god you can imagine.\" He did not raise his voice, but his tone became thicker, harder. \"Remember that the _jheherrin_ saved the Pure One. They were weaker than you are, and maybe more scared, but they helped him anyway. Then he set them free.\n\n\"Try remembering _that_. If doubt infects, so does courage.\"\n\nLinden held her breath. If the Feroce turned back now\u2014\n\nFor a long moment, they were silent. They did not move. Their large eyes remained fixed on Covenant. Nevertheless they conveyed the impression that they were conferring with each other.\n\nCovenant faced them steadily, waiting.\n\nFinally they sighed like slumping mud. \"We are the Feroce. We are ignorant of courage. We obey because we must.\"\n\nThey did not urge haste again. Instead they drifted away from Covenant, gathered in the center of the pool. There they faced each other, holding out their fires like questions for which they had no answers.\n\n\"Thomas?\" Linden asked.\n\nHe frowned at her, or at his own thoughts. \"I know. Not exactly reassuring.\" Then he grimaced. \"So what else is new?\n\n\"We should go,\" he told Rime Coldspray. \"We're running out of time.\"\n\nYet doubt infects.\n\nIt was contagious.\n\nNodding, the Ironhand addressed Bluff Stoutgirth. \"Anchormaster?\"\n\n\"Aye.\" Stoutgirth grinned. To his crew, he said as if he were jesting, \"Come, sluggards. Have done with feasting and sloth. While we dally, the world's doom grows fretful. Soon it may set its sails and depart unopposed.\"\n\nHis crew responded with snorts or groans, or with ripostes; yet they immediately began packing away their provisions. Soon they were ready.\n\nLinden hesitated, unsure of her son. But Jeremiah asked for the Staff without prompting. \"I feel better now,\" he assured her. \"I want to practice.\" He faced her squarely, held her gaze. \"But maybe you shouldn't help me anymore. You make it too easy. I don't have to push myself when you're doing half the work.\"\n\nShe winced. He was right, of course. He had to make himself stronger; had to earn his inheritance. But she already knew that she was going to abandon him again. She was even going to abandon Covenant. And when she did, she would leave without any hope that she might ever return.\n\nHer hands shook as she passed the Staff to her son. Unclosing her fingers required an act of will.\n\nHis attention shifted at once to the wood; but she continued to gaze at him, clinging. Carefully she said, \"I'm proud of you. Do you know that?\"\n\n\"Sure, Mom.\" His tone made it clear that he was not listening.\n\nThe theurgy which he summoned from his hands and his violated heart was as black as anything that she had ever done.\n\ned by the Feroce, the company struggled upward. Emerald oozed like infection down the river. The light of the _krill_ seemed to lurch from place to place as it struck irregular facets of stone. The channel felt interminable. Its twists and bends through Mount Thunder's gutrock blocked Linden's view ahead. She could not guess how far the company would have to climb.\n\nFortunately Jeremiah's use of Earthpower and Law was improving. The Giants were able to breathe more easily. And the hints of She Who Must Not Be Named which Linden had felt earlier were lessened by midnight fire in the confines of the flume.\n\nBlustergale continued to support Scatterwit. A few of her comrades took turns holding the rope tied around her. Like them, she labored ahead, striving toward an untenable future.\n\nSo suddenly that Linden only had time to flinch and grip, Grueburn slipped: she started to plunge. But Stave stopped her by anchoring her foot. She caught herself on her hands, regained her balance. Muttering rueful apologies, she bore Linden onward.\n\nOther Giants slipped as well. As their weariness grew, they lost their footing more often. Most of them recovered quickly, or were secured by their comrades. But one of the sailors fell hard enough to take Keenreef with him. Threshing their arms, they were swept downward. However, Wiver Setrock dropped to his knees below their rush, spread his arms, snagged his comrades before they collided with Grueburn and Kindwind. With another sailor and Onyx Stonemage at his back, Setrock helped the Giants find their feet.\n\nAnxiety and jests echoed down the chute. Coldspray and Stoutgirth shouted unnecessary warnings. Jeremiah looked around wildly for a moment: the only sign that he had noticed what was happening. Then he returned his attention to the Staff.\n\nDarkness. Green glaring dully. Flashes of argent. Loud water acrid with minerals and pollution. Treacherous rocks and mosses. More darkness. Covenant clung like a penitent to Coldspray's back. Jeremiah half knelt behind Kindwind, gripping the Staff across her cataphract. Linden listened to the effort of Grueburn's breathing, felt the strain in Grueburn's muscles, and could do nothing.\n\nShe had given up looking ahead when she heard the Anchormaster call, \"And not before time! Doubtless all things must have an end. After such an ascent, however, I would lief have gained a less ambiguous summit.\"\n\nLinden jerked up her head; saw that the fires of the Feroce no longer reflected on the walls. The _krill_ 's illumination seemed to imply an open space ahead. She tried to extend her discernment upward, but she could not. Her senses were blocked by Giants and fouled water, Earthpower and exertion. Even Loric's gem had the effect of obstructing her percipience.\n\nNone of the Giants spoke as they hurried to reach a place where they might be able to rest again.\n\nLike the Feroce, Coldspray and Stoutgirth had moved out of sight. Holding light for the sailors and the Swordmainnir, Branl stood at the edge of the channel-mouth. Now Linden was able to see that the river ran from another large cavity in the gutrock; but the scale of the space was still hidden from her.\n\nAs Grueburn labored upward, however, Linden heard more complex tones in the water's turbulence, new pitches and timbres. Another waterfall? No. The sounds lacked that deeper resonance. After a moment, she realized that she was listening to more than one torrent. From beyond the immediate rush and spray came the turmoil of other streams, two distinct sources of water, neither splashing from any considerable height.\n\nHalf a dozen sailors reached the Humbled. They passed him leftward, clambered out of sight. As Stonemage and Setrock gained the opening, they led Keenreef and more of Dire's Vessel's crew to the right. Together Grueburn and Kindwind carried Linden and Jeremiah to smooth stone at the rim of the tunnel.\n\nLinden peered out at a large cave like a bubble in Mount Thunder's igneous substance. By the measure of the lower cavern, its dimensions were modest. She could have hit the ceiling with a rock, or skipped a pebble halfway across the dark water in front of her: a diminished lake now little more than a pond marked by rancid strands and stains higher on the walls. At the water's former height, the rocks piled around the cave's bottom would have been covered, useless to the company. At the pond's present level, she could have scrambled anywhere in the cave.\n\nNevertheless the air was viscid, thick with omens. The hurtful tang of She Who Must Not Be Named was stronger here. Suggestions of ire and ruin felt like insects on Linden's skin, tangible and feeding. Without Jeremiah and Earthpower, she might have whimpered aloud.\n\nBut then Grueburn carried her aside, out of the way of the Giants behind them; and Linden noticed the water's inlets.\n\nThere were indeed two, one diagonally across from her on the left, the other opposite her and somewhat to the right. The stream on the left tumbled from a fissure in the wall, a crack barely wide enough to admit a Giant. The water frothing there conveyed the impression that it cascaded from somewhere far above the cave. In the _krill_ 's light, its spray shone silver.\n\nThe other stream boiled out of an opening beneath the lake's surface. Apparently it came from the base of a subtle flaw in the stone, a seam where distinct forms of rock had been reluctantly fused. Under the pressure of its own weight, water seethed into the pond.\n\nOnly the fissure on the left offered the company an egress. An ascent there would be difficult. If the crack narrowed, it might become impassable. But the water there was fresh.\n\nGod, it was _fresh_ \u2014It came from a clean spring, or from several. And the fissure was accessible. The company could reach it without enduring an immersion in the pond; without subjecting Linden to more of the bane's touch.\n\nThe Cavewights were entirely unlike the Feroce. Surely they required sources of clean water? Surely a source this abundant would lead toward the Wightwarrens?\n\nHer heart seemed to beat in her throat as she turned toward Covenant.\n\nRime Coldspray had set him down on the far side of the cave's outlet. Stave and all of the Giants had now emerged from the tunnel, and Cirrus Kindwind had already lowered Jeremiah to the rocks. He leaned on the Staff, resting, but he did not relax his efforts. Stark strands of power fluttered around the company, softening the atmosphere.\n\nHe was the only one not looking at Covenant. Stave, Branl, and the Giants watched the Unbeliever, the Timewarden, waiting for him to make a decision. As if there could possibly be any doubt\u2014\n\nBut he ignored them. Instead he faced the Feroce.\n\nWreathed in green, they clustered a few paces beyond him. Some of them stood with their feet in the pond, but they did not sink away. Again they appeared to commune with each other. Their fires danced like language in their hands.\n\nLinden winced at the sight. They were definitely smaller. Shrinking. Losing faith.\n\nCovenant's impatience showed in the clench of his shoulders, the rigidity of his back. He seemed to want some form of confirmation from the creatures, even though the company's path was obvious. After a tense pause, he demanded, \"Now what? We can't just hang around here. We don't have time.\"\n\nThe Feroce did not look at him. Their voice quavered as if they expected to be struck down.\n\n\"You will be wroth with us. You will not heed.\"\n\n\"What?\" Covenant's surprise echoed faintly around the walls. \"I'm going to get angry because you're trying to help? Why?\"\n\nTwo of the creatures pointed at the fissure. \"You must not enter there. It misleads.\" Two others indicated the rank moil of the second inlet. \"You must follow richer water.\" Then they crowded closer together. \"Now we perish. You will not suffer us.\"\n\n\"Thomas!\" Linden protested. She gestured urgently toward the crack. \"That water is _fresh_.\" It did not stink of threats.\n\nGiants nodded their assent.\n\n\"Oh, stop,\" Covenant growled at the Feroce. \"I'm not going to do anything to you. None of us are.\" He squinted over his shoulder at Linden, then addressed the creatures again. \"But we need an explanation. 'Richer' water? I assume you mean water with more crud in it. That doesn't make sense. Never mind that it's likely to poison us. Suppose you're right. Suppose it does run closer to the Wightwarrens. Even Giants can't swim against that kind of pressure. And we sure as hell can't hold our breath long enough to find air.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" Jeremiah murmured. Ebony tendrils curled across the pond. They searched along the far wall. But he did not say more; and the alarm clamoring in Linden's ears prevented her from heeding him.\n\n\"So tell me,\" Covenant continued. \"Why _that_ water? Why is a trail we can't even follow better than one we can?\"\n\nThe creatures flinched. Their fires guttered. \"We are the Feroce. We obey, as we must. We cannot answer ire.\"\n\nCovenant swore softly.\n\nQuivering, the damp voice said, \"We do not know your goal. We do not know the mountain. But we taste the memories mingled here. Those waters do not hold the Maker's scorn. Other powers enrich them, yes. They urge false worship, abhorrent to us, seductive.\" The Feroce shuddered. \"Yet we are certain. Memory is certain.\"\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" Jeremiah said again.\n\nEveryone ignored him.\n\n\"The stream of mere water. The plain path. It misleads. It does not recall light. No light has shone upon it. No sun. No flame. No magicks.\"\n\nNo light\u2014?\n\n\"Stone and Sea!\" rasped the Ironhand. Other Giants muttered their chagrin.\n\nThe _Haruchai_ watched and listened as if they were drawing different conclusions.\n\n\"The richer waters,\" said the Feroce, \"remember much. They recall darkness and horrible strength. Strange theurgies. Time without measure. And light. Light! In a distant age, they have known the sun. They have not forgotten.\n\n\"The memory is there.\"\n\nAs one, the creatures pointed at the turbulence spewing from beneath the surface of the pond.\n\nOh, God. Floundering, Linden thought, Light\u2014The cascade of fresh water had never seen torches. It had never felt the ruddy glow of rocklight. Therefore its long plunge did not intersect the catacombs. Even Cavewights needed illumination.\n\nBut the other stream\u2014Ah, hell. That impassable gush came from the Soulsease. It had once traveled the Upper Land. It had known the warmth of the sun. And far to the west, the Soulsease entered the Wightwarrens. But only a few days ago, it had lost its way through the mountain. Now it plunged toward the Lost Deep. For that reason, it was fraught with the anguish and rage of She Who Must Not Be Named.\n\n\"Thomas.\" Linden's voice had fallen to a whisper. She was too frightened to raise it. \"I can't. There's no way\u2014\"\n\nShe could not submerge herself in water that reminded her of the bane. She would go mad.\n\nIn a taut rumble, the Anchormaster remarked, \"We know little of these Feroce. We of Dire's Vessel have heard your tale, but we have not lived it. Is it conceivable that they have turned aside from our purpose? If they are no longer ruled by their monstrous deity's will, it may be they who mislead, rather than the waters.\"\n\nCovenant shook his head. \"I doubt it. They had a perfect chance to abandon us back at that lake, but they didn't. The lurker still wants to live. They still want to live. We're the only hope they've got.\"\n\nLike him, Linden believed the Feroce. Nevertheless the company could not go where they suggested.\n\nShe should have been grateful. Instead she wanted to scream.\n\n\"I said, _wait_ a minute!\" Jeremiah demanded more strongly. \"You aren't paying attention.\"\n\nFierce as a blow, Covenant wheeled away from the Feroce. Bracing his fists on his hips, he glared past the spread of Giants and the mouth of the downward chute. \"Hellfire, Jeremiah! Paying attention to _what_?\"\n\nJeremiah faced Linden rather than Covenant. \"Look, Mom.\" Black fire played across the spout of fouled water, skirled up the seam of the wall. \" _Look_.\"\n\nLinden stared at him, thinking, Don't push me. I can't.\n\nBut he was her son. She could not refuse him. Trembling privately at the prospect of maggots, spiders, worms, she asked Frostheart Grueburn to put her down. When she stood beside Jeremiah, close enough to borrow some of the Staff's Earthpower, she turned her senses toward the fused stone. Alarm hampered her, but she forced it aside. Unsteadily she directed her percipience into the water; into the wall.\n\nThere.\n\nInstinctively she recoiled; closed her throat against a moan.\n\nThe rock along the seam was thin. It looked thin enough to break. And beyond it\u2014\n\nShe bit her lip until she drew blood.\n\n\u2014stretched a different fissure, a wedge with its tip at the seam. It was narrow, but it widened into the distance until it passed beyond her discernment. And it was full of water.\n\nNo, she realized a heartbeat later, not full. Everywhere under Mount Thunder, the Soulsease had shrunk to a fraction of its former flow. Before that, it had been a mighty torrent. That hidden fissure had indeed been full. And the cave itself had been full as well: a fact which probably explained why the weight of water had not broken through the seam ages ago. The cave had served to equalize the pressure. But now\u2014\n\nAh, now the level behind the wall had dropped. The fissure had emptied itself until the water stood, waiting to drain, little more than the height of a Giant above the pond. If the rock broke, the issuing flood would be fierce. Still the Giants might be able to withstand it. Stave and Branl might. When the river found a new level, a new equilibrium, the company might be able to ascend against it.\n\n_Writ in water_. God help me.\n\nLinden was not ready. She would never be ready.\n\n\"Linden?\" Covenant called in frustration. \"Jeremiah? What is it? Damn it, I can't _see_.\"\n\nIn a voice so small that she hardly heard it herself, Linden answered, \"That wall is thin. There's a crevice behind it. I can't tell how high the crack is, or how far it goes. But if we break the wall\u2014\"\n\nShe did not have the courage to say more.\n\n\"That's it,\" Jeremiah confirmed more loudly. \"That's the way. We can go there.\"\n\nThe Swordmainnir peered across the cave in wonder. At a nod from the Anchormaster, Hurl and Wiver Setrock began to work along the wall to the right. \"We are wise in the lore of stone,\" Stoutgirth explained unnecessarily. \"We will ascertain whether our strength may suffice to open the way.\"\n\nWhile he waited for Hurl and Setrock, he sent four of his crew leftward to refill their waterskins from the clean stream.\n\n\"The stone,\" intoned the Feroce, \"remembers endurance. It will not surrender to fists or blades.\"\n\n\"That's not the problem,\" Covenant muttered over the clamor of waters. With Coldspray's help, he crossed the slick outlet, then scrambled toward Linden and Jeremiah. \"The problem is control. Too much is easy. Just enough is hard.\"\n\nLinden turned to him as if she were falling. When he reached her, she put her arms around his neck, leaned against him.\n\n\"Oh, Thomas,\" she whispered to him alone. \"I can't do this. I can feel She Who Must Not Be Named.\"\n\n\"What, _here_?\" he breathed. Alarm tightened his grip. \"Is She close?\"\n\nLinden shook her head. \"I didn't mean that. I don't know where She is. But I can feel Her power. It's leaking into the water. Just smelling it is bad enough. If I touch it\u2014\"\n\nHorror crouched in the pit of her stomach, in all of her nerves. The bane was death to her. It hungered for her soul.\n\nJust for a moment, Covenant held her like a man who wanted to howl. Then he mastered himself. \"I understand,\" he said stiffly. To retrieve her from carrion, he had been forced to hold her underwater; threaten her with drowning. \"I'll spare you if I can. If the Giants aren't strong enough, I'll try\u2014\"\n\nShe felt him grimace as if he had bared his teeth. \"Hellfire, Linden. I might bring down the roof.\"\n\nShe knew what he meant. He had too little health-sense\u2014and he feared himself too much. His passions were too extreme for restraint.\n\nHurl and Setrock reached the seam. While Hurl pressed an ear to the stone, listening, Setrock thumped the flaw with the heel of one palm, gently at first, then harder. Harder. Then Hurl stepped back. To the Anchormaster, he called, \"Water lies beyond this stone. Linden Giantfriend and the Chosen-son gauge acutely.\" His voice carried like streaks of argent across the surface of the pond. \"Yet the Feroce do also. The stone has suffered much across the ages\u2014aye, and absorbed much to harden it. It will not yield to blows or iron.\"\n\nBranl raised Longwrath's sword as if it were a question.\n\nHurl shook his head. \"The theurgies of that blade are obscure. I cannot conceive that they will suffice here.\"\n\n\"The _krill_?\" asked Branl.\n\nThe idea wrung a flinch from Linden. \"No,\" she told Covenant. \"Not the _krill_. It might cut deep enough. But whoever holds it will be too close.\" Tons of water and rock would crash outward\u2014She had no choice. \"I have to do it.\"\n\nHe pulled back his head, peered into her eyes. \"Are you sure?\"\n\nShe could not hold his gaze. Leaning her forehead against his chest, she sighed, \"I can try. I need to start using my ring. It might even help.\"\n\nWhen he had invoked wild magic in the lower cavern, his wedding band had summoned a response from hers: a silver throb which had muted the sensations of pincers and scurrying. Perhaps her own power would shield her from the bane's tormented, tormenting seepage.\n\nShe felt Covenant gather his resolve. Briefly he tightened his hug again. Then he wheeled away.\n\nShouting so that everyone would hear him, he demanded, \"Listen! Linden is going to break through that wall for us, and she's going to have to do it from here.\" Opposite the seam. \"But when she does, she'll release a hell of a lot of water. I don't want it to touch her! I don't care how you do it. _Think_ of something. Just keep her out of the water!\"\n\nJeremiah gaped at him. In surprise, the boy lost his grasp on Earthpower. The air failed in Linden's lungs. She started to gag. But then Jeremiah recovered. Renewed flames spread outward.\n\n\"Mom?\" he asked anxiously. \"Mom?\"\n\nPanting, she urged him, \"Don't worry about me. Your job is hard enough. If I can do this, there's going to be a flood\u2014but we'll still need air. The Giants will take care of me. I'll be fine as long as we can breathe.\"\n\nThe Ironhand and the Anchormaster exchanged a few quick words. Then Rime Coldspray announced, \"Timewarden, it will be done. The water here is vile. It will become more so. Yet we are hardy against such affronts. With your consent, I will entrust Linden Giantfriend to Bluff Stoutgirth and those in his command. They are not hampered by armor and swords. Frostheart Grueburn will stand ready to receive the Giantfriend when our passage inward has been opened.\"\n\nCovenant did not object. Linden could not.\n\nAt once, Stoutgirth called a few orders of his own. Almost immediately, everyone except Linden was in motion.\n\nThe sailors refilling the waterskins helped each other past the fissure, moving directly toward the seam. Blustergale supported Baf Scatterwit in spite of her insistence that she did not need aid. Flashing a smile of encouragement at Linden, Grueburn strode away, followed by Cirrus Kindwind carrying Jeremiah. With a boost from Stave, Covenant climbed onto the Ironhand's back. A look of nausea filled his eyes as if he had been overtaken by vertigo.\n\nFor an instant as Branl passed her, Linden considered asking him to wait with her. She could use the _krill_ 's gem to trigger wild magic: she had done so once before. But the outcome then had appalled her. She remembered too well the charred remains of Cavewights, scores or hundreds of them. Her spirit still wore the stains of slaughter. She nodded to the Humbled, but did not speak.\n\nStave came to her side. He gave her a grave bow, regarded her with his single eye. \"In such straits, Chosen,\" he remarked, \"it may be that Giants are better able to ward you than one _Haruchai_. Nonetheless I will not be parted from you. I have accepted once an absence from your side. I will not do so again.\"\n\nOf the friends who had first joined Linden after her return to the Land, Stave was the last. The Ramen were gone. Liand and Anele were dead. And in some ways, Stave had endured more than any of them. She had no words for her gratitude.\n\nTrailing behind Stonemage, Bluntfist, and the last of the sailors, Etch Furledsail stopped with Linden and Stave. Even among Giants, she was tall: a graceful and comely woman no longer young, with grey scattered through her hair, a gleam in her eyes, and a weathered face. \"It may appear to you,\" she offered, \"that our intent for your protection entails needless hazard. I assure you that it does not. I dare not attempt true haste over the hazards of these rocks. Therefore we will bear you across the water.\n\n\"Fear nothing,\" she added. With a wave, she indicated Setrock and Hurl beside the seam. \"Where one Giant may fail, three will succeed. And we are adept in water. Here it is noxious in all sooth.\" She frowned at the pond. \"Still it will not harm us.\n\n\"Giantfriend, I ask only that you do not resist when the wall has been opened. To evade such torrents, we must move swiftly.\"\n\nLinden said nothing. She had stopped listening. Her gaze followed her companions as they gathered on both sides of the flaw where she meant to strike, but she was not watching. Her attention had turned inward. While Furledsail's voice passed over her, she searched for the door hidden within her, the specific intersection of intention and emotion and openness, of need and willed desperation, which gave her access to wild magic.\n\nFurledsail raised an eyebrow at Linden's silence. Stave replied with a slight shrug.\n\nAt first, Linden could not find her way. Too many things could go wrong. If she ruptured the wall, a tremendous amount of water would crash straight toward her. It would hit hard enough to make pulp of the Feroce, who still stood on the other side of the cave's outlet. Or the Giants poised beside the seam might be struck by shards, caught in the cascade, torn away. Jeremiah's concentration might falter again. Then the bane's insidious fetors might overwhelm Linden. And she could not be sure that the company would be able to force a passage along the crevice behind the wall. If that crack held more water than the cave could release\u2014\n\nFurledsail intended to carry her into the pond; into memories of horror and anguish\u2014\n\nBut then Covenant called her name. Jeremiah shouted, \"Mom!\"\n\nSteady as gutrock, Stave said, \"You are Linden Avery the Chosen, named in honor Ringthane, Giantfriend, and Wildwielder. Much is asked of you, but much has also been given. The time for doubt has passed. Only deeds or death remain. On other occasions, you have dared Desecration. You need not fear it now.\"\n\nAnchored by the voices of people who were dear to her, Linden closed her mind to the clamor of too much trepidation, too many possible disasters. She was not alone. Her husband and her son loved her. Her friends had faith in her. She could trust them.\n\nBut they could not reach into her secret places for her. That she had to do for herself. And she knew how. She had done it before. She only had to retrace her mental steps.\n\nFollowing her health-sense inward, she found the intimate chamber of her power. It was masked on all sides by fears and sins, unforgiven, but it was a part of her nonetheless. She had a right to it.\n\nNow or never. How often had she said that to herself?\n\nWhen argent stark as lightning began to blaze from her ring, she did not hesitate. And she did not hold back. She was not Covenant, fraught with ungovernable potential. Causing _caesures_ had required precision, supreme delicacy: attacking granite and basalt demanded only _force_.\n\nShe delivered _force_ as if she had suddenly become mighty.\n\nAs the stone cracked along the seam, the whole cave seemed to shriek. Rubble and water burst from the wall like screams.\n\nBefore Linden could snatch another breath, everything became chaos.\n\nAn avalanche of water slammed into the pond, but she hardly saw it; hardly saw the Giants gripping each other so that they would not be swept away; hardly saw Jeremiah flail black fire in all directions, wild and useless. She had already been lifted into Furledsail's arms. At once certain and cautious, Furledsail moved into the pond. But she did not confront its upheaval directly. Instead she angled away to the right, past the immediate thrash and spray.\n\nAt the same instant, Hurl and Setrock dove. Hurl stretched out, long and shallow, crossing as much distance as he could. Setrock went deeper, shorter. As Furledsail sank to her waist, Hurl broke the surface beyond her.\n\nAbove the water, the lash and rebound of waves, Furledsail tossed her burden upright to Hurl.\n\nLinden caught a frantic glimpse of Stave swimming. Then Hurl's hands caught her.\n\nHe did not hold her. Treading water, he pitched her back over his head. A blind throw\u2014\n\nBlind and unerring. Deftly Wiver Setrock snagged her out of the air. In the same motion, he, too, flung her behind him.\n\nA heartbeat later, Linden lay in Grueburn's clasp at the water's edge. With wary haste, Grueburn retreated up the rocks to press her back against the wall among the other Giants. Her grin as she regarded Linden was feral with glee.\n\nLinden's mind had gone blank. She stared up at Grueburn as if she did not recognize the Swordmain.\n\nBut somewhere deep inside her, a voice was crowing.\n\nYou did it. You _did_ it.\n\nDid you call me your _daughter_? she shouted at Lord Foul. Watch and learn, you smug bastard!\n\nShe could cheer and threaten because the Despiser was not her greatest fear. He was Covenant's problem. She had chosen a different path to the World's End.\n\nWild magic was a necessary step.\n\n## 7.\n\nAt Last\n\nTumults crashed inward. They threatened to fill the cave, drown the entire company. The Feroce vanished in roaring waves. The air that came with the flood stank of minerals and trapped hate. It surpassed Jeremiah; surpassed the Staff of Law.\n\nBut the constrained volume of the river was less than it had been scant days ago, much less; and the cave's outlet swallowed the immediate brunt of the inrush. On either side, waves slammed like heavy seas against the walls, fell back onto each other. The pond became a boiling cauldron, a contained squall. Surges tore at the Giants' ankles, knees, thighs. Fluid blows hammered Stave and Branl. Yet moment by moment the flail and rebound of the waters ran down the mountain's throat.\n\nGradually the flood seemed to find its balance. Its force receded as the cleft drained. Turmoil slapped at the walls and the company, but did not claim them. Smaller waves sank to the level of knees and then ankles. Soon the water only splashed the feet of the Giants. Its thunderous howl faded.\n\nAt the same time, the air tumbling from the opened crevice lost some of its virulence. It had been blocked for ages or eons, and its contagions had congealed until they were thick as mire. But now it ran out like the river; and as it emptied the cleft, it drew air from some cleaner source. Gasping, Linden tasted hints of something that resembled life. When Jeremiah regained his grip on Earthpower, the whole company began to breathe more easily.\n\nHis efforts confirmed that he was unharmed.\n\nBut the Feroce were indeed gone. If they had survived the torrents, they had allowed themselves to be swept away: back to the cavern and the black lake, to the Defiles Course and the Sarangrave. Linden wanted to think that they were still alive. They had done what they could. Perhaps their High God would forgive their doubts.\n\nA shout from the Ironhand announced that the gap into the crevice had become passable. Branl carried the _krill_ closer to light the way as the Anchormaster and half a dozen of his crew dropped down into the water's former channel, then began scrambling upward. The river frothed against their legs, but they labored higher until they were out of sight.\n\nThrough the raw clamor of the current, Covenant told Branl to go ahead. With Coldspray's assent, the Humbled took Loric's dagger into the crevice. For a moment, the gem left slashes of argent on the pond's turmoil. Then the Ironhand followed, bearing Covenant with her, and her size blocked most of the light. The remaining streaks and gleams made the cave and its water look ghostly, transient, as if the whole place were dissolving; losing its place in the reality of time.\n\nHalewhole Bluntfist went next with Setrock and Furledsail. Cirrus Kindwind carried Jeremiah after them. Then it was Frostheart Grueburn's turn. As Linden scrambled onto Grueburn's back, she saw a rope trailing from the crevice: a lifeline. Onyx Stonemage gripped the end while someone\u2014Bluff Stoutgirth or one of his sailors\u2014pulled it taut. Muttering her approval, Grueburn held the line to steady her as she bore Linden into the crevice with Stave behind her. Squallish Blustergale supported Scatterwit. Stonemage brought up the rear.\n\nThe lifeline was necessary. Somewhere beneath Grueburn's feet, there was stone: there had to be. But long turbulent millennia had deposited thick layers of silt as cloying as quicksand. The water pounding against Grueburn's thighs was not the greatest obstacle to her ascent. The silt was worse. She sank to her calves and higher in muck that dragged at every step. While she hauled one foot out of the mire, her weight drove the other deeper. She needed the rope.\n\nFor that reason, any Giant above her who happened to find secure footing paused to anchor the line. The result was progress in arduous surges as sailors and Swordmainnir pulled themselves or each other from one patch of solid ground to another.\n\nHow the _Haruchai_ managed to ascend, Linden could not imagine. Glancing behind her, she sensed an uncharacteristic frown of vexation on Stave's visage. The strain in his muscles was as palpable as Grueburn's. At intervals, he clutched at the lifeline, obviously reluctant to require its aid.\n\nHow long could he continue? How long could the Giants? Linden had often been amazed by their endurance, but still\u2014The crevice was too narrow for the companions to assist each other side by side, and the silt was _deep_. Each new step seemed to demand more effort than the one before.\n\nA call from above warned the company that Stoutgirth had floundered into a pit where the mire seemed bottomless. His sailors dragged him back; but then everyone else was forced to wait while the Giants in the lead probed for a way past the pit.\n\nLinden felt a flutter of panic. The walls seemed to be leaning in. Surely the crevice was becoming narrower? The current boiling past Grueburn's legs carried glints of She Who Must Not Be Named like flakes of shed malice: lightless, invisible, yet distinct to Linden's nerves.\n\nIf Frostheart Grueburn lost her balance\u2014If Linden plunged into the water\u2014\n\nApparently Stoutgirth's fall and rescue had released gases trapped in the pit. Heavy as fog, sulfur and putrefaction rode the stream. They burned Linden's eyes, stung her nose, bit into her chest, until the tug of running water took them away.\n\nShe could hear Covenant swearing at his helplessness. Jeremiah jerked his head from side to side, flung black fire along the river. Spray stood like sweat on his skin.\n\nThen the Anchormaster reported success. The line began to lurch forward again.\n\nIn their turn, Kindwind and Grueburn reached the pit. Now Linden understood Stoutgirth's mistake. Her health-sense could not measure the varying depths of the silt. It was all so old, so laden with refuse and minerals, so full of the aftereffects of dire theurgies, that it refused percipience.\n\nHelped by Bluntfist and Furledsail, Cirrus Kindwind bore Jeremiah around the rim of the pit: a narrow path. Linden shifted until she hung from Grueburn's shoulder; dangled over the pit as Grueburn forced her way around it. Stave crossed by floating on his back and pulling himself along the rope. Grueburn and Kindwind waited while Blustergale ensured Scatterwit's safety. Then Blustergale sent Scatterwit ahead. He stayed behind to assist Onyx Stonemage.\n\nIn heaves and sags, the company struggled upward. Aching for Grueburn, and for Jeremiah, Linden concentrated on clinging to Grueburn's armor\u2014and on holding still so that she would not disturb Grueburn's balance.\n\nHere the air was definitely better. It became cleaner, demanded less from Jeremiah, as the river dragged its atmosphere with it. Hints of the bane persisted, but they were diminished.\n\nOn into darkness, interminably. The fissure became wider. It narrowed again. At intervals, indurated juts of stone interrupted the silt. For long stretches, the muck seemed deeper. The Giants fought for breath to feed their straining muscles, their accumulating exhaustion. Their gasps filled the crevice above the rush of water. Linden could not remember when they had last rested.\n\nThen the rope was drawn tighter. Grueburn gripped it with both hands. She began to move a bit more easily. Behind her, Scatterwit chortled, a sound as forlorn as a groan. The light of the _krill_ reached farther down the cleft. It touched Kindwind's head, flared like fire in Jeremiah's hair. The wall on the left had begun to lean away from the river. The darkness overhead felt more open.\n\nThe leading Giants must have found a place where they could stand; where they could gather on firm rock and brace their feet.\n\n\"Soon, Giantfriend,\" Grueburn panted. \"Soon.\"\n\n\"It better be.\" Jeremiah coughed the words. \"I can't hold on much longer.\"\n\nLinden watched the silver on the walls grow brighter as more and more of the company moved past the _krill_. In moments, she caught sight of Branl. Where he stood, the left wall appeared to fall away. But then she saw that the fissure simply became wider. Beyond a rough edge like a doorpost, that wall curved back, continuing the crevice. The river ran there, tumbling more slowly between sheer sides now farther apart. Past the turning, rough stone formed a floor like a platform above the water, vaguely level, and perhaps ten or fifteen paces across.\n\nBluff Stoutgirth and his immediate companions waited there, chests heaving. Coldspray had put Covenant on his feet. He stood squinting past the glare of Loric's gem, impatient for Jeremiah and Linden. With Setrock and Furledsail, Bluntfist had taken the rope. Together they hauled as if they hoped to raise their comrades from a crypt. Silt caked their legs, but they ignored that discomfort.\n\nOn the platform, some of the sailors began unpacking waterskins and bundles of food.\n\nEager to slip down from Grueburn's back\u2014eager to put her arms around Covenant\u2014Linden did not look around. Her legs stung as she dropped to the stone. Moving toward Covenant, she stumbled, had to catch herself. Then he was holding her tight. The urgency of his hug matched hers.\n\n\"Hellfire, Linden,\" he murmured near her ear. \"I thought that was never going to end.\"\n\nIt was not ended now. The companions had merely found a respite.\n\nFrom the downward fissure, Stonemage herded Blustergale and Scatterwit out of the river: the last of the Giants. As similar as brothers, Stave and Branl came toward Linden and Covenant.\n\nLinden felt Jeremiah quench the power of the Staff. Instinctively she flinched. But the atmosphere here was kinder to her lungs. Although it was thick with dust and disuse, stale, acrid, the river carried most of its wastes and poisons with it. She could breathe without choking.\n\nWhen she had held Covenant long enough to ease her heart, she turned to her son.\n\nJeremiah was sitting on the stone, hugging his knees against his chest in an effort to control the tremors in his limbs. He had dropped the Staff beside him. Dully he stared across the water, a gaze as expressionless as the far wall. Saliva collected on his drooping lower lip: a sight which Linden had not seen since he had emerged from his dissociation.\n\nShe knelt at his side, put her arm over his shoulders. \"Jeremiah, honey? Are you all right? It's no wonder you're tired. You've been keeping us all alive.\"\n\nHis eyes did not shift. He hardly seemed to blink or swallow. His voice was a low rasp, a scraping like the sound of a creature crawling on its belly.\n\n\"It isn't fair, Mom. It's not. I'm so tired. I can't go on. I can't. But I have to have Earthpower. Without it\u2014\" Abruptly he released his legs, slapped at his face as if his weariness revolted him. \"It protects me.\n\n\"You don't know what it's like. That mountain is _huge_. And the Worm is in the river. It's drinking every bit of Earthpower it can find, but it wants more. It wants it _all_.\"\n\nOh, Jeremiah\u2014\n\nUselessly Linden told her son, \"You'll get stronger. You're already stronger. We'll eat something, rest for a while. You'll feel better. Then we'll need you again. We'll have to go back into the river. You'll be able to protect yourself.\"\n\nLeaden with depletion or despair, his head turned toward her. \"What are you talking about?\" He peered at her as if he were going blind. \"The river? Why?\" With one hand, he pointed up the wall. \"That's the way. It has to be. The air's better there. You won't need me anymore.\"\n\nShe frowned, momentarily confused. Then she stood to look around.\n\nGiants cast grotesque shadows, shapes that appeared to caper across the walls. Between them, however, the _krill_ lit this section of the crevice clearly.\n\nUnder tremendous pressure long ago, layers of stone on this side had shifted. Diagonally beginning half a dozen paces beyond the Giants and angling erratically into the darkness overhead, ancient forces had pulled the higher reaches of the wall back from the lower. The result was a crude ledge or shelf: a natural formation that lurched upward, lying level in some places, jutting like a titan's stairs in others; obstructed here and there by piles of rubble. For short distances, it looked wide enough to accommodate horses. Other stretches were too narrow to let more than one Giant pass at a time.\n\nIt ascended beyond the _krill_ 's illumination, beyond the range of Linden's senses, climbing into the secrets of the crevice. She had no way of knowing where it led. But the air drifting down was unmistakably cleaner.\n\nSurely even stone-dwelling Cavewights required unfouled air?\n\nIn any case, the ledge went higher. It might go far enough to reach the catacombs.\n\n\"You're right,\" she murmured to Jeremiah. \"We have to go up.\" Then she added quickly, \"But that doesn't mean we don't need you. It just means that you can stop wearing yourself out for a while. Maybe you can learn other ways to use the Staff.\"\n\n\"Like what?\" he asked as if she had suggested something unimaginable. He had already failed to affect the hue of the wood. He could not undo its effect on him.\n\nInstead of giving him a direct answer, Linden said, \"You're here for a reason, honey. It's no accident.\" For his sake, she spun a web of inferences that made her tremble. \"Of course, you're here because Roger took you. He wanted a way to make me give him Thomas' ring. And Lord Foul wants revenge. He thinks that you can help him trap the Creator. He's trying to fill your head with despair so that you won't fight him.\n\n\"But it isn't that simple. Lord Foul isn't the only one who chooses who comes to the Land. He picks us because he thinks that he can manipulate us, or because he thinks that we're already his. But the Creator chooses us, too. They both picked us.\" Covenant had taught her this. Now she pushed it further. \"The only difference is, the Creator doesn't manipulate us. He lets us make our own decisions.\"\n\nIgnoring the rest of the company, Linden hurried to make her point before her courage failed.\n\n\"The Creator sees hope in you, honey. He sees things that you might choose for yourself, things that might make a difference. That's why\u2014\" Oh, God. Did she have to say this? Did she have to face it? \"That's why he didn't warn me before Roger got to you. If he had given me any hint that you might be in danger, I would have stopped Roger somehow. I would have taken you away so that he couldn't find you.\"\n\nShe had almost done so when she had seen images of Revelstone and Mount Thunder in her living room.\n\n\"The Creator didn't warn me because he needs you.\"\n\nHer claim seemed to strike a spark into the tinder of Jeremiah's aggrieved spirit. Unsteadily he stood to face her. The murk of his gaze clung to her.\n\n\"Needs me _how_? What am I supposed to do?\"\n\nFor that, Linden had no answer.\n\n\"What you've always done,\" Covenant put in roughly. He had come to stand behind Linden. She felt the tension in his muscles, heard the clench in his voice. \"Something damn Foul doesn't expect.\"\n\nJeremiah's head snapped toward Covenant. His mouth hung open.\n\n\"Maybe,\" Covenant went on, \"you think he marked you. Maybe you think being a halfhand means he has some kind of claim on you, some kind of special power over you. But that's backward. _He_ didn't cut off those two fingers. Your _mother_ did. And she did it so she could save the rest of your hand. Being a halfhand doesn't make you a victim. It makes you free.\n\n\"The Despiser doesn't know you as well as he thinks he does. He can't. Filling your head with visions is just a trick to keep you off-balance. He doesn't want you to see the truth. You're only his if you choose him.\"\n\nJeremiah gaped at Covenant. Linden watched turmoil seethe like Lifeswallower's mire in her son's eyes. The whole company seemed to pause while he struggled to understand: even the river seemed to hold its breath. The _krill_ cast light and shadows in all directions.\n\nAs if he were choking, Jeremiah protested, \"But what I see is _real_. The Worm is _real_.\"\n\nHe may have meant, We're all going to die.\n\n\"Well, sure.\" Covenant's tone conveyed a shrug. The Despiser did not lie. \"But that's not the point. The Worm isn't more real than _you_ are. It's just more dramatic.\"\n\n\"I don't get it,\" Jeremiah groaned. \"I can't\u2014Lord Foul is too strong.\"\n\nHis confusion and need twisted Linden's heart; but Covenant did not relent. \"Then let him be too strong. You don't need to beat him. Just do _something_ he doesn't expect. Be yourself.\"\n\nA young man with the Staff of Law and his own Earthpower: a young man with a talent for _making_. Even the Despiser in his fury and frustration could not satisfy all of his desires without the ability to create. Linden understood what Covenant was saying. She knew why Lord Foul needed her son.\n\nBut she could see as clearly as if she had entered him with her health-sense that Jeremiah did not understand. He was too young to know how much he did not know about himself. When he ducked his head to mutter as if he were ashamed, \"Maybe Roger had the right idea. Maybe we should all try to become gods,\" she seemed to hear the _croyel_ in him: the legacy of being possessed.\n\nYet she did not hear scorn. Bitterness, yes. Fear. Self-pity. But not contempt. He had other birthrights as well.\n\nSurely she could try to believe that they would come to his aid when he needed them? Surely she should trust him, no matter how much his distress hurt her, or how much she feared for him? She would not be there for him when his plight came to its crisis. Trusting him now might be the last gift that she would ever be able to give him.\n\nhen the companions had eaten another meal, shared their waterskins, and refreshed themselves as much as they could on the better air drifting into the crevice, they started upward. Once again, the Ironhand and the Anchormaster took the lead; but this time Covenant walked behind them with Branl and Halewhole Bluntfist. After Hurl, Keenreef, and several other sailors, Linden and Jeremiah essayed the terraced ledge accompanied by Stave, Frostheart Grueburn, and Cirrus Kindwind. Onyx Stonemage and more of Stoutgirth's crew came next. As before, Blustergale and Baf Scatterwit brought up the rear.\n\nIn places, the surface they trod resembled sheets of slate, and there the going was easy. Some of the stairs where the rock had crumbled were minor obstacles. But occasionally the sheared steps reached to Linden's waist. A few were taller than she was: they cast shadows as threatening as chasms. Like Covenant and Jeremiah, she had to be lifted to the next level.\n\nThe walls leaned toward and away from each other, tracing the variations of Mount Thunder's flaws and stubbornness. By increments, the river fell below the reach of the company's illumination. The rush of water became distant, as if it were fading out of the world; and with it the spilth or detritus of She Who Must Not Be Named also receded. In gusts and eddies, the air improved.\n\nLike the crevice, the width of the ledge undulated. At intervals, Linden was able to walk at Jeremiah's shoulder as if she could still shield him. More often, the company was forced to go in single file. When the ledge became dangerously narrow, Cirrus Kindwind kept her hand on Jeremiah's shoulder, and Frostheart Grueburn did the same for Linden.\n\nAfter some distance, Rime Coldspray and Bluff Stoutgirth came to a break in the ledge. Linden could not see how they crossed it. Giants blocked her view. Her every step was obscured by shadows. But when she and Jeremiah reached the gap, she found that the sailors had stretched a rope over it, held taut by Hurl on one end and Wiver Setrock on the other. Using the line for support, Kindwind and Grueburn helped Jeremiah and Linden to the far side.\n\nWhen the last of the Giants were safe, the company continued to climb.\n\nLinden lost her sense of duration. Nothing in the mountain's perpetual midnight marked the passage of time. Gradually the river passed out of hearing. After that, there were no sounds apart from the efforts and breathing of the companions. The _krill_ 's light shifted as Branl moved, but it revealed only rock and more rock, enduring and unrelieved. Beyond it, darkness crowded thick as obsidian or basalt.\n\nStill the river pulled air downward with it: a guttering breeze on Linden's face. For a while, she derived a sense of progress from the declining pressure of taints in her lungs. Soon, however, the changes became too subtle to be distinguished. Then weariness and strain became her only measure for the meaning of her steps.\n\nAt intervals, Jeremiah extended tentative flicks of theurgy from the Staff, but their purpose eluded Linden.\n\nIn the distance ahead, the crevice bent sharply to the left. Beyond a blind corner, another high step or shelf interrupted the ledge. This one reached the chests of the Giants. Some of the sailors were able to gain the next level unassisted; but the Swordmainnir were more heavily burdened, and their weariness was more profound: like their smaller companions, they needed help.\n\nWhen Grueburn had lifted her past the shelf, Linden paused to scan her surroundings.\n\nWithin the ambit of the _krill_ 's illumination, the ledge looked wide as a road, comparatively level. But the crevice was narrowing. After its sweep to the left, it curved gradually back to the right; and as it did so, the opposite side restricted her view ahead. Overhead the walls leaned together: she supposed that they met somewhere in the darkness, closing the fissure. Above her at the farthest extent of the light, a line across the near wall suggested the possibility of another ledge.\n\nThe far wall was pocked with holes like the mouths of tunnels, open maws where the gem's radiance did not penetrate. They looked big enough for Giants. A few were level with the company's path, but most were scattered higher around the curve.\n\nLinden peered at those holes, frowning, until she felt Covenant's tension. It poured from him like the heat of a fever. He was glaring along the ledge ahead with his fists clenched and his shoulders tight, as if he were expecting a blow.\n\nWhen she followed his gaze, she saw bones.\n\nThey littered the ledge as far as she could see: thighs and ribs, arms, hands and feet, skulls. Small heaps like crushed children. Whole skeletons piled atop each other. Femurs and ulnas randomly discarded. Smashed skulls grinning at their own ruin. Hundreds, no, thousands of them. Most of them suggested Cavewights, but some made Linden think of ur-viles\u2014or stranger monsters.\n\n\"I don't like this,\" Covenant muttered. \"It's probably good news. Somebody tossed them here. We must be getting close to the Wightwarrens. But hellfire! I think we're in trouble.\"\n\nIn the _krill_ 's silver, the bones looked desiccated, bleached: they seemed to ache with age. But when Linden studied them more closely, she saw that only some of them were old. Others still wore gobbets of flesh, shrouds of blood. The breeze drifting past her held a tang of new rot\u2014\n\n\u2014and another odor, one which she did not want to recognize. She remembered it too well.\n\nThe fresher piles seethed with rats. They cleaned the bones fearlessly, creatures that had never been threatened. Occasionally a dark eye glittered at Linden. Whiskers twitched. Plump bodies fought for every shred of meat.\n\nLong ago aboard Starfare's Gem, she had seen them swarm at Covenant, possessed by a Raver and eager for his blood.\n\n\"Thomas,\" she whispered: a dry croak.\n\nHe reached out to her. \"What is it?\" When she took his hand, he gripped her hard. \"Do you sense something?\"\n\n\"I can\u2014\" Linden tried to say; but her throat closed. She had to force out words. \"Oh, Thomas. I can smell _moksha_.\"\n\nThe precise evil of Ravers was imprinted on her nerves. Her memories of _turiya_ were bad enough. What _moksha_ had done to her was worse.\n\nCovenant stared at her. \"Damnation.\" Darkness and light warred in the background of his gaze. Then he wheeled away.\n\n\"Branl!\" he barked. \"Coldspray! We're going to be attacked!\"\n\nThe Ironhand called a question; but her comrades reacted before he could answer. Bluntfist, Kindwind, and Grueburn urged Covenant, Jeremiah, and Linden farther along the ledge, closer to the wall. Between them and the plunge of the crevice, Stonemage drew her sword. Branl thrust the _krill_ into Hurl's hands, flourished Longwrath's flamberge. He and Stave flanked Stonemage.\n\nBaffled, the sailors heaved Baf Scatterwit above the edge. As she scrambled away, they stretched their arms for Squallish Blustergale.\n\n\"Are you sure?\" Covenant panted to Linden.\n\n\"Of course she's sure.\" Jeremiah made a palpable effort to sound fierce, but his voice came out in a yelp. \"We always get attacked.\n\n\"I can't see!\" He shoved at Kindwind's back. \"I can't do anything if I can't see.\"\n\nGripping her longsword, Cirrus Kindwind shifted to cover him more completely. Bluntfist and Grueburn readied their blades.\n\nHerding Scatterwit and Blustergale ahead of them, Coldspray and Stoutgirth strode closer. \"Setrock!\" the Anchormaster commanded. \"Keenreef. Furledsail. Lead us! Clear bones from our path. If we are assailed, we must have sure footing.\"\n\nThe three sailors surged forward. Scatterwit started after them, hopping. Two of her comrades caught her arms, dragged her aside. Blustergale and another Giant followed Setrock, Keenreef, and Furledsail to help sweep debris from the ledge.\n\nMany of the bones crumbled when they were kicked aside. They released a fume of age.\n\nInstinctively Linden siphoned Earthpower from the Staff, sent her health-sense farther. The holes in the far wall looked deep. They felt empty: tunnels leading nowhere. The rats had a musty fetor, the smell of carrion and ancient dust. And the Raver\u2014\n\nImplications of _moksha_ Jehannum burned her nerves, but she could not locate their source, any source.\n\nHurl held the _krill_ above his head to extend its light. Wiver Setrock and his companions brushed through the bones. The sailors behind them pushed more into the crevice. Rats scurried away, chittering angrily. _Moksha_ remained hidden.\n\nAbruptly Coldspray announced, \"There is no gain in waiting.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" assented the Anchormaster. \"If we are to be assailed, our foes must approach along our path. They cannot surprise us.\"\n\nAt a word from the Ironhand, Stonemage and Bluntfist started after Blustergale. With Bluff Stoutgirth, Hurl, and the rest of the sailors, Coldspray followed. Kindwind and Grueburn drew Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah away from the wall. With Branl and Stave, they trailed behind the rest of the company.\n\nWithout a cordon of defenders around her, Linden felt exposed. The holes in the stone across from her seemed to watch like eyes, black and malicious. But Jeremiah was visibly relieved: now he could see. He loosened his arms, swung the Staff from side to side as if he were testing its reach. Determination clenched his features. And Covenant strode after Setrock, Keenreef, and Furledsail as if he feared for them more than for himself.\n\nBranl kept pace with Covenant. Stave stayed with Linden.\n\nFrostheart Grueburn rested a hand on Linden's shoulder, kept Linden between her and the wall. Calmly she assured Linden, \"Stoutgirth Anchormaster speaks sooth. Our foes cannot surprise us here. They will seek some advantage of position or concealment.\"\n\nLinden was not comforted. She could feel _moksha_ Raver crouching somewhere near. Hurl's grasp on the _krill_ was not as steady as Branl's. As he moved, shadows reeled across the walls, along the ledge. Threats seemed to lurk in all directions.\n\nUrged by Coldspray, the company advanced more quickly. At the same time, Stoutgirth called to his sailors in the lead, ordered them to wait for Bluntfist and Onyx Stonemage.\n\nSpread out along the ledge, the companions rounded the curve. Linden searched past the Giants for a glimpse ahead. Mutely she prayed for haste. The holes scattered across the far wall disturbed her. For no reason that she could name, she wanted to get out from under their black glower.\n\nA moment later, Setrock shouted in frustration. When a gap opened between the Giants, Linden saw that the ledge ran straight for a short distance beyond the curve. Then it was blocked by a pile of large boulders. The last of the rats vanished among them.\n\nBlustergale and his companions were still kicking away bones. Other Giants studied the boulders, testing their bulk, looking for a way past them.\n\nAs the Ironhand and the Anchormaster strode closer, Furledsail turned toward them. \"The balance of this obstruction appears precarious,\" she reported. \"We may be able to shift the stones.\" She hesitated, glanced at her comrades, then added, \"Yet the formation is not natural. Moreover, it is recent. I deem that it was placed to thwart us.\"\n\n\"Oh, hell,\" Covenant muttered. \"Hell and blood.\"\n\nHe sounded tense enough, anxious enough, to tear the barricade aside with wild magic. He knew what _moksha_ had done to Linden.\n\nHis power might shatter the ledge.\n\nBiting her lip, Linden pushed her senses among the boulders. She wanted to discern what lay beyond them. But before she could extend her percipience far enough, a sharp cracking sound distracted her. From high above her came a granite impact, one rock massive as a menhir colliding with another\u2014or bouncing off the wall.\n\nShe jerked up her head. Saw nothing.\n\nAn instant later, a boulder the size of a Giant struck somewhere far overhead. It rebounded in a spray of shards. Splinters as keen as knives hissed past the ledge. The remaining mass arced away, hammered the far wall below the holes, burst into rubble. She did not hear the fragments hit water. The fissure was too deep.\n\nGiants yelled. Linden, Jeremiah, and Covenant were shoved against the wall again. Kindwind and Grueburn crouched over them, shielded them with lore-hardened armor.\n\nApparently unconcerned at the edge of the drop, Stave pointed at the line or ledge a long way up the fissure. \"There,\" he announced. \"The stone fell from that height.\"\n\n\"Don't _stand_ there!\" snapped Covenant. \"If it was supposed to hit us, there's going to be more!\"\n\nStave glanced at Covenant. \"Indeed, Timewarden. From this vantage, I will have forewarning. The wall provides a measure of shelter, yet it also obscures sight.\"\n\nPeering upward, he said, \"I discern no\u2014\" Then he spun toward the Giants near the blockade. \"Beware!\"\n\nToo late, Linden felt the swift hurtle of another boulder.\n\nThis one did not strike the walls. It came straight down, hard as a meteor.\n\nSailors thrust Scatterwit aside as the second rock struck within a stride of where she had been. It tore off a chunk half the width of the ledge as it bounced away, squalling with debris.\n\nMore than half the width. Only an arm span remained.\n\nLinden, Covenant, Jeremiah, and their immediate defenders would have to pass that break in order to follow their companions.\n\nCovenant's vertigo\u2014\n\n\"Giants!\" roared the Anchormaster. \"Shift the barricade! We must pass onward!\"\n\nWith Keenreef and Furledsail, Setrock began straining at the pile. Others of Dire's Vessel rushed to add their strength. Hurl moved to give them more light. Scatterwit lurched after him.\n\nOne long stride took Stoutgirth past the break. Coldspray crossed behind him, then looked back to verify that the rear of the company was safe. Linden, Covenant, and Jeremiah. Branl and Stave. Kindwind and Grueburn.\n\nA third boulder seemed to detonate against the far wall. A granite fusillade ripped across the ledge.\n\nBlustergale went down with blood spurting from his shoulder. A shard had pierced an artery. Fragments whined off Bluntfist's armor, staggered Stonemage. A sailor whose name Linden did not recall was torn apart. For an instant, his whole body spasmed. Blood and fluids sprayed from half a dozen wounds. Trying to regain his balance, he pitched off the ledge.\n\nA scream that she could not utter choked Linden. Heedless of the danger, Covenant ran toward the break. Jeremiah looked around wildly.\n\nAs if from nowhere, a stone spear appeared in the center of Hurl's chest. He sprawled backward, crashed against the wall. The impact knocked the _krill_ from his hand. It hit the ledge, skittered away\u2014\n\nShadows pounced from all directions.\n\nFaster than Linden's fear, Branl leaped the break, dove headlong. Sliding in Blustergale's blood, he snagged the dagger at the lip of the drop.\n\nSomehow he kept his longsword.\n\nMore spears crossed the crevice, a volley of stone shafts. Setrock and his comrades were driven back from the blockade. Now Linden saw a Cavewight standing in each of the tunnels in the opposite wall. The holes spat spears. Then those Cavewights moved aside. More creatures with spears strode into view, stepped into the force of their throws.\n\nRime Coldspray shouted orders louder than Bluff Stoutgirth's. At the same time, she returned over the breach to intercept Covenant. Ignoring his curses, she hauled him off his feet, swung him onto her back so that she could shield him.\n\nGrueburn and Kindwind guarded Linden and Jeremiah with their armor. Grueburn's blade batted a spear aside. Stave knocked another out of the air.\n\nBluntfist sprang close to the edge, protected as many sailors as she could. Limping, Stonemage joined her. Bluntfist let one spear splinter against her cataphract while she chopped at another. Stonemage deflected two shafts. The Giants behind her dodged.\n\nSurging upright half cloaked in blood, Branl raised the _krill_. One-handed, he swung his flamberge. A spear shattered. Pieces fell into the crevice. Bright silver spread over the ledge, along the fissure. Shadows capered, jeering.\n\nMore spears came in continuing waves.\n\nYears among shrouds and ratlines had made the sailors agile. They twisted and ducked; shoved each other out of the way; blocked spears with belaying-pins and fists. When they could, they armed themselves with the Cavewights' weapons.\n\nSobbing, Scatterwit clamped her hands to Blustergale's shoulder. \"Ward yourself!\" he gasped. \"The wound is mine. I will stanch it.\" But she ignored his protest.\n\nNear Linden, Earthpower burgeoned. Abruptly Jeremiah pushed past Kindwind's protection. Yelling words which he had heard Linden use, he found an open space, aimed the Staff of Law like a lance. \" _Melenkurion abatha!_ \" From the wood's iron-shod end, black flame blared. \" _Duroc minas mill!_ \" Magic lashed like lightning across the fissure, scoured its way into one of the tunnels. \" _Harad khabaal!_ \" The Cavewights there caught fire, blazed in agony.\n\n\"Take _that_ , you bastards!\" Like Scatterwit, he was sobbing. \"I'm learning! I'll kill you all!\"\n\nTo Linden, Cavewights implied Roger Covenant. She shouted Jeremiah's name, fearing an eruption of Roger's laval fury. But she hardly heard herself over the roars and efforts of the Giants, the sharp strike of spears.\n\nAs the boy readied another blast, Stave reached him. Turning his back on the Cavewights, on the spears, Stave stepped in front of Jeremiah, forced Jeremiah to look at him. Calm as a breeze amid the turmoil, the former Master said, \"Wield such strength with care, Chosen-son. It is new to you. Therefore it is uncertain.\"\n\n\"Rockbrother!\" called Frostheart Grueburn.\n\nStave did not glance at the Swordmain. \"Also,\" he told Jeremiah, \"the ur-Lord's maimed son may join the assault at any moment. You must prepare to oppose him.\"\n\nCursing, Grueburn left Linden, leaped to stop a spear aimed at Stave. The frantic sweep of her sword missed: she took the shaft's point on her breastplate. It glanced away, clattered on the ledge.\n\n\"Roger?\" cried Jeremiah. \"You want me to fight _Roger_? How am I supposed to do that?\"\n\n\"With care,\" Stave replied evenly. \"With passion, certainly, but also with care.\" Step by step, he urged Jeremiah back into the shelter of Cirrus Kindwind's bulk and armor.\n\nFrantic and afraid, Linden searched the confusion with her senses; but she found no sign of Roger.\n\nAbruptly the barrage of spears stopped. Responding to a signal that Linden did not hear or feel, all of the Cavewights withdrew from the gaping tunnels.\n\nA moment later, the barricade beyond the company collapsed as if a keystone had been removed. Huge rocks rolled over the edge, dropped soundless into the dark. In an instant, most of the barrier was gone as though a door had been kicked open.\n\nAlong the ledge charged a throng of Cavewights, howling.\n\nThey were armed with spears and falchions, cudgels and axes. Plates of stone hanging from their shoulders served as armor. The hot red of their eyes scorned the _krill_ 's wavering radiance.\n\nTheir suddenness caught the Giants off balance. A cudgel like a battering-ram struck the side of a sailor's head, knocked him into the fissure. Cries followed him down. Furledsail fell back with gore spilling from a slash below her ribs. She, too, might have gone over the edge; but Setrock sprang after her, snatched her into his arms. Her attacker Keenreef stopped with one hard punch to the center of the forehead. Then he had to wheel away from the vicious stroke of an axe.\n\n\"Withdraw!\" The Anchormaster's command echoed up the wall. He sounded preternaturally unperturbed; accustomed to gales. Perhaps he was also accustomed to loss. \"Withdraw, Dire's Vessel! This is work for Swordmainnir!\"\n\nBut he did not retreat himself. Jerking the spear out of Hurl's chest, he advanced to meet the Cavewights. He seemed to be laughing.\n\nOnyx Stonemage and Halewhole Bluntfist were already running to counter the charge. Rime Coldspray shouted for Branl; consigned Covenant to the Humbled. With her glaive in her fist, she raced after Stonemage and Bluntfist.\n\nThe ledge was too narrow for a massed assault. No more than four Cavewights led the attack; and even then, they hampered each other. Stonemage and Bluntfist let the remaining sailors scramble between them. Then the two Swordmainnir faced the creatures.\n\nColdspray stopped Stoutgirth three paces behind her comrades. She and the Anchormaster braced themselves for flung spears; prepared to cut down any Cavewight that fought past Stonemage and Bluntfist.\n\n\" _Damn_ it, Branl!\" Covenant demanded. \" _Do_ something! I can take care of myself!\"\n\nBranl studied Covenant for a moment; shrugged delicately. Then he handed Loric's dagger to the Unbeliever. Springing away over the break in the ledge, he went to join the Ironhand.\n\nCovenant, Linden, and Jeremiah were left behind. Stave, Grueburn, and Kindwind. But soon sailors came to them dragging Blustergale, carrying Furledsail. Harried along by Setrock, Scatterwit retreated from the fray.\n\nLinden watched Giants and Cavewights fight in darkness relieved only by the _krill_ in Covenant's grasp, and by the crimson glow of eyes. At first, Bluntfist and Stonemage seemed implausibly effective. They were skilled and mighty. They had room enough between them to swing their blades. And they could afford to let creatures lunge past them: Coldspray and Stoutgirth protected their backs. Rabid thrusts and slashes were beaten aside. Bodies toppled from the ledge in welters of blood.\n\nBut the Cavewights were mighty as well, born with the strength to delve in gutrock by hand. They were nearly as tall as Giants. Their arms were longer. And they were many, more than Linden could count. Eventually their sheer numbers would overwhelm the Giants. Already Bluntfist and Stonemage were driven backward. The Ironhand and the Anchormaster were forced to retreat as well.\n\nBranl strode between the commanders. He passed Bluntfist and Stonemage, drifted like a shadow among the Cavewights. With the rippled edges of his longsword, he seemed to reap creatures all around him. Howls became shrieks. Bodies fell. In the press of Cavewights, his shorter stature was an advantage. Creatures fighting at the height of Giants could not block his flurry of cuts, his swift dance. For a moment, he stopped the advance. Linden almost believed that he would be able to turn the battle.\n\nStill the Cavewights were too many. And they were not mindless. Quickly they adjusted their tactics. Those in the lead sprang aside, cleared a space which allowed other creatures to level their weapons and their strength at the Humbled.\n\nBranl dodged a spear, cut off the arms of its wielder. As if in a single motion, he blocked a cudgel on one side, countered a sword on the other. He slashed at thighs, knees, ankles.\n\nBut more Cavewights came. In spite of his prowess, he was beaten backward.\n\nSoon Covenant would have no choice. Jeremiah would have none.\n\nAt the edge of her vision, Linden thought that she saw another boulder plummet into the depths. She saw or imagined a Cavewight sprawling through the air after it.\n\nShe shook her head to dispel the image. She could not help Branl and the struggling Swordmainnir. She had promised herself\u2014\n\nBut she could meet other needs. Snatching Earthpower from the Staff, from Jeremiah, she aimed fire at Blustergale's shoulder and Furledsail's side.\n\nShe worked fiercely. She had no time for kindness. The battle was coming closer. Like an act of violence, she stopped Blustergale's bleeding, mended the bones, closed the wound; poured energy into his veins: healing as brutal as abuse. When she was sure that he would live, she treated Furledsail in the same fashion.\n\nAll of the Giants had cared for her. Some had given their lives. This was how she rewarded the living.\n\nThen Stave called her name. She jerked up her head, flung her gaze at the fighting.\n\nHe still stood near her. Nevertheless another _Haruchai_ had joined Branl. The newcomer had acquired a falchion from a fallen creature. Together he and Branl struggled to slow the Cavewights so that the Swordmainnir would not be overrun.\n\nAnother\u2014?\n\nLinden did not recognize him.\n\nA heartbeat later, a second unfamiliar _Haruchai_ landed lightly on the ledge. He must have been working his way down the wall. Even one of his people could not plummet onto stone with such ease from any great height.\n\nHe had the grizzled hair of a veteran: his face was a lattice of old scars. He paused to glance around at Stave and the sailors. Grueburn and Kindwind. Linden and Jeremiah. Then he stared at Covenant.\n\nFor the first time, Linden saw open astonishment on the impassive face of a _Haruchai_.\n\n## 8.\n\nShamed Choices\n\nWild magic swelled in Covenant. It yearned for release. His wedding band ached on his ring finger. The ambush had already killed three of the Giants. Hurl's body lay against the wall, transformed by a stone spear into fresh feasting for rats. Two of the men from Dire's Vessel had plunged into the crevice; into the distant embrace of the Defiles Course. Still an uncountable number of Cavewights pressed forward: a storm of red eyes and ferocity squalling like ghouls. Covenant did not know how much longer the company's defenders could withstand the attack.\n\nStonemage and Bluntfist. Coldspray and Stoutgirth. Branl with Longwrath's flamberge. The eldritch blade's magicks were meaningless here: its edges were not. Together the Humbled and the Giants were more effective than Covenant could comprehend.\n\nThe Anchormaster's remaining sailors had armed themselves with spears. Even Blustergale and Furledsail had regained their feet after Linden's violent healing; had claimed weapons. But they could not enter the fray. The ledge was too narrow.\n\nCovenant loathed killing, but his abhorrence for the suffering and loss of those who stood with him was greater. To save them, he would have incinerated every Cavewight on the ledge. And he would have borne the cost; added those deaths to the stains on his soul. His ring seemed to plead for use.\n\nYet he suppressed its fire, swallowed his ambiguous power. He did not have enough control to strike at the Cavewights without harming the people whom he longed to save. He could not protect Linden and Jeremiah. He had never been able to spare anyone who chose to fight for the Land.\n\nAnd he did not understand why the unfamiliar Master stared at him in such amazement.\n\nSurely the _Haruchai_ had come for this? Summoned by Bhapa and Pahni, they must have rushed to Mount Thunder to join the Land's last defense. Why else were they here? How else had they arrived when they were needed?\n\n\"Thomas,\" Linden panted. \"Thomas.\"\n\nCovenant barely heard her. He gripped Loric's _krill_ as if he had forgotten it.\n\nWhy was this Master surprised?\n\nFortunately he had not come alone. Armed with a Cavewight's falchion, the other warrior now supported Branl. In perfect harmony, they appeared to flow and eddy among the creatures, delivering bloodshed and death with the grace of dancers: a cut here, a thrust there, a spinning feint, on and on, all too swift for Covenant to grasp. Maimed and dying Cavewights were flung like sleet into the fissure. And those that fought past the two Masters were met by the hard iron of the Swordmainnir, or by Stoutgirth's spear.\n\nThe strength and skill of the defenders slowed the charge. They halted it.\n\n\"Ur-Lord.\" Stave pitched his voice to pierce the clamor and rage, the screams of pain, the raw gasping. \"Here is Canrik of the Masters. His comrade is Dast. Above us, Ulman and Ard await the outcome here.\" Stave's tone had a sardonic tinge, trenchant and vindicated. \"They were unaware of your return to life.\"\n\nUnaware\u2014? The idea staggered Covenant. Realities shifted. The ledge tilted to one side. It began to turn. He stood on impossible stone, could not keep his balance. The crevice called his name, a chiaroscuro of alternating seductions and commands. The _krill_ fell from his numb fingers.\n\nWhat had Bhapa and Pahni told the Masters? Had the Cords even reached Revelstone? Had the Ardent failed in his dying gift? Then why were the Masters here?\n\nCovenant wanted to howl silver until the ledge stopped; until everything stopped.\n\nThrough the whirl, Linden's arms found him. \"Thomas!\" He thought that he saw Stave holding the _krill_ nearby; but he heard only his wife. \"The Masters came. Stave says that two hundred of them came!\" With every word, she tried to summon him back. \"But they didn't know where to look for us. There are too many tunnels. They had to spread out. Four of them found a place where the Wightwarrens open on this crevice. Somewhere up there.\" She seemed to be pointing. \"Two _hundred_ , Thomas! We'll have more help as soon as the others learn where we are.\n\n\"Hang on, Thomas! You have to hang on.\"\n\nReeling, he struggled to focus on her. His hands fumbled their way to the sides of her face. He held her directly in front of him, almost nose to nose, so that she would wheel with him\u2014or so that the truth of her would remain stationary. She was not spinning. The ledge was not. Even the world was not. It was all in his mind.\n\nHe should have been accustomed to such things. He had been dizzy often enough\u2014\n\n\"Mom?\" Jeremiah asked. He seemed to be pleading. \"Are they going to save us?\"\n\nCanrik spoke. \"Ur-Lord.\" His voice was hard. His amazement had become anger. \"There are questions which must be answered.\" Then he seemed to relent. \"They cannot be answered here.\n\n\"Giants!\" he called. \"Do you possess rope? We would do well to gain the ledge above. Ulman and Ard will aid us. We have no other path.\"\n\nA cudgel caught the side of Stonemage's leg. She went down. Lunging, Stoutgirth spitted her assailant. Blood gushed from the Cavewight's mouth, splashed the Anchormaster's face. But Stoutgirth was not done. In spite of his leanness, he was strong enough to heave the Cavewight into the air on the end of his spear. Furiously he pitched the creature over the edge.\n\nStonemage's pain made Linden flinch. She pulled away from Covenant. \"Help them!\" she yelled at Canrik. \"Stonemage can't stand!\"\n\nThe Master faced her, glaring. \"There is no need. The attack fails. A rout begins.\"\n\nHarried by fears like furies, Covenant forced his inward whirl aside. The whole crevice continued turning, but he ignored it. Standing with his legs wide, he looked along the ledge.\n\nThrough a blur of failing sight and vertigo, he saw that Canrik was right. Only seven or eight Cavewights still fought. The other Master, Dast, pursued creatures trying to retreat. Branl spun to help Bluntfist and Coldspray with their opponents. His blade spilled entrails, flung red spray. With every slash, Coldspray drew bright gore. Bluff Stoutgirth threw his spear: a final strike that gouged chips from a plate of armor. Then he stooped to Stonemage, pulled her arm over his shoulder, hauled her upright. Together they staggered toward the rest of the company.\n\nBlustergale did not wait for instructions. From one of the company's sacks, he produced a heavy coil of rope. Baf Scatterwit tried to take it from him: his healed shoulder was still weak. He refused her; gave the rope to Wiver Setrock. To console her, he said, \"Stand ready. You will have other tasks.\"\n\nShe hooted a laugh. \"I am ready. Am I not ready always?\"\n\n\"Anchormaster!\" shouted Setrock. \"The Master counsels an ascent! Other Masters wait to assist us.\"\n\nManic in his mask of blood, Stoutgirth grinned, rolled his eyes. \"Sluggard! Why do you delay? If we do not accept aid when it is offered, we are not merely fools. We are witless as well.\"\n\nAt once, Setrock moved to the rim of the ledge, peered upward. For a moment, he gauged the distance, hefted his coil of rope. Then he nodded. Crouching to gain force, he threw his coil at the ledge high above the company.\n\nIt disappeared in the darkness for a moment. Then one end of the rope came snaking down.\n\nCovenant drew a steadier breath, watched his surroundings settle back into their necessary positions.\n\nStoutgirth lowered Stonemage to the ledge, settled her leaning against the wall. \"Another line,\" he commanded Scatterwit cheerfully; too cheerfully. Anguish in his gaze belied his tone. \"Rig three cradles. I will not entrust the Timewarden or Linden Giantfriend or Jeremiah Chosen-son to the strength of their arms.\"\n\nHe did not add that Cirrus Kindwind had only one hand, or that Blustergale and Furledsail were still recovering, or that Onyx Stonemage was hurt, or that Scatterwit herself had lost a foot.\n\nCovenant approved. He did not believe that he would be able to hold on when fresh vertigo urged him to fall.\n\nQuestions which must be answered?\n\nCanrik was glaring at Linden again as if she were a viper. As if he felt betrayed\u2014\n\nUnder the force of his gaze, she seemed to shrink inside her clothes. She had endured too much distrust from the Masters; too many judgments. Her history with them hung on her shoulders like a millstone. But she did not reply to Canrik's plain ire. Instead she turned to Jeremiah. Like a woman who wished to demonstrate something, she said distinctly, \"I need Earthpower, Jeremiah. For Stonemage. Do you mind?\"\n\nApparently she wanted Canrik to understand that the Staff of Law now belonged to the boy.\n\nJeremiah frowned. \"She's hurt.\" He looked baffled. \"You don't have to ask. She needs you.\"\n\nHe seemed to mean, I don't know how to help her.\n\nThe idea that the Masters still saw harm in Linden made Covenant want to hit Canrik in the face. Trembling at the intensity of his own wrath, he watched her walk toward Onyx Stonemage.\n\nThe injured Swordmain sat on the far side of the place where a boulder had broken the ledge. She kept her hands clamped around her thigh to block the sensations from her knee, prevent the pain from breaking through her self-command. Linden did not try to cross the gap unaided\u2014and did not wait for help from the Giants. Instead she halted near the breach and bowed her head, concentrating her senses on Stonemage's injured leg. As if of its own accord, fire unfurled from the Staff of Law, an ebon tracery stark in the _krill_ 's shining. It spun whorls like intaglio as it reached toward Stonemage.\n\nBeyond them, Rime Coldspray kicked a Cavewight off the ledge: apparently the last of the creatures. Breathing hard, she and Halewhole Bluntfist studied the distance for a moment, where Dast harried the remnants of the attack. Then they raised their swords to salute Branl.\n\nHe replied with a _Haruchai_ bow. His expression acknowledged neither pride nor satisfaction. If he had gleaned anything from Dast's thoughts, he did not reveal it.\n\nBriefly Covenant faced Canrik. He wanted to demand, How dare you? How _dare_ you? After everything she's been through while you were sitting on your damn hands? But he restrained himself. There was too much here that he did not understand. Too much that the Master did not.\n\nDeliberately he shifted his attention to Jeremiah. Harsh as a rasp, he asked, \"Where is the Worm now?\"\n\nLike Linden, he intended a demonstration.\n\nJeremiah winced. He studied his hands twisting on the Staff. \"It's still in the river.\" His voice shook with bitterness. \"Still above ground. But it's getting close. I can't see _Melenkurion_ Skyweir anymore. There's just a huge cliff with a crack where the river comes out.\"\n\nOver his shoulder, Covenant looked at Canrik again. Did you hear that, you self-righteous bastard? You think you've got questions? You have no idea.\n\nEverything that Linden had done for her son's sake since Covenant's return to life was justified.\n\nThen he told Jeremiah unsteadily, \"Don't worry about it.\" The boy was ignorant of Linden's fraught history with Canrik's people. When would she have explained it? Why would she? Galt had saved Jeremiah's life. \"I know what's happening to you is cruel. I can only imagine how much it hurts. But you'll get your chance to do something about it. And the Masters will help us.\"\n\nAt least until their questions were answered.\n\nAs if in response, Canrik said, \"The Masters have been given lies. Stave conceals his thoughts. Branl of the Humbled must reveal truth.\"\n\nThe openness of Branl's mind did not trouble Covenant. Of course Branl would tell the truth. He had promised to instruct his people. Covenant trusted that he would tell the whole truth.\n\nBut lies? Who had lied to the _Haruchai_? Who had taken that risk? And how had the discernment of the Masters been foiled?\n\nStave regarded Canrik with a flatness that seemed to imply disapproval; but he did not reproach the Master.\n\nAround Covenant, the Giants hurried through their preparations to leave the ledge. A sailor called Spume Frothbreeze braced his feet on the wall. With a second coil of rope over his shoulder, he pulled himself upward hand over hand. Scatterwit's line had been knotted around his waist so that he could drag it behind him.\n\nTo Covenant's blurred sight, the height of the next ledge seemed unattainable. If Ard and Ulman were there, he could not distinguish them. Within moments, Frothbreeze faded into obscurity.\n\nBut the Giants did not hesitate. At once, a woman followed with the company's last rope: Far Horizoneyes. Like Frothbreeze, she climbed with the ease of long experience.\n\nKeenreef and Setrock took the remaining supplies, hastened upward. Covenant scowled at the cradles knotted into Scatterwit's line: three of them tied in sequence so that he, Linden, and Jeremiah could sit in them and simply hold on while Giants and _Haruchai_ raised them. He did not want to do this. He would lose his balance again. And all three of them would be vulnerable. If the Cavewights renewed their attack, threw more spears\u2014\n\n\" _No_.\" The Ironhand's voice snatched him out of his fretting. Although she spoke quietly, her vehemence shocked him.\n\nTurning, he saw Bluff Stoutgirth rise to his feet with Hurl's body across his shoulders.\n\n\"No,\" repeated Coldspray, furious or grieving. \"Anchormaster, no.\"\n\n\"One I lost to the _skurj_ ,\" Stoutgirth replied like a lament. \"For him, I have been granted a _caamora_. But three were slain here, and two fell beyond the reach of sorrow.\" He bared his teeth through his veil of blood. \"All were in my command, and their guerdon was death. I will not forsake Hurl to the feeding of rats.\"\n\n\"You _will_ ,\" countered the Ironhand. \"I do not gainsay your bereavement. Nonetheless you are the Anchormaster of Dire's Vessel, and you have not been relieved of command. Storms do not abate when a Giant falls from the rigging. Nor is our peril eased by the loss of comrades precious among us.\n\n\"The world's ending will be _caamora_ enough for any woe. You will not hazard your life for a corpse.\"\n\n\"Will I not?\" Stoutgirth did not meet her gaze. \"Is this your word, Rime Coldspray? Do you speak thus, you who have lost five of your Swordmainnir, and have seen the purpose of your striving across the seas fail? Ironhand, your heart is stone. Mine is water.\"\n\nColdspray clenched her fists: anger glared in her eyes. Before she could retort, however, he jerked up his head, laughed like a loon. Two strides took him to the edge of the chasm. There he crouched, braced his arms under Hurl's body, and heaved it into the depths.\n\nLaughing or crying, he said, \"Hurl I give to the river. May it bear my heart to the surcease of seas, as it does him.\"\n\nHis wracked mirth rose until it seemed to fill the crevice: a broken man's threnody for the world's fallen. But he did not permit his rue to hold the company back from the ropes.\n\nhen Covenant reached the higher ledge, he had to sit down. Freed from his knotted cradle, he collapsed against one wall of the crude tunnel leading away from the crevice; drew his knees to his chest and hugged them urgently; hid his face. He felt unmanned by vertigo, by impossible demands and contradictions. He had barely known Hurl. He could not even remember the names of the other slain sailors, Giants who had lost their lives without striking a blow in their own defense. And his decisions had led them to ruin. It was his responsibility to make their deaths worthwhile.\n\nIt could not be done. Nothing that he ever did would assuage Lord Foul's countless victims. Nothing would suffice to honor the valor of those who still struggled for the Earth.\n\nStill Covenant had to try. He had to close his ears to the siren song of dizziness and futility. He had to believe\u2014\n\n_There is no doom so black or deep that courage and clear sight may not find another truth beyond it._\n\nHe was a leper. Surely he could believe whatever he chose? As long as he was willing to pay the price?\n\nFortunately he was not alone. In the Land, he had seldom been alone; but this time he had been given more than companionship and aid. Linden was coming toward him. He did not need health-sense to recognize the love in her eyes, the raw concern. Jeremiah followed behind her, clutching the Staff of Law as if his sanity depended on it. Stave brought the light of Loric's _krill_ into the tunnel. Branl had gone to extremes that still appalled Covenant. Two Masters\u2014Ard and Ulman?\u2014stood on the ledge, helping with the ropes. And there were still Giants.\n\nGod, Giants\u2014Five of Rime Coldspray's comrades: four of the Anchormaster's sailors: all gone, as lost to the world as Lostson Longwrath. Nevertheless those who remained outnumbered the dead.\n\nAnd two hundred Masters had come to the Wightwarrens. Two _hundred_ \u2014\n\nIf Covenant's ability to choose what he would and would not believe was one side of being a leper, this was the other: he did not know how to bear such abundance. He had spent decades in one world and millennia in another learning how to stand alone.\n\nYet he could not pretend that he was not grateful. When Linden sat down beside him and slipped her arm over his shoulders, he found that he was able to meet her gaze.\n\n\"It isn't all bad,\" he said roughly. \"At least we're still together. Some of us made it.\"\n\nHe meant, I love you, Linden Avery.\n\nHer hug seemed to say that she understood.\n\nBlinking uselessly, he looked around. \"How are we doing?\" Shadows and stark silver confused the shapes gathering around him. \"We can't stay here.\"\n\n\"We'll be ready soon,\" she told him. \"Some of the Giants need help.\" Cirrus Kindwind and Onyx Stonemage. Baf Scatterwit. Squallish Blustergale. Etch Furledsail. \"They're being hauled up now. That only leaves Canrik and Dast.\"\n\nOf course, Covenant thought. Naturally the Masters would insist on coming last.\n\nTwo hundred of them were in the Wightwarrens somewhere. Against how many Cavewights? He had no idea. Roger had had plenty of time to summon every living creature in Mount Thunder. And _moksha_ Raver remained a threat. He might still be able to command any number of Lord Foul's servants. Covenant was not sure that two hundred _Haruchai_ would be enough.\n\nAnd in spite of what he had said to Jeremiah, he was not confident that he could count on their help. _The Masters have been given lies_. He did not know what those lies were. Therefore he could not guess how the Masters would react to the truth.\n\nTogether, Kindwind and Stonemage were heaved onto the ledge. When the last sailors and _Haruchai_ had been pulled upward, Canrik strode among the Giants toward Rime Coldspray.\n\n\"Ironhand,\" he said at once, \"we must not tarry in this passage.\"\n\nColdspray looked down at him. \"Aye. Our foes are certain of our presence. They will surely come against us. And here we cannot retreat. We will perish\u2014we must\u2014if we do not discover a choice of headings. Are you able to guide us?\"\n\nCanrik nodded. \"Our older knowledge of the Wightwarrens is slight, but we have not forgotten our path hither. And as we rejoin with our kinsmen, our knowledge will increase.\n\n\"What do you seek? Where do you hope to discover Kastenessen\"\u2014he cast a caustic glance at Linden\u2014\"if it remains your intent to confront one deranged _Elohim_ while the Land and the Earth are unmade?\"\n\nWithout pausing for thought, Covenant surged to his feet. \"Kastenessen?\" he snapped. Lies? \"Where did you get that idea? Didn't you feel it when Kevin's Dirt faded? What did you think that meant? Kastenessen gave up days ago.\"\n\nClearly the Masters knew that the Worm of the World's End had been roused\u2014\n\n\"We are not blind, ur-Lord,\" retorted Canrik. \"We are aware that Kevin's Dirt has ended. But we were misled, Stave does not speak to us, and Branl is\"\u2014the Master appeared to search for words\u2014\"strangely reluctant. We cannot divine your purpose.\"\n\nCovenant made an effort to swallow his anger. The Masters were not his enemies. He was simply outraged that they thought ill of Linden.\n\n\"I have to get to Kiril Threndor,\" he rasped. \"If that's not too much to ask. I want to find the Despiser. And Cavewights aren't our only problem. My son is here somewhere. He's scared enough to try anything. Plus there's _moksha_ Jehannum. He's probably mad as hell.\n\n\"I don't know what's bothering you, but it's trivial. We don't have time for it.\"\n\nFor a moment, Canrik stood as if he had been silenced. Slowly a frown settled onto his forehead. Then he stated, \"Our questions must be answered.\"\n\nWithout waiting for a reply, he strode down the tunnel.\n\nColdspray glanced sharply at Covenant; but she did not delay. Hailing her Swordmainnir, she sent Halewhole Bluntfist and Frostheart Grueburn after Canrik. Then she followed him herself, taking Cirrus Kindwind with her, Ard and Ulman; leaving Onyx Stonemage with Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah.\n\nA subdued Anchormaster marshaled his crew. His uninjured sailors\u2014Wiver Setrock, Spume Frothbreeze, Keenreef, Far Horizoneyes\u2014he sent ahead. With Scatterwit, Blustergale, Furledsail, and Dast, he trailed the rest of the company.\n\nInstinctively Covenant took Linden's hand, rested his halfhand on Jeremiah's shoulder. Accompanied by Stave and Branl, they started along the passage.\n\nJeremiah did not resist, but he walked with his head down, paid no attention to where he put his feet. His hands tightened and relaxed on the Staff, urgent as heartbeats. At intervals, he jerked up his head and glared around him. But he did not speak; did not appear to notice Covenant or Linden.\n\n_Maybe Roger had the right idea. Maybe we should all try to become gods._\n\nThe notion made Covenant's stomach burn as if he had swallowed acid. He refused to believe\u2014\n\nLinden studied her son for a moment. Then her eyes flinched away. She looked at Covenant, pleading like a woman who had no language for her needs. Almost at once, however, she turned her attention to Stave.\n\nIn a low voice, she asked, \"What's bothering the Masters? Did Pahni and Bhapa reach them?\"\n\nShe might have asked, Do they think that Pahni and Bhapa lied? They can't believe that. If they do, why did they come?\n\n\"Chosen,\" replied Stave, \"I must accord to our people the respect which I will require of them.\" His tone suggested that he was keeping his distance. \"They will speak of their doubts and indignations when we have evaded immediate pursuit. It is their right to be who they are, and to determine what they will become.\n\n\"Yet I am free to acknowledge that the Masters have heard and questioned the Cords. True to his service, the Ardent delivered Bhapa and Pahni to the vicinity of Revelstone. Their words gave the Masters cause to come in search of you, Chosen.\" He gave a subtle emphasis to Linden's title. \"Now the Cords accompany the Masters. If our foes and our fate permit it, you will be reunited with them.\n\n\"More than that I will not disclose.\"\n\n\"Damn it, Stave,\" Linden muttered. \"That's not enough. How could they not know that Covenant is alive? Didn't Bhapa or Pahni tell them?\"\n\nHow had the Cords goaded the Masters into action at last, if not by insisting that the ur-Lord needed them, the Unbeliever, the man who had twice defeated Corruption?\n\n\"We'll hear about it soon enough,\" Covenant put in. He did not have the heart to challenge Stave's scruples. Instead he tightened his grip on Linden's hand, trying to reassure her. \"Or we'll spend what's left of our lives fighting, and we won't hear anything at all. Either way, it doesn't matter. They aren't just Masters. They're _Haruchai_. Eventually they'll help us, even if they think we did something terrible behind their backs. They have to. They're too ashamed to do anything else. They've already passed up two chances to face Lord Foul with me, not to mention once with Kevin. They don't know how to live with it.\"\n\nStave nodded like a shrug. Branl did not offer his opinion.\n\nFor a long moment, Linden studied the ungiving stone ahead of her. When she finally spoke, her voice was so soft that Covenant barely heard her.\n\n\"Don't let them get in my way. This is my last chance. We can't stop the Worm. It's my fault, but I can't do anything about it. That's why I have to\u2014\"\n\nAbruptly she stopped.\n\n\"I know,\" Covenant sighed. \"We're all in the same boat. The only thing that might be worse than facing our fears is not facing them.\"\n\nLinden did not reply; did not lift her head. She clung to his hand as if she were drowning.\n\nCovenant knew the feeling. He believed that she would find the courage she needed. A woman who could do what she had done would be able to do more. But he was not at all sure how he would bear losing her.\n\nThe sheer scale of his anger at the Despiser was becoming a liability. Often it had kept him going when he should have failed. But now he needed a better answer\u2014and his anger threatened to blind him.\n\nThat was the paradox of his leprosy. In order to confront Lord Foul, he positively required numbness. He had to be untouchable: immune to every affront; impervious to the extremes of wild magic. Unaffected by the implicit betrayal of Roger's allegiance. Yet numbness might also leave him impotent. It had done so before.\n\nWhen Linden left, she would take his heart with her. If he allowed fury to fill that great hole in his chest, he was sure to fail.\n\nven in this unfamiliar passage, Covenant recognized the Wightwarrens. He knew them by the crudity of the Cavewights' delving\u2014the careless walls and ragged ceiling, the irregular protrusions of stone where the creatures had neglected to finish what they started\u2014and by the instinctive cunning with which the tunnel followed veins and lodes within the gutrock. From here, anyone who knew the catacombs well would be able to find Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder, where Covenant had once surrendered to the Despiser.\n\nBut he had no idea how far he still had to go. And he felt sure that the company would be attacked again before he reached his goal.\n\nAs if to prove him right, a warning shout came from the darkness ahead: the Ironhand's voice. He heard yells and effort, the clash of weapons. At once, Onyx Stonemage gestured for a halt. She went three paces farther, then stopped, waiting with her longsword in her fists.\n\n\"Mom?\" Jeremiah asked uselessly. \"Mom?\"\n\n\"Cavewights bar the passage,\" Branl announced, \"a small force. I surmise that they did not anticipate our ascent from the crevice. They were not prepared against us. Yet the constricted space aids them. They suffice to\u2014\"\n\nStave shook his head. Briefly Branl narrowed his gaze. Then the Humbled said, \"They do not suffice. Four Masters assail the creatures from the rear. Openings are created for the blades of the Swordmainnir, and for Canrik and Dast. Three Cavewights have fallen. Five. Now eight.\" After a moment's silence, Branl stated, \"The passage has been cleared.\"\n\n\"Is anyone hurt?\" Linden asked.\n\nBranl appeared to hesitate before saying, \"Skill and armor shielded the Swordmainnir. _Haruchai_ do not regard their hurts.\"\n\n\"In other words,\" she snapped, \"they don't want me to insult them by offering to treat them.\"\n\nCovenant ground his teeth. She was right, of course.\n\nStave shrugged. \"There is much which the Masters do not comprehend.\"\n\n\"Mom,\" Jeremiah breathed thickly. \"I smell blood.\"\n\nLinden glanced past Covenant at the boy. \"I know, honey. I'm sick of all this killing. But we can't stop. If we don't fight, they'll kill us.\"\n\nAs if to herself, she muttered, \"It galls the hell out of me that the Cavewights would probably be on our side if they knew how Foul is using them. They can _think_ , for God's sake. They just don't think clearly enough.\"\n\nAnd they probably love their children, Covenant added for her. They probably hate us for what we're doing. But he kept that thought to himself.\n\nJeremiah murmured something that Covenant did not hear. Stonemage was beckoning them into motion.\n\nStill holding Linden's hand, still resting his palm on Jeremiah's shoulder, Covenant started forward again.\n\nSoon he, too, could smell blood: blood and more bitter fluids. In the distance ahead, the _krill_ 's illumination caught glints of crimson on the floor and walls. It looked dark as ichor. The Giants and Masters leading the company had moved past the site of the fray, leaving hacked and gutted corpses behind them. Blood lay in thick pools around bodies and spilled guts. Stonemage strode through the carnage as if she could not afford to acknowledge it. Stave and Branl stepped, heedless, in swaths of red, trod with apparent unconcern over dripping corpses. But Covenant had to let go of Linden and Jeremiah so that he could pick his nauseated way among the dead.\n\n_God_ , it was hard not to hate the Despiser. Rage felt like the only sane response.\n\nAs the Giants bringing up the rear passed the slain Cavewights, Branl told Covenant, \"The Swordmainnir have gained an intersection of passages. The path familiar to Canrik and his companions lies to the right, but there the air is fraught with peril. Samil, Vortin, and other Masters approach from the left. They report that their search did not tend toward Kiril Threndor. Therefore the Ironhand wishes to continue ahead. She awaits only your consent, ur-Lord.\"\n\nCovenant hesitated momentarily, trying to guess the consequences of every choice. Then he rasped, \"Tell her to trust herself. More Masters will find us. Eventually some of them will know how to reach Kiril Threndor.\"\n\nBranl and Stave nodded. Branl's manner hinted at increased concentration as he conveyed Covenant's reply.\n\nCovenant looked to Linden for her approval; but her attention was fixed on Jeremiah. The boy stood staring straight ahead as if he had gone blind. His hands shifted up and down the Staff as if he were wrestling with the Worm.\n\nGroaning to himself, Covenant trailed after Onyx Stonemage.\n\nWhen he and his companions reached the intersection, they found Frostheart Grueburn, Halewhole Bluntfist, and Dast waiting for them. Blood dripped from a cut the length of Grueburn's left forearm. A spear had gashed Bluntfist's right cheek. But their wounds seemed superficial. In the _krill_ 's argent, their grins looked garish as grimaces.\n\nThey gestured Covenant and the others onward. \"The Ironhand deems,\" Grueburn explained, \"that we are no longer required in the forefront. Therefore we will ward the rear.\" As Grueburn added, \"Though we are Giants, we counsel haste,\" Bluntfist chuckled. \"Yon tunnel\"\u2014she indicated the one on Covenant's right\u2014\"is rife with odors. It augurs unpleasantness.\"\n\n\"Be careful,\" Covenant warned them unnecessarily. \"We can't lose you.\"\n\nHe had to stifle an impulse to start running.\n\nThis tunnel climbed steeply; dipped down; rose again. It turned at odd angles. After a while, the clang of iron echoed after Covenant. Muffled snarls, thudding blows. Branl reported that Cavewights assailed Grueburn, Bluntfist, and Dast. But now the confines of the passage aided the Swordmainnir and the Master. They could afford to retreat as they fought, following the company. And soon they were able to beat back the creatures. The sounds of struggle faded.\n\nBranl continued to relay information from his kinsmen. In the distance ahead, the vanguard reached a branching. Four more Masters were there. These _Haruchai_ reported that they had found a cave, a space like a small cavern with a shallow basin for a floor and openings into other passages: a place where the companions could be questioned.\n\n\"I don't like it,\" Covenant complained to Branl. \"We're running out of time.\" And he did not want to hear accusations from the Masters.\n\n\"In this, they speak with one voice,\" replied Branl. His tone concealed his personal reaction. \"They require an account of our deeds and purposes.\"\n\n\"They will be answered,\" Stave returned. \"Yet I also mislike the prospect of delay. We can have no effect upon the outcome of the world if we do not achieve our ends before the Worm drinks of the EarthBlood.\"\n\nThe Humbled shrugged. \"If the Masters are denied, they may respond with denial.\"\n\n\"Oh, God,\" Linden sighed. \"Just what we need.\"\n\nCovenant swore to himself. Whatever else Linden had done, she had not lied to the Masters. But they might not be able to see past the fact that she had set in motion the Earth's ruin.\n\nAloud, he demanded, \"Can't you convince them, Branl? It doesn't matter why they're here. Hellfire! It doesn't even matter if Bhapa and Pahni lied to them. We need help. Holding us back now is just surrender. We might as well kill ourselves.\"\n\nThe Humbled held Covenant's glare. \"I cannot sway them, ur-Lord. I am not as I was. My thoughts no longer accord with theirs. They deem that they would not have acted as I have done. In their minds, they would have forestalled the Worm's awakening. This belief justifies their wrath.\"\n\nJeremiah was squirming. \"That's stupid,\" he snorted as soon as Branl finished: scorn thick as venom. \"Covenant wouldn't be here without it. And I wouldn't be _here_. I would already be helping Roger and that _croyel_ become _eternal_.\n\n\"Did you tell the Masters _that_?\"\n\n\"To what purpose, Chosen-son?\" countered Branl. \"They would reply that Corruption could not threaten creation while he was imprisoned within the Arch. And while he was imprisoned, much might have been attempted to thwart him. Only the Worm's awakening assures his triumph.\"\n\nBefore Covenant could think of a response that was not rage, Linden spoke. \"If it's up to me,\" she told the Humbled, \"I'll answer anything. I don't know how much time we have. I don't know if we can afford to stand around arguing. But the Masters are important. I'll do what I can.\"\n\n\"Chosen.\" Branl's visage revealed nothing. Yet when he bowed, he gave her his full respect. Then he turned away, bearing the company's only light down the tunnel.\n\nWell, damn, Covenant thought. My wife\u2014\n\nBaring his teeth, he tried to grin. When that failed, he concentrated on catching up with the Humbled.\n\nI am not as I was.\n\nAnd Linden was facing the most immediate of her fears.\n\nefore long, Covenant and his immediate companions reached the place where the tunnel forked. There four Masters awaited him. He recognized Ard and Ulman. The other two were Vortin and Samil.\n\nThe _krill_ lit momentary wonder in Vortin's eyes, and in Samil's, as they bowed to Covenant. It exposed their ire when they regarded Linden. But they did not linger. While Branl explained that they would help Grueburn, Bluntfist, and Dast guard the rear, the four men moved into the blackness of the passages.\n\nCovenant heard weapons behind him again. Giantish oaths echoed like gasps along the tunnel. Bluff Stoutgirth's voice harried Scatterwit and Blustergale.\n\n\"They are swift enough,\" a Swordmain responded to the Anchormaster. Grueburn? Bluntfist? \"Expostulation will not speed them.\"\n\nGritting his teeth, Covenant followed Stonemage with Linden, Jeremiah, and Stave. Among them, Branl strode along like a man whose uncertainties had become faith.\n\nThis passage also ascended and dipped as it wandered; but now each rise took the company higher into the mountain. Covenant had no idea where he was in relation to the ancient Heart of Thunder. His human memories of the catacombs were confused by the dangers which he and his companions had faced then. Surrounded by this darkness, this weight of stone, he could not imagine how far he still had to go.\n\nTired as he was, the erratic climb felt long. The vagaries of the rough corridor blocked his view in both directions: he could not see beyond the _krill_. Like the Giants ahead of him, those behind seemed insubstantial, as if they had faded from the world. Only Linden and Jeremiah were real. Branl, Stave, and Onyx Stonemage.\n\nBut then the tunnel angled downward so sharply that Covenant had to lock his knees to keep his balance. When he was free to look up again, he saw the end of the passage, an opening into a wider space. From his perspective, that space resembled a pit, black and bottomless. But the figures walking into and through it demonstrated that it was not deep.\n\nAs he followed Branl into the cave, he found his companions gathering near its center. The Ironhand and Cirrus Kindwind. Four of Stoutgirth's sailors. And Masters\u2014\n\nTheir number confused him until he realized that more _Haruchai_ had joined the company. They bowed to the Giants, gazed with closed faces at Covenant and Linden. Then they spread out around the space, leaving only scarred Canrik with Rime Coldspray.\n\nThe cave was vaguely circular, with walls that looked natural rather than hewn, and a knuckled ceiling like an array of clenched fists. The floor was a complex jumble of fallen rocks on sunken patches where the underlying granite had contracted or cooled, sending a fretwork of narrow cracks through the surface. Four more tunnels opened like throats at irregular intervals around the walls: gullets choked with darkness where the light did not penetrate. In pairs, the Masters moved to stand guard at each entrance.\n\n\"Thomas?\" Linden asked softly. \"Where are Pahni and Bhapa?\"\n\n\"They'll come.\" Covenant tried to sound sure. The Wightwarrens were vast; but when the mental communion of the _Haruchai_ reached enough of their people\u2014\n\nWhen or if.\n\nShe frowned. \"We need them. The Masters seem to think that I can answer their questions, but I probably can't.\" She fell silent briefly. Then she added like a sigh, \"I want to see Pahni and Bhapa again.\"\n\n\"Me, too,\" he muttered. He had already lost too many friends\u2014and he was going to lose more. He did not know how to avoid it.\n\nHe and Linden greeted Coldspray and Kindwind, acknowledged Wiver Setrock and the other sailors. Covenant scowled at Canrik, thinking, Be careful what you say. Be very careful. But he did not warn the Master aloud. Instead he turned to watch the Anchormaster and the remaining sailors enter the cave.\n\nBoth Furledsail and Blustergale were helping Baf Scatterwit now. She had torn open the stump of her ankle trying to walk as if she had not lost her foot, and every step left smears of blood. Nevertheless she grinned hugely as she rejoined her comrades.\n\nA few moments later, Grueburn, Bluntfist, and five Masters entered the small cavern. They arrived at a trot, but they slowed when they saw the rest of the company. Carmine streaks stained their limbs, their tunics and cataphracts; but little of the blood was theirs. They did not move like people with injuries. The two Swordmainnir approached their Ironhand. Dast, Ard, and Ulman joined the _Haruchai_ keeping watch at the entrances. Vortin and Samil took places with Canrik.\n\nRime Coldspray's jaws worked as if she were chewing curses. \"Here the Masters require answers,\" she grated, \"though every delay serves our foes.\"\n\n\"We do,\" said Canrik, impervious to her indignation. \"We comprehend exigency. Nonetheless we will await the coming of the Voice of the Masters, and of the Ramen Cords. Our thoughts have reached out to other Masters, and thence to more distant kinsmen. Handir and those with him now hasten toward us. They will stand in the presence of the ur-Lord before the end. They will demand sooth from Linden Avery, who has brought the Worm upon us, and has given rise to falsehoods.\"\n\nCovenant beat his fists together, punching the hard circle of his wedding band to control his ire. Linden was right. He repeated that to himself again and again. She was right. He could do nothing against Lord Foul if the Masters refused him. Five Swordmainnir, eight Giants from Dire's Vessel, Stave, and Branl were not enough to oppose thousands of Cavewights, never mind Roger and _moksha_ Jehannum and any other force that the Despiser summoned.\n\nDistinctly Jeremiah said, \"You don't know Mom.\" His eyes looked blank, as if he were thinking about something else. From his hands, black power ran like oil through the Staff's runes. \"Why would she lie? She isn't afraid of you.\"\n\nJust for an instant, Linden's features crumpled. Then she covered her face with her hands. When she lowered them again, her expression had hardened, and the gaze that she fixed on Canrik was bleak.\n\nAs if he were choking, Covenant asked the Master, \"How long do you expect us to just stand here?\"\n\nCanrik regarded him gravely. \"The pursuing Cavewights have been slain. No others gather within reach of our discernment. We conclude that they do not know where to seek for us. No assault is imminent.\" He glanced around at the Giants. \"And your companions must welcome any respite.\"\n\nHe appeared to believe that his reply would content Covenant.\n\nCovenant said nothing. In spite of his weak sight, he could see that the attitudes of the Masters had changed. They had recovered from their initial surprise. Now they conveyed more anger. They appeared to feel betrayed, not by Covenant himself, but by the fact of his presence. And they blamed Linden\u2014\n\nDays ago, they had been misled by an image of Covenant. When Roger had ridden disguised by glamour into Revelstone with Jeremiah and the _croyel_ , the Masters had failed to discern the truth. They had reason for doubt.\n\nNevertheless Covenant wanted to yell at them. Linden had already endured too much from Handir and the other Masters. She did not deserve more.\n\nUncharacteristically brusque, Stoutgirth Anchormaster told his crew to distribute food and water. Before they could comply, however, more Masters began to arrive. In groups of four, they entered the cave from various passages: a score of _Haruchai_ ; then two score. To the Giants, they bowed impassively. To Linden and Covenant, they gave flat stares as fierce as castigations. Jeremiah they seemed to ignore. Then they spread out to form a cordon around the company; but whether they did so to defend Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah, or to defend against them, Covenant could not tell.\n\nHandir had once threatened to wrest Linden's implements of power from her.\n\nI won't stand for it, Covenant told himself. I can't.\n\nBut he could not make the Masters' decisions for them. _The necessity of freedom_ belonged to them, as it did to everyone else.\n\nStill pressures rose like water within him. Soon he would have to start raging at somebody, anybody, for no better reason than because he needed an outlet.\n\nHe bit down on his tongue to stifle a shout when Handir finally strode into the cave.\n\nThe silver of Handir's hair, and the scars which seamed his visage and forearms like emblems, testified to his years and stature. He was the Voice of the Masters, accustomed to authority.\n\nThree of his people accompanied him, but they were not alone. Among them, they escorted Manethrall Mahrtiir's Cords, Bhapa and Pahni.\n\nAt the sight, Covenant's anger fell away like a wave from a cliff. He could see that the Cords had changed. The Pahni whom he had known might have forgiven Linden for refusing to attempt Liand's resurrection. That girl might have run to hug Linden; might have shed tears of gratitude and relief. And brave, diffident Bhapa would have stood back only because he did not consider himself important enough to demand attention.\n\nNot now. Somehow both of the Ramen had inherited Mahrtiir's spirit. Pahni swept forward like a striking raptor, and her eyes were bright with vindication, keen as whetted iron. Bhapa approached more slowly, but not because he was reluctant or daunted. Rather he walked with the firm tread of a man who had been flensed of his weaknesses.\n\nThe two of them gave the impression that they had brought the Masters from Revelstone by force of will.\n\nPahni offered the Ironhand a Ramen bow. The Cord's gaze flicked among the Swordmainnir, counted their losses. Then she bowed again more deeply, acknowledging their fallen. But she did not greet Covenant. Although her eyes widened when she saw the Staff in Jeremiah's hands, her attention did not linger on him.\n\nThe look that she fixed on Linden was simultaneously proud and defiant. She seemed to dare Linden to tell her that she had done wrong.\n\nLinden started toward the girl, then stopped herself, biting her lip. Her eyes were bruises.\n\nBhapa's manner was more reserved. He honored Coldspray and her comrades formally. To Covenant, he bowed as well, saying only, \"Timewarden.\" His brows lifted as he regarded Jeremiah; but he, too, did not pause for wonder. In a voice as tight as a rope, he said, \"Some tidings we have received from Handir. We have been assured that Manethrall Mahrtiir has not fallen. For that we are grateful. But the tale of his transformation we must hear at another time.\" Then the Cord came to stand in front of Linden.\n\nHer arms lifted to him, but he did not grant her an embrace. Instead he sank to the stone; prostrated himself before her as if she had become his suzerain, as honored as a Ranyhyn.\n\n\"Bhapa\u2014\" Linden's voice broke. \"Oh, Bhapa.\" Tears ran down her cheeks. \"What are you doing? What's happened to you?\"\n\nSeverely the Cord rose to his knees. After studying her face for a moment, he stood. Dampness softened his gaze, but his manner did not relent. He spoke as if he were offering a pledge.\n\n\"Linden Avery, Ringthane and Chosen, I cry your pardon. I will account for my deeds. But I must first assure you that Cord Pahni is innocent of fault. She spoke as she did at my command. The blame of the outcome is mine and no other's.\"\n\nClarion as a whinny, Pahni announced, \"He has become my Manethrall. He has honored my life with service. Where he leads, I follow gladly.\"\n\nGod in Heaven, Covenant thought. What have you done?\n\nLinden bit her lip again, struggling to contain a torrent of emotions.\n\nJust for an instant, Jeremiah looked like he wanted to put his arms around her. But he caught himself, stepped back. He had known Bhapa and Pahni only for a short time\u2014and only through the veil of the _croyel_ 's derision. He did not know how to interpret what was happening.\n\nFrowning, Handir had contained himself while the Cords preceded him. Now he spoke.\n\n\"I am Handir,\" he said in an astringent tone, \"by right of years and attainment the Voice of the Masters. Much lies between us. It must be answered.\n\n\"We have learned to our cost that our discernment cannot pierce the glamour of Corruption's servants. Here we behold one who appears to be the ur-Lord, yet we have seen his like before. We require some assurance that he is indeed the ur-Lord rather than a new display of glamour.\"\n\nLinden flinched. Disapproval spread among the Swordmainnir. Branl allowed himself a scowl. Stave's mouth tightened.\n\nBut Covenant responded first. Handir's challenge brought back his anger in a rush.\n\n\"Oh, stop,\" he snarled. \"Branl must have told you who I am. Are you so sick with suspicion that you can't even trust one of the Humbled? The _last_ of the Humbled?\n\n\"Here, I'll show you.\"\n\nFiercely he stamped toward Jeremiah. To Jeremiah's surprise, Covenant slapped his halfhand onto the black wood, gripped it for a moment. Then he wheeled to face Handir again.\n\n\"Do you remember the test of truth? I thought you remembered everything. When Roger was pretending to be me, he didn't let Linden use the Staff. Hell, he didn't even let her touch him. Now she's my wife. My _wife_ , do you understand?\"\n\nThe _Haruchai_ were passionate about their mates\u2014\n\nThrough his teeth, Covenant gritted, \"I don't know what's bothering you people. I don't really care. You want answers? If you keep this up, you'll all answer to _me_.\"\n\nThen he stopped. Handir's evident satisfaction silenced him. Now he realized that Handir's demand had served an oblique purpose. Inadvertently Covenant had just confirmed Handir's authority; his right to judge.\n\nIt was possible that Handir had not doubted Covenant's identity\u2014\n\nThe idea made Covenant reel. What had Bhapa and Pahni told the Masters?\n\nWith a defiance of his own, Stave said impassively, \"Be at ease, Timewarden. The Masters crave stone, yet they stand upon quicksand. They are indeed misled. Uncertain of his devoir, Handir masks his deeper apprehensions.\"\n\nThe Voice of the Masters did not react to Stave's assertion.\n\n\"Then get to it,\" Covenant told Handir. \"At least one of us will by God answer your questions.\"\n\nDeliberately Vortin and Samil moved to stand beside their leader. They appeared to ask or expect Branl to join them; but the Humbled remained with Covenant and Linden, Jeremiah and Stave.\n\nSensitive to the tensions in the cave, Bluff Stoutgirth took his crew aside; out of the way. Glowering, Rime Coldspray did the same with her comrades, although the Swordmainnir plainly wanted to defend their friends. The cordon of the Masters tightened around them all. Within it, Pahni remained nearby, apparently waiting. But Bhapa stood with his back to Handir, facing Covenant and Linden. Again Covenant felt the force of the former Cord's new demeanor, his earned severity.\n\n\"Cord,\" Handir said harshly: a reprimand or a warning.\n\nBhapa ignored him.\n\n\"Ringthane and Timewarden,\" the older Raman began, precise as a garrote, \"the wrath of the Masters is mine to endure. You had no part in their misapprehension. Their umbrage rests, not upon a falsehood, but upon a withheld truth. For this, I again cry your pardon, Ringthane. The choice was mine. Cord Pahni spoke as she did at my command.\"\n\n\"And would do so again,\" declared Pahni. \"I serve my Manethrall as I do the Ranyhyn.\"\n\nBut Bhapa did not pause for her. \"The dilemma of the Masters is this. They did not know of your return, Timewarden, because I did not permit them to know. They were informed of the rousing of the Worm. They were told of the Worm's hunger for the Blood of the Earth. But naught was said concerning your resurrection, Timewarden. Your name was not spoken. I did not concede the knowledge that you were restored to us by the selfsame deed which awakened the Worm.\"\n\nIn spite of their stoicism, Handir, Canrik, and the other Masters betrayed their indignation. Branl must have explained Covenant's return. Nevertheless they were unprepared for Bhapa's confession. Millennia ago, the Bloodguard had trusted the Ramen\u2014\n\n\"Rather, Ringthane,\" the older Cord continued to Linden, \"I encouraged them in their belief that the blame for the world's doom is yours.\" His tone was a strangle-hold. \"Speaking as I had instructed her, Pahni gave them cause to imagine that your sole purpose from first to last has been the restoration of your son, that you have given no heed to the havoc which you have unleashed. Therefore the Masters have come seeking retribution for the final crime of the Earth.\"\n\nCovenant listened with his mouth open, wordless and appalled. Linden stared as if Bhapa had betrayed her: a man who had sworn himself to her. The Giants cursed softly, gripping their weapons. Only Jeremiah did not react. Apparently images of the Worm had reclaimed him.\n\nThen Handir barked, \"Enough! Am I a child, that a Raman must assume my place?\"\n\nSwift as threats, Samil and Vortin approached Bhapa. They grasped him roughly, dragged him aside.\n\nLinden looked like she might wail. To restrain her, distract her, Covenant said reflexively, \"This is my fault.\" Her distress was worse than his. She already blamed herself\u2014\"I should have told Bhapa and Pahni what to say. I didn't because I thought the Masters deserved a chance to make their own decisions. It never occurred to me\u2014\"\n\nWhat had possessed the Cords?\n\nLinden did not look at him. Her whole face seemed to plead with Bhapa.\n\nIgnoring Handir's indignation, Bhapa told her, \"Faithful to his word, the Ardent delivered us to the vicinity of Revelstone. There we were able to speak privately ere the Masters greeted us. The burden of my wishes I gave to Cord Pahni because her need was plain. I prayed that her passion would prevail where my own ire might undermine me.\"\n\nHe tried to say more; but Samil silenced him with a hand on his throat: a choke which nearly lifted him from his feet.\n\nWithout transition, Covenant's wedding band burned. Sudden fire crowded his mind, straining for release.\n\nThe threat to the Cord was too much for the Swordmainnir. In an instant, Rime Coldspray reached Samil and Bhapa, her glaive in her hands. Frostheart Grueburn followed a step behind her.\n\nAround them, the cordon of Masters closed like a noose. Giants brandished their weapons: swords and spears. Pahni's garrote appeared in her fists.\n\n\"Handir!\" Covenant snapped. \" _Handir!_ \"\n\nHandir's jaws bunched. He nodded once.\n\nSamil released Bhapa. Samil and Vortin stepped back.\n\nCovenant took a deep breath, made an effort to quench his heart's fire.\n\nIn a small voice like a cry, Linden asked, \"Why, Bhapa? Why did you do that?\"\n\nHandir spoke over her. To the Ironhand, he said, \"Withhold your blows. You cannot stand against us. For that reason, we will not strike. We scorn unequal combat. Samil sought only to impose silence upon the Cord.\"\n\nReluctantly Coldspray sheathed her sword. Grueburn and the other Giants lowered their weapons. As they did so, the Masters relaxed their ring around the company.\n\nTheir Voice faced Linden. \"We share your query, Linden Avery. We will hear it answered. But first we must have some confirmation of what has occurred.\"\n\nBefore she\u2014or Bhapa\u2014could protest, Handir turned, not to Covenant, but to Branl.\n\n\"Are your thoughts sooth?\" he demanded in the full light of High Lord Loric's _krill_. \"Stave has learned concealment. Therefore he is suspect. Concealment enables falsehood. Are you now likewise capable of falsehood?\n\n\"Is _turiya_ Herem truly slain? Has Linden Avery indeed restored a Forestal to the Land? Has her fated boy provided for the preservation of the _Elohim_ , and for an end to Kevin's Dirt? Have you defeated Sandgorgons and _skurj_? Does the ur-Lord now seek to challenge Corruption in Kiril Threndor?\"\n\nBranl lifted an eyebrow. Then he shrugged like a man who did not deign to take offense. \"I am _Haruchai_ ,\" he said. \"More, I am Humbled. I do not sully my mind with lies.\n\n\"Nor,\" he added more sharply, \"will I condone aspersion to the Ramen. As do you, Handir, Voice of the Masters, I require an account of their deeds. Yet they have been at all times steadfast and valiant companions. They have given of themselves utterly while the Masters remained effectless in Revelstone. I will endure no denunciation of them.\"\n\nHandir studied Branl. He appeared to search Branl's mind.\n\n\"We are not effectless now,\" the older man retorted. \"Two hundred Masters have entered the Wightwarrens, seeking Linden Avery and Kastenessen as we were urged. Two hundred more strive toward _Melenkurion_ Skyweir, where they, too, will give of themselves utterly against the Worm, if their arrival is not belated.\"\n\nAt once, Pahni countered, fierce and proud, \"Did the Ranyhyn consent to bear you?\"\n\nHandir glanced at her. \"You know the truth of this, Cord Pahni. Do not aggravate your fault with insolence. You will be judged when you have justified your deeds.\"\n\nThen he said to Covenant as much as to Branl, \"Ranyhyn bore us hither. Without their aid, we could not have come so swiftly. But the Masters who ride to _Melenkurion_ Skyweir do so on lesser beasts. The great horses declined to be ridden there.\"\n\nThe shining of Pahni's eyes resembled exultation. \"Thus the Ranyhyn approve Manethrall Bhapa's purpose.\"\n\nThe Voice of the Masters permitted himself a vexed frown. \"I do not hear you,\" he told the Cord. \"It becomes evident, however, that I must heed the last of the Humbled. By him, as by the ur-Lord's presence, the lies of the Ramen are exposed. Now Linden Avery's query must be answered.\n\n\"Bhapa of the Ramen, it is not in the nature of your people to scheme and mislead. Why have you betrayed their legacy? Why have you concealed necessary truths?\"\n\nCovenant was holding his breath. He forced himself to let it out. The idea that two hundred Masters intended to oppose the Worm directly appalled him. He shook his head to dispel images of pointless slaughter.\n\nWary and unrelieved, Rime Coldspray and her Swordmainnir studied Bhapa, measuring the man in front of them against their memories of him. The Giants of Dire's Vessel did not know the Cords, but they remained poised to support the Ironhand. Only Baf Scatterwit did not seem tense. She was chuckling to herself as if everyone in the cave amused her.\n\nJeremiah muttered something that Covenant could not hear. The boy scowled darkly, as if he were contemplating murder. The absence in his eyes suggested that he was watching the Worm burrow into _Melenkurion_ Skyweir.\n\nBhapa rolled his head to loosen his bruised throat. He came closer to Linden and Covenant. In the open center of the gathering, he stopped: a man who needed room for the fire of his emotions. His eyes were white flames in the surrounding gloom.\n\n\" _It was for this_ ,\" he told Handir in a tone of throttled fury. \"That you might here encounter the truth of the Ringthane, the Chosen, Linden Avery\u2014encounter it and _know shame_.\"\n\nThen he turned his back on the clenched repudiation of the Masters.\n\n\"Ringthane\"\u2014he addressed his appeal directly to Linden\u2014\"you are dear to me. My esteem you won by your care of Sahah, who is both Pahni's cousin and half my sister. No succor known to the Ramen could have brought her back from death, yet you contrived to do so.\n\n\"My heart you won in the aftermath of First Woodhelven, when you redeemed Manethrall Mahrtiir's life\u2014aye, and preserved also his place as my Manethrall. At that time, I could not have met the peril of these times without his guidance. Sparing him, you spared me also.\"\n\nLinden listened with tears spilling from her eyes, but she made no sound.\n\nThe older Cord's voice rose as he continued. Anger grated like thunder in the background of every word.\n\n\"And since those great deeds, I have been stunned to the soul by your devotion to your son, by your valor in the greatest extremity, and by your enduring love for the Timewarden. I know nothing of _turiya_ Herem, or of Forestals, or of _Elohim_. Yet I know with a certainty which surpasses utterance that the awakening of the Worm was the outcome of Fangthane's cunning, not of any desire for Desecration in you. You acted only upon your love for the Timewarden, and upon your love for your son.\n\n\"Linden Avery, Chosen, Ringthane, I am _offended to the marrow of my bones_ that these sleepless ones have dared to think ill of you. They have named themselves the Masters of the Land, but they do not _serve_. True service submits itself to the cause which it serves, deeming that cause holy. This the Ramen comprehend. True service does not judge the deeds which are asked of it. It does not consent to _this_ and refuse _that_ , according to the dictates of its own pride. It gives of itself because the cause which it serves is worthy.\n\n\"The self-will of these Masters _offends_ me. It is an offense to every good which they have sworn to preserve.\"\n\nAs if he were unaware of the lifting of Covenant's heart, unaware of the bright approval in the eyes of the Swordmainnir, unaware even of Linden's weeping, Bhapa said more softly, \"That is my justification. I did not mislead the Masters for the Land's hurt, or for their own. I merely\"\u2014he spat the word\u2014\" _encouraged_ them in their judgments and pride, praying that they would ride forth in wrath to confront Desecration. Thereby I hoped to impose upon them a confrontation with their own folly.\n\n\"If I must say more, I will add only that I did not invoke the Timewarden's name because I feared that the Masters would not heed it. When have they ever stood with him in his last need? I feared that their notions of service would compel inaction.\"\n\nThen the Cord was finished. Briefly he slumped as if his passion had drained from him. But after a moment, he squared his shoulders and lifted his head, bracing himself to accept the consequences of what he had done.\n\nLinden's only answer was to say his name like a sob as she went to him. To his look of surprise, she replied by putting her arms around him and holding him tight.\n\nCovenant wanted to weep himself. He wanted to laugh, and to shout out his joy in the Cords, and to rail at the Masters. But he contained his turmoil, set his own emotions aside in order to concentrate on Handir.\n\nFates of every description stood on the lip of a precipice. One misstep now might be fatal. Covenant should have felt dizzy; but he found that his faith was equal to this moment. Bhapa had brought the Masters to a crisis of rectitude, a challenge which would search their definition of themselves to its core. And here they had the power to save or damn Covenant's intentions. Nevertheless he was content to await the outcome. He called himself the Unbeliever, but he believed in Bhapa, whose name meant \"father.\" In Pahni, whose name was \"water.\"\n\nAnd he had always trusted the _Haruchai_.\n\nThe Voice of the Masters did not speak. His mien revealed nothing. No doubt he was engaged in a vehement discussion with his kinsmen; but they masked their thoughts.\n\nWhen Linden had satisfied her gratitude, she released Bhapa. Blinking to clear her eyes, she gave him a crooked smile. Then she turned to Pahni.\n\nClearly she was unsure of herself with the young woman. Pahni had not spoken a word to her since Linden had refused to attempt Liand's resurrection. Instead of offering to hug the Cord, Linden asked with an ache of yearning in her voice, \"My God, Pahni. How did you do it?\"\n\nHow had a woman who had been little more than a girl when she found her first love in Liand discovered the strength to face down the assembled Masters in Revelstone?\n\nIn spite of her slight stature, Pahni met Linden's question with an imperious air. She looked whetted, as if she had spent days applying her heart to a grindstone. Without hesitation, she replied, \"I made of my grief a form of rage. I spoke to excoriate, goading the Masters to bestir themselves. We are the life which remains. They could not stand idle while a mere Cord faulted them for permitting the world's Desecration. They had no answer for the charge which I brought against them.\"\n\nThey did not grieve. Therefore their bereavements ruled them.\n\nHarsh as the call of a hawk, Pahni added, \" _I_ do not cry your pardon, Ringthane. I am a Cord of the Ramen. I will not regret that I have abided by the command of my Manethrall.\" But then her manner softened somewhat. \"And I also am offended in your name. I, too, crave the shaming of the Masters.\"\n\nAt that, Linden covered her face with her hands.\n\nRelieved and grateful, Covenant went to Bhapa. When the older Cord met his gaze, he said without rancor, \"You took a hell of a risk. What were you going to do if it didn't work?\"\n\nBhapa's mouth twisted. He almost smiled. With a hint of his former diffidence, he said, \"Timewarden, I would have spoken of you. Your need outweighs my wrath. Had the Ringthane's name failed, yours might have prevailed\u2014though,\" he admitted ruefully, \"in that event the burden of shame would have become mine to bear.\"\n\nCovenant nodded. Under his breath, he murmured, \"You're a brave man. I'm glad you're here. But maybe you should have trusted them with the truth. This\"\u2014a twitch of his head indicated the Masters\u2014\"isn't settled.\"\n\nStill Handir and his people said nothing, revealed nothing. They guarded the cave and the company, motionless as graven images while they carried on their mental debate.\n\nImpatient for a decision, the Giants fretted among themselves. While Grueburn and Stonemage spoke in low voices to Bluff Stoutgirth's sailors, telling them more about Bhapa and Pahni, Rime Coldspray approached the Cords. She greeted them kindly in spite of her obvious exasperation, praised their courage, thanked them for their fidelity to Linden. Then, however, she reached the end of her endurance. Striding past the Ramen, she confronted Handir and Canrik, Samil and Vortin.\n\n\"Enough of this!\" she called so that every Master could hear her. \"While you query yourselves, our foes rally against us. Such uncertainty ill becomes you. If you will not stand with us, stand aside. We must attain Kiril Threndor.\"\n\n\"Must we then countenance shame?\" snapped Canrik. \"Is that your counsel, Giant? You who know nothing of the strictures which form and inform the _Haruchai_?\"\n\nThe Ironhand started to retort; but Handir gestured abruptly for silence. Ignoring Coldspray, he faced Covenant across the shining of the _krill_.\n\n\"Nonetheless this also is folly.\" He spoke with his accustomed rigidity\u2014and yet his tone conveyed a cry of protest. \"Doubtless Linden Avery has become a rightful white gold wielder. And your endeavors against Corruption have twice exceeded every expectation. Yet when the Worm feeds, wild magic cannot counter it. Only Law can withstand the Earth's destruction, but the Staff is held by a boy who has not mastered it. Why do you wish to expend our lives where no good outcome can be achieved?\n\n\"If we must be shamed, we will bear it. We are _Haruchai_. Yet it is cruel\u2014is it not?\u2014to insist upon our service in the name of folly. In the name of futility, ur-Lord. In the name of _waste_.\"\n\nCovenant grinned at him fiercely. \"You tell me. Which would you rather do? Die here fighting Cavewights? Take the chance that something good might happen? Or be swept out of existence while you stand around complaining about waste?\"\n\nThe Voice of the Masters paused for only a moment. Then he said without inflection, \"We will fight.\"\n\nCovenant clenched his fists; stifled an impulse to punch the air. \"Then get me to Kiril Threndor. Protect Linden as long as you can. Keep Jeremiah safe. And brace yourselves. We've already surprised the hell out of Lord Foul. Maybe we'll surprise you, too.\"\n\nAfter that, he could no longer contain himself. Turning away from Handir, he shouted at the ceiling, \"Did you hear that, you tormented bastard? The _Haruchai_ are going to _fight_!\"\n\nThe Ardent's last service had accomplished its purpose.\n\n## 9.\n\nParting Company\n\nCovenant wanted to talk to Linden, remind her that he loved her, do what he could to reassure her. In addition, he meant to check on Jeremiah. The boy's elsewhere gaze was changing: his whole face seemed to be changing. The silted hue of his eyes had acquired a crimson tinge, as if his irises were bleeding. And his visage looked leaner, deprived of its youthfulness by dismay and nascent horror. His hands no longer gripped the Staff tightly, no longer spilled the black flames of his transformed legacy. He may have forgotten that he held it.\n\n_As guerdon for his puerile_ _valor_ \u2014\n\nHe was losing his ability to ward himself from visions of the Worm.\n\nCovenant wanted to say something, ask questions, understand; give comfort if he could. But he had no time. While the echoes of his defiance lingered in the cave, the cordon of Masters surged into motion.\n\nResponding to the mental shouts of the sentries, _Haruchai_ sprinted toward the chamber's openings. Around the company and the Cords, a few Masters formed a protective circle: Handir and Canrik, Samil and Vortin, Dast and Ulman. Stave held the _krill_ high in one hand, hefted Cabledarm's longsword in the other. Branl readied Longwrath's flamberge.\n\n\"Cavewights,\" the Voice of the Masters announced, passionless as stone. \"They have massed their forces. Now they advance.\"\n\nCovenant spun, scanned the entrances. \"Where?\"\n\n\"On all sides, ur-Lord,\" Branl replied.\n\nNodding to the Anchormaster, Rime Coldspray and her comrades joined Handir's defensive formation. The sailors arranged themselves to support the Swordmainnir.\n\n\"Hellfire!\" Covenant's ring itched for use. He felt an irrational desire to fling wild magic at the knuckled ceiling. \"Then pick one! Which one goes toward Kiril Threndor?\"\n\nLinden's face was pallid with fright as she grasped Jeremiah's arm, prepared herself to pull him into motion.\n\nHe threw her off. \"Again?\" he protested petulantly. Then his voice darkened. \"Of course. We're always attacked.\" He sounded like a different person, someone older, inured to abuse. \"Somebody should tell them they're as doomed as we are.\"\n\n\"Jeremiah!\" cried Linden softly. \"Honey? What's happening to you?\"\n\nFor an instant, the boy's eyes rolled back in his head. Then he bared his teeth. His gaze came into focus.\n\n\"I'm getting it, Mom.\" Again he sounded different, as if this time he had arisen from some other grave. \"I don't care what Stave says. I'll show you.\"\n\n\"We do not know the way,\" Handir told Covenant. \"None here have trod familiar passages. We must estimate our road. We are certain only that Kiril Threndor lies in that direction.\" He pointed above and behind Covenant. \"We will endeavor to clear a path there\"\u2014he indicated the tunnel closest to Kiril Threndor's heading\u2014\"hoping to encounter other Masters. Their knowledge may extend farther.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" Jeremiah muttered. \"Why not?\"\n\nBhapa and Pahni stood with Stave beside Linden and Jeremiah. The Cords held their garrotes in their fists.\n\nCovenant heard a noise like the sizzle of rain on hot stone: running feet. It swept closer. Before he could respond to Handir, Cavewights charged into the cave on all sides. In an instant, they filled the space with chaos and howling.\n\nThey came brandishing spears and truncheons, falchions heavy as spars, axes shaped to behead Giants. They burst into the cave from every entrance in such numbers that they could have inundated their foes, left no one standing.\n\nBut they did not come so far. Three strides into the chamber, they crashed like breakers against a seawall of Masters.\n\nHardly able to understand what he saw, Covenant watched the warriors meet the attack with a fanged front. At each entrance, tight wedges of three or four men bit like teeth into the brunt of the charge. Even as they fell in spurts and gushes of blood, the _Haruchai_ drove confusion among the first creatures; forced them to veer away on both sides. Some of the Cavewights tripped over bodies, did not rise again. Others spilled past the formations and scattered their lives against a bulwark of Masters.\n\nThe wedges did not hold. They could not. There were too many Cavewights. But the _Haruchai_ were at their most devastating when they fought singly. As their front failed, they spun among their assailants, fighting as though carnage exalted them. They leapt and ducked, avoided and struck. Punches snapped arms, broke necks. Kicks dislocated knees, smashed feet. And many of the Masters snatched up weapons. They cut like scythes through the Cavewights, reaping entrails, brains, gore.\n\nNevertheless the creatures were many; and they had spent millennia nurturing their hatred and savagery, their resentment of peoples who had repeatedly foiled their singular dreams. They fought with the ferocity of beasts. Slaughtered themselves, they delivered slaughter in return. Covenant watched dozens of Masters go down amid scores of Cavewights. Wherever he looked, he seemed to see _Haruchai_ killing or crippling creatures\u2014and yet at every moment the Masters were driven back. Axes took heads, ripped torsos. Spears, bludgeons, brutal swords: all wrought havoc. Even the armed warriors died, cut down from behind while they slew the foes in front of them.\n\nCovenant could have stopped this\u2014but only by killing everyone in the cave, rendering every living thing to ash. His thwarted heart burned, accomplishing nothing.\n\nStill more Cavewights surged inward, striding long-legged over the mounting rubble of corpses. Their weapons flung red ruin. Step by step, the fighting closed around the company. Handir prepared his defense. The Swordmainnir waited with their blades poised.\n\nBehind them, Linden and Jeremiah faced each other, apparently arguing. Alarm stretched her features. He gnashed his teeth as if he were biting off hunks of desperation. She may have been shouting\u2014they both may have been shouting\u2014but Covenant could not hear them. Howls and screams deafened him, the sickening sounds of torn flesh, the hard smack of blows, the crack of breaking bones.\n\nAs if he were answering his mother, Jeremiah raised the Staff of Law. He held it over his head like a quarterstaff, braced to hammer down fire. The look in his eyes was agony.\n\nAbruptly Branl gripped Covenant's arm, turned him toward the tunnel where Handir had proposed to leave the cave. At the same time, the _Haruchai_ between the company and that exit changed their tactics.\n\nImponderably graceful amid the viciousness and turmoil, those Masters drew back, leaving an open line for the Cavewights, an aisle straight toward the clenched center of the defense.\n\nCovenant thought that he heard Linden yell, \" _Now_ , Jeremiah!\"\n\nRoaring triumph, the creatures rushed forward\u2014\n\nNow or never.\n\n\u2014and Jeremiah swung the Staff.\n\nBlack lightning raged from the shaft. Earthpower struck at the Cavewights, fire hot as an inferno. It set them ablaze as if their bones were kindling. Their roars became shrieks. Lit like torches, they blundered away, trying to escape.\n\nMore creatures charged. More creatures caught fire. Jeremiah screamed as if his efforts were claws tearing at his heart. His eyes wept anguish. Nevertheless he poured out power in a convulsion of killing.\n\nFor a moment\u2014if only for a moment\u2014he cleared a path.\n\n\"Now!\" Linden cried again. \" _Run!_ \"\n\nThis time, she was shouting at the Giants.\n\nThe company obeyed. Shielded by Masters and Swordmainnir, and then by the Giants of Dire's Vessel, Branl hauled Covenant forward. With Bhapa and Pahni, Stave herded Linden and Jeremiah. While the surviving _Haruchai_ gathered to ward the rear, the Land's defenders dashed along Jeremiah's path.\n\nA moment later, the boy's power failed. He crumpled as if his tendons had been cut. He dropped the Staff: he may have fainted. But Far Horizoneyes snatched him off the floor, cradled him without missing a step. Furledsail grabbed the Staff and kept running.\n\nCavewights crowded the passage ahead. They had only paused, shocked or startled by screaming. But while they were in the tunnel, their movements were constricted. With Canrik and Samil\u2014with Vortin, Ulman, and Dast\u2014Handir tore into the creatures, broke them like boughs in a rending wind. And those Cavewights that withstood the force of the _Haruchai_ fell to the blades of the Swordmainnir.\n\nTrampling bodies, the company gained their exit.\n\nBut now the Masters also were hampered. Their speed and agility became less effective. Dodging a spear, Ulman stepped into the stroke of a falchion. The blade opened his side, cut deep enough to reach his spine. He fell, fountaining crimson. The other warriors in the lead survived only because they were supported by the swift skill of the Swordmainnir, the lick and thrust of longswords.\n\nThe _Haruchai_ holding the rear did so without the aid of battle-trained Giants. The Anchormaster and Frothbreeze gave what aid they could: still the losses among the Masters were grievous. While they struggled against swords and axes, massive clubs, they also had to contend with spears hurled over their heads to strike at Stoutgirth's crew. Leaping to intercept some of those shafts left the Masters defenseless. They were cut down or spitted.\n\nBehind the warriors, Keenreef and Setrock swung their sacks of supplies, blocked spears with bundled waterskins and food.\n\nAs the Masters died, the Cavewights drove closer. How many _Haruchai_ remained in the rear? Ten? Less?\n\nCovenant heard Scatterwit laughing amid the clamor: a horrific sound, shrill and urgent, feverish as hysteria. It jerked him around to watch as Scatterwit thrust her way among the Masters. Stoutgirth's shout, and Blustergale's, carried after her, but she ignored them.\n\nLurching on the stump of her ankle, she rushed the Cavewights with her arms spread wide as if she wanted to embrace every creature within reach.\n\nIn an instant, the point of a spear jutted from her back. A truncheon crashed onto her left shoulder. An axe bit between her ribs on the right. Her laughing was cut off; but she did not falter. Four, no, five Cavewights she hugged to her chest. Using them as a shield, she drove her great strength and weight against the pursuing creatures.\n\nFor a moment, she was impossibly successful. Somehow she cleared a space between her comrades and their foes. Five paces. Seven. Ten. When the blade of an axe came down on her head, spilling brains and ruined bone, she sagged. Still her legs thrust her forward. Supporting herself on the creatures in her arms, she kept fighting.\n\nThen she was done. Strength and life drained out of her: her legs failed: she dropped to her knees. Propped upright by corpses, she knelt there until her foes hacked her to pieces.\n\nScreaming, the Anchormaster tried to follow her. Frothbreeze and Blustergale caught his arms, held him back.\n\nRage filled Covenant's throat. He could hardly breathe. \"The _krill_ ,\" he gasped. \"I need the _krill_!\"\n\nScatterwit had opened a gap. If he could reach the rear before the Cavewights resumed their advance\u2014\n\nStave and Branl must have understood him. Without hesitation, Stave slapped the bright _krill_ into Covenant's hands. At the same time, Branl moved past Covenant. With one arm, the Humbled parted the sailors so that Covenant could pass.\n\nWhile Linden cried his name, Covenant brought up a rush of wild magic.\n\nBut he did not unleash its raw force. Instead he shaped silver fire along the blade of the _krill_. As he had done against the Sandgorgons, he fashioned an argent sword fierce as the white core of a furnace.\n\nWith Branl, he went to meet the Cavewights.\n\nBehind the two men, the rest of the company fled, following Handir's embattled cadre and the striking Swordmainnir. Supported only by the last of the rearguard, Covenant and Branl carried bloodshed among their attackers.\n\nCovenant made no attempt to defend himself. He had no skill, and was burning too hotly to care. He left his own protection to Branl's flamberge, to the fleet prowess of the few Masters. Wielding his chosen theurgy, Covenant became incarnate killing.\n\nWith every slash and thrust, every frantic swing, he appalled himself. He had to goad himself with curses like groans in order to keep moving. Otherwise he would have plunged to his knees, crippled by abhorrence. The Cavewights were only simple in their thinking: they were not unintelligent. And they had a long history. On their own terms, they had a civilization. They had never deserved the use which Lord Foul had made of them. They did not deserve what Covenant did to them now.\n\nHe promised himself that the Despiser would pay for this; but no promise sufficed to condone such slaughter.\n\nBranl and the Masters exacted their own toll. They were as precise as surgeons, as fluid as wind. But where they cut and blocked, punched and fended, Covenant ravaged.\n\nThe Cavewights seemed endless. Those still alive after the struggle in the cave were joined by more issuing from the other passages, entire hordes of creatures mad with blood-lust and ancient resentments. Yet even they could not withstand a blade forged of wild magic that shone like condensed stars. Nor could they match the skill of the _Haruchai_. Their screams and shrieks raced back down the tunnel, pierced the hearts of the Cavewights behind them. Their rage became fear. It became terror and panic. Fighting the press of their fellows, they tried to flee.\n\nAt first, they failed. The creatures advancing from the cave were not yet afraid. They resisted the impulse to retreat. But loud desperation filled the passage. It flooded through the Cavewights, carried away their fury. They turned to run, leaving their piled dead to guard their backs.\n\nThere Covenant flinched to a halt. His eldritch longsword frayed and faded: the _krill_ dangled in his numb clasp. Hellfire, he tried to say. Hell and damnation. But he could not catch his breath. There was no air anywhere. There was only blood.\n\nBlood and bodies, some still writhing in their last throes.\n\nIf he had been able to speak, he would have asked Branl and the Masters to forgive him. Of the _Haruchai_ guarding the rear, only seven remained; and most of them bore wounds. How many of them had already given their lives? Covenant could not bear to guess.\n\nSurely he had the right to defend himself? To fight for the people he loved, and for their world? Surely the Despiser was responsible for all of this blood?\n\nOf course, Covenant told himself. But the fact of his antagonist's malevolence did not relieve him of culpability. He had done so much of the actual killing\u2014\n\nThere was a price for such deeds. He intended to pay it\u2014as soon as he could breathe again. As soon as he found his way to Kiril Threndor.\n\nWithout a word, Branl took his arm, urged him into motion. Beyond the _krill_ 's reach, the rest of the company had vanished around a bend in the tunnel. But he could still hear fighting. Muffled by distance, blows and yells echoed out of the darkness. Clearly Handir's comrades and the Swordmainnir were able to beat back the Cavewights blocking their path. But the creatures had not given up. They contested every step.\n\nThey were not _Haruchai_. They had no way of knowing what Covenant had done\u2014and could do again.\n\nPulled into a trot, Covenant ran after his wife and his friends, stumbling on his numb feet like a man who had never drawn a clean breath.\n\nPast the bend, he nearly fell when the _krill_ 's light revealed the body of a Swordmain among the strewn corpses of Cavewights.\n\nCirrus Kindwind sprawled against the wall, propped at an awkward angle by a spear driven through one eye and out of the back of her skull. Her longsword lay a few paces away, as if she had tried to throw it with her last strength. Her features had closed around the spear: they held it in place like an act of defiance.\n\nShe had been fighting in darkness. Covenant carried the only light.\n\nBlinded by intolerable tears, he ran again, trusting Branl to guide him.\n\nAbruptly the sounds of fighting ahead ceased.\n\nQuiet as the dark, Branl said, \"Other Masters have come to assail the Cavewights. The way has been cleared.\" After a moment's pause, he added, \"It will not remain so.\"\n\nCovenant tried to clear his vision, but he saw no sign of his companions. He found only bodies and spilled fluids rank as offal.\n\nThe tunnel turned again. It rose steeply. At the top of the incline, he had to clamber over terrible mounds of the dead. He feared to look at them; feared to see some of Handir's people, another Swordmain, the Cords. Linden or Jeremiah. His friends had been fighting an uphill battle when they were rescued.\n\nBeyond heaps of Cavewights, he caught up with the company.\n\nAt first, he could not see past Bluff Stoutgirth and his crew. They had spread out in a wider section of the passage: their tall forms blocked his view. But then the sailors stepped aside, and the _krill_ 's silver fell on other survivors.\n\nIn the vanguard, the Voice of the Masters stood with Canrik and Dast, Vortin and Samil. They had been joined by nine or ten of their kinsmen. A quick glance showed Covenant a multitude of wounds and stains. Nevertheless all of the _Haruchai_ bore themselves as if their hurts were superficial; as if they had not lost scores of their people, and had never known sorrow. Closer to Covenant, still heaving to control their breathing, Frostheart Grueburn, Onyx Stonemage, and Halewhole Bluntfist waited with the Ironhand. Gore streaked their cataphracts: their longswords trembled in hands made weak by weariness. But their injuries looked shallow. Only the darkness in their eyes betrayed the loss of Kindwind.\n\nStoutgirth's dismay was more overt. His jaws worked as he tried to summon some sound from his throat, some shout or cry which might relieve his pain. Yet he remained mute: a man for whom all laughter had gone out of the world. At his side, Squallish Blustergale wept openly. The other sailors hung their heads in shock and fatigue.\n\nBhapa and Pahni stood apart from the rest of the company as if they had no place in it. They had not fought. Nor had they known any of the fallen except Cirrus Kindwind. And they were Ramen, lost without open skies to unfetter their spirits.\n\nAmong the Giants, Covenant found Linden and Jeremiah with Stave.\n\nThe boy was conscious now; on his feet. He had reclaimed the Staff of Law. Holding it upright, he scowled at his hands as they moved over the shaft, tracing the runes as if he were searching the written wood for the answers to questions which he did not know how to ask. He did not glance up when Covenant arrived. His concentration excluded everyone.\n\nBut Linden's gaze leapt at once to her husband. Her mouth shaped his name.\n\nThe sight of her made Covenant feel like weeping again. He recognized the complex consternation in her eyes: fear for her son and her friends, and more particularly for him, combined with a flagrant dread which had not yet become resolve. And something else, a kind of horror\u2014\n\nUntil he saw her expression, he did not realize that he was drenched in blood.\n\nHe went to her at once. But he did not touch her; foul her. He did not dare. His hands made truncated gestures, then fell back to his sides. The _krill_ in his grasp cast cavorting shadows that seemed to mock the faces around him.\n\nLinden's mouth repeated his name. Thomas. And again, Thomas.\n\nHandir moved among the Giants toward him. \"Ur-Lord,\" said the Voice of the Masters, \"we must not delay. Two paths to Kiril Threndor are now known.\" He must have acquired them from the minds of the newcomers. \"One is the more direct. It is also the more perilous. If we must, we will attempt it. We await only your word.\"\n\nJeremiah stamped the Staff on the stone. His voice cracked. \"We don't have time. Don't you understand? The whole _mountain_ is coming down.\" He did not look up from his hands. \"The Worm doesn't even feel it.\"\n\nCovenant groaned. _Melenkurion_ Skyweir was falling like Kevin's Watch. Hellfire\u2014\n\nLinden studied her son. Her face twisted. Then an obstacle within her seemed to break; or perhaps she pushed it aside. She went to Covenant, threw her arms around his neck, pressed all of herself against his soaked T-shirt and jeans as if she ached to embrace his sins, his accused soul.\n\n\"Thomas,\" she breathed in his ear. \"Oh, Thomas.\"\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" Handir repeated more loudly.\n\nCovenant dropped the _krill_ so that he could wrap his remaining strength around his wife. What else could he do? He had no words for his distress; no language that might soothe his clawed heart. He was going to lose her. The Worm was making his choices for him.\n\n\"Are you sure about this?\" Linden asked in an aching whisper. \"I mean about Kiril Threndor?\" She may have meant, About everything? \"Are you sure that Lord Foul is there?\"\n\nAre you sure that you want to face him?\n\n\"Of course he is.\" Covenant clung to her acceptance. \"Or he will be when I get there. Where else would he be? Sure, he wants us all dead.\" All except Jeremiah. The Despiser had probably laid a _geas_ on the Cavewights so that Jeremiah would be spared. \"But if that doesn't work, he wants me to find him. He wants the pleasure of finishing me.\"\n\nSo softly that Covenant barely heard her, Linden murmured, \"Then help me. I can't do this.\"\n\nHe wanted to tell her, You can. You're the only one who can. But he did not. She had heard his professions of faith often enough.\n\n\"Ur-Lord!\" insisted Handir; but Covenant was not listening. He was already covered in blood. It was too late to count the cost. Maybe someday he would be forgiven.\n\nHe released Linden. When she loosened her arms, he stepped away from her to confront Jeremiah. Deliberately he placed himself in front of the boy, braced his empty fists on his hips.\n\n\"Can you hear me?\" he demanded. \"I need you. You have to hear me. I need your help.\"\n\nLinden might rally if he could show her that her son was not as lost as he looked.\n\nJeremiah did not glance up from the Staff. Shadows seemed to redefine his face. In a caustic tone, as if he were speaking for the _croyel_ , he snarled, \"Then you might as well give up. I can't even _see_ you. I can't see anything. The Worm is under that mountain. That's all there is.\"\n\nThinking, Forgive me, Covenant barked, \" _Jeremiah!_ Snap out of it! You think this is bad? It's going to get worse. Have you forgotten? Foul wants to _use_ you. He's going to do you more damage than you can imagine.\"\n\nThe boy flinched as if Covenant had struck him. Darkness writhed across his visage.\n\n\"Thomas!\" Linden objected.\n\nCovenant ignored her.\n\n\"Right now, he's just softening you up. Soon he'll get serious. He'll try to tear you apart, turn you inside out, hurt you so much you'll be _eager_ to do what he wants. If you don't help me, he wins.\"\n\nLinden tried to come between Covenant and Jeremiah. Stave held her back. The spurned _Haruchai_ seemed to understand\u2014\n\nJeremiah looked like he wanted to weep. In a different voice, abused and abject, he whimpered, \"I can't\u2014\"\n\nAs if he had lost patience, Covenant retorted, \"You _can_. You have that right. You were _born_ with it. All you have to do is choose,\" _must_ or _cannot_. He pushed his fingers through his hair, tried to harden his heart. Deliberately harsh, he rasped, \"Otherwise you might as well go back into hiding. You'll be useless.\"\n\nSlowly Jeremiah's silted gaze settled into focus on Covenant. He seemed to return from some other dimension of reality; some private hell. When it came, his answer was distinct.\n\n\"I don't want to go back there.\"\n\nCovenant felt like cheering. Grimly he stifled the impulse. \"Then trust yourself. Trust the Staff. There's a way to fight back. You just have to find it.\n\n\"And remember I need you. You might do something better than surprising the Despiser. You might surprise yourself.\"\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" Handir demanded, peremptory as a cudgel. \"Do you not hear me? Every delay is fatal. You must select a path.\"\n\nStill Covenant ignored the Voice of the Masters. He had to face Linden.\n\nShe was glaring at him, furious and bitter. Her hands clenched as if she wanted to hit him. He had hurt her son.\n\nBefore she could speak, he said harshly, \"Maybe I'm wrong.\" With the fingers of his halfhand, he massaged the scar on his forehead. \"Maybe I'm not. Look at him. What do you see?\"\n\nFor a moment longer, her indignation raked Covenant; but she could not refuse him.\n\nWhen she focused her senses on Jeremiah, her eyes went wide. Realizations scudded across the background of her gaze. In a startled tone, she breathed, \"You brought him back.\"\n\nCovenant nodded. He felt suddenly drained, weak in every limb, as if he had passed a test which might have broken him.\n\nTo Handir, he said in a wan voice, \"The direct road. Jeremiah is right. We don't have time for anything else.\"\n\nHe knew what _direct_ meant. It would require more killing.\n\nRime Coldspray stood over the old _Haruchai_. \"If the path is perilous,\" she asked, \"what form do its hazards take?\"\n\nHandir frowned up at her. \"For a portion of its length, Ironhand, we will be exposed to assault on all sides.\"\n\nShe snarled a curse. Then she gave Covenant a look full of reflected argent. \"Aye, Timewarden. If we must kill and die, then let us do so swiftly and be done.\"\n\nAt once, she turned to the sailors. Sure of herself now, she told them to help the Masters guard the rear of the company.\n\nBranl had retrieved the _krill_. As he restored it to Covenant, he said, \"Be wary, ur-Lord. Your son has not yet opposed us. _Moksha_ Raver remains. And we do not doubt that Corruption has other servants.\"\n\nWith a mental command, Handir sent the newly arrived Masters to support the sailors. Joined by Canrik and Dast, Samil and Vortin, he started along the passage. The Swordmainnir followed at his back. Gesturing for the Cords, Covenant accompanied Branl. Stave urged Linden and Jeremiah forward.\n\nThrough the thick midnight of the Wightwarrens, Covenant bore the only light. He tried to hold it steady, but his arm wavered like his thoughts. Be wary. Roger and Cavewights and _moksha_ Jehannum. Cirrus Kindwind. Baf Scatterwit. Scores of slain _Haruchai_. And for what? Not for him. Not even for Linden. Lord Foul was not afraid of them. He believed that he had already triumphed. Nothing that they did could stop the Worm.\n\nNo, it was all for Jeremiah: all the threats and bloodshed, all the striving and woe. So that the Despiser would be able to take him.\n\nCovenant could only pray that Jeremiah would eventually find a way to resist.\n\nefore long, the company's progress became a running battle, frantic and almost continuous. The tunnel branched more frequently, intersected other passages; and at almost every junction, massed Cavewights waited, or small bands of Masters, or both.\n\nWith their acquired weapons\u2014heavy falchions, spears nearly as tall as Giants, axes that Covenant could not have lifted\u2014Handir, Canrik, and their comrades led the way. Deceptively swift, they slipped among their foes, slashing or stabbing at exposed limbs, throats, groins. Together they disrupted one attack after another.\n\nAnd behind them came the Swordmainnir. Rime Coldspray and her women fought in a kind of fury, pitiless and brutal. Their blades flung blood. Crimson stained the air, streaked the walls, glazed the floor. They wore it as if it nauseated them, but they did not falter.\n\nCavewights went down, screaming or already dead. _Haruchai_ fell as well. New warriors joined the company. Together they hastened from one struggle to the next.\n\nFor the time being, at least, Lord Foul's forces did not attack from the rear. Masters reported that Cavewights crowded the tunnel behind them; but the creatures appeared content to follow at a distance. They feared Covenant's wild blade\u2014or they desired a surer chance to strike.\n\nGuiding by newly acquired memories, the Voice of the Masters turned left at one branching, passed straight through two intersections, angled sharply to the right at a third. The passage lurched upward in stages like terraces. The cries of the dying trailed like spectres behind the company.\n\nThirty or more _Haruchai_ had now joined the company. The losses of the Cavewights were far greater. But there were thousands of Cavewights. Tens of thousands. At present, the tunnels themselves were the company's best defense. Covenant and his companions survived primarily because Handir's route avoided another open killing field like the cave.\n\nAt Covenant's side, Linden hurried as if she were hunkering down inside herself, trying to make herself too small for her fears to find her. Nevertheless she remained Linden Avery. With Jeremiah's consent, she borrowed Earthpower from the Staff at intervals and spread it among the Giants, fed vitality to Covenant's dwindling reserves. To Bhapa and Pahni, she offered the same gift; but they declined it. They were Ramen. They could have run through these passages indefinitely, fleet as horses in spite of their loathing for enclosed spaces.\n\nTo the Masters, she gave nothing. She knew better.\n\nAlong the way, Jeremiah made his own use of Staff-fire. Instead of extending flames outward, however, he appeared to draw them into himself. They ran up his arms as if he intended to broil his own skin, excoriate himself. Then they faded into his chest. And as he absorbed the Staff's magicks, his eyes darkened until they seemed to refuse light. They glittered at Covenant's silver like chunks of obsidian.\n\nCovenant had no idea what the boy was trying to accomplish, but he did not question it. He had provoked this reaction. Now he had to trust it.\n\nThe gem's shining restricted his view ahead, but he thought that he saw\u2014\n\nAbruptly he lowered the dagger, shaded it with his free hand. \"Branl?\" He was breathing too hard to articulate a question. \"Branl?\"\n\n\"Indeed, ur-Lord,\" the Humbled replied as though he understood.\n\nThere: in the distance above Covenant, beyond the dark shapes of the Swordmainnir hastening upward temporarily unopposed: a faint glow. Reddish, but not crimson; warmer and more yellow than the laval eyes of the Cavewights. It seemed to flicker as Giants interrupted it, but Covenant could guess what it was.\n\nThen Linden grabbed his arm, breathed his name; and he was sure.\n\nRocklight. The company was approaching one of the lit regions of the Wightwarrens.\n\nThe glow grew stronger. Summoned by Handir, Masters from the rear ran past Covenant and Linden, Jeremiah and the Cords. Fresh rage and iron rang along the passage. Hard impacts. A rabid stutter of screams, howls, frenzy.\n\n\"We will ward you,\" Stave said suddenly, \"but you must also defend yourselves. A multitude awaits us.\" He touched Jeremiah's shoulder. \"Do you hear, Chosen-son? You must turn your thoughts to our peril. It may be that our lives will require your aid.\"\n\n\"What do you want from me?\" Jeremiah panted. \"More killing? That's not what Law is for. I can't forget the Worm. I'm not strong enough.\"\n\nLinden regarded him with desperation in her eyes.\n\n\"Then don't worry about it,\" said Covenant between sickened breaths. \"You're getting ready for a different kind of fight.\" As was Linden. \"Leave this one to the rest of us.\"\n\nTo Giants and _Haruchai_. And to Covenant himself, who had already shed enough blood to drown him.\n\nHe gave himself no other choice. In a former life, he had turned his back on power. Now he demanded it of himself.\n\nRocklight washed over him. Rime Coldspray and her comrades passed an opening, spread out to both sides. Blows and shouts pounded down the tunnel, but the sounds were strangely muffled. A gulf seemed to swallow their force.\n\nStraining for air, Covenant went a step or two ahead of Linden and Jeremiah; ahead of Stave. The _krill_ he held at his side so that it would not blind him. With Branl, Bhapa, and Pahni, he drove his weakness out of the tunnel onto a ledge as wide as an avenue.\n\nThere he found himself facing a rocklit chasm.\n\nIt was not a fault or flaw in the gutrock, although it resembled a crevice: long and high, but not wide, little more than a stone's throw from wall to wall. Rather it had been fashioned, dug out over centuries or millennia. The ruddy light everywhere testified to the effort and theurgy which had formed the space. Overhead, and to left and right, it stretched beyond the reach of Covenant's dimmed sight. But when he moved closer to the rim of the ledge, he could see the bottom of the excavation: a crude trough crowded with debris, as full of refuse as a midden.\n\nIn spite of Stave's warning, he stopped and stared, momentarily unable to do anything except look. For a few heartbeats, he forgot fighting; forgot his peril entirely. He needed time to comprehend what he saw.\n\nA ledge opposite him resembled the one where he stood. It was the lowest of five, six, no seven levels like communal passages, each carved into the wall two or three Giant-heights above the next. And at the back of each horizontal cut, each shaped road, were openings like doorways. They measured out the chasm in both directions at intervals of perhaps twenty paces. Stone doors closed some of them. Others stood open, revealing lit chambers.\n\nHabitations. Covenant could hardly think. He struggled for air as if he were inhaling dismay. Dwellings. Homes.\n\nHomes implied families. Families implied children.\n\nThere were hundreds of doorways near enough for his failing vision; and the chasm was long. If the wall where the company had emerged mirrored the one across from it, the space held thousands.\n\nThousands of homes. The Cavewightish version of a city.\n\nAh, hell. Covenant had brought bloodshed to a place where the creatures were vulnerable, where their mates and children could be killed. A place which they would defend for reasons better than obedience to the Despiser.\n\nEverywhere he looked, he saw Cavewights mustering. On every level, armed bands gathered and ran, converging\u2014\n\nAny uncontrolled wild magic here would incinerate children.\n\n\u2014on bridges that spanned the chasm.\n\nHellfire! There were dozens of the damn things, wrought granite roads as wide as the ledges. A few stretched straight across, level to level; but most of them arced, connecting the walls at differing heights. On Covenant's left, the nearest bridge reached to the third level opposite it: another farther away on his right extended to the fourth. An elaborate and apparently random network of spans crisscrossed the space, giving every ledge access\u2014direct or indirect\u2014to every other.\n\nAnd on every bridge, Cavewights raced across the air, rushing to give battle.\n\n_\u2014exposed to assault on all sides._ Bloody damnation!\n\nCovenant wheeled on Branl. \"We have to get out of here! These are their homes! We can't start killing their _children_!\"\n\nThe Humbled shrugged. \"We do what we must. Foes now throng the passage at our backs. We have sacrificed the choice of retreat.\n\n\"Our path lies there.\" He pointed to the nearest bridge. \"From the third level opposite, we must cross to the fifth above us. At that height, a passage leads toward Kiril Threndor. Its constriction will defend us once again.\"\n\n\"Then _run_!\" Covenant yelled. \"Before they can stop us!\"\n\nHe could not unleash wild magic here. Even to save the Earth, he could not.\n\n\"Thomas!\" Linden clutched his arm, tugged at him. \"Look!\"\n\nFor an instant, his mind reeled. Then he dragged his attention away from possibilities which horrified him.\n\nOn both sides, his companions were already fighting.\n\nTo the left, the Ironhand and Frostheart Grueburn slashed like furies through the press of Cavewights. Among them, Handir and half a dozen Masters dodged and struck. Onyx Stonemage and Halewhole Bluntfist had gone to the right. With more _Haruchai_ , they held their ground against three times as many creatures. The cacophony of battle was terrible. It seemed more terrible because it dissipated in the high chasm as if it were meaningless.\n\nThe Giants of Dire's Vessel had arrived behind Covenant. The last six or seven Masters prepared to block the tunnel, protect the rear of the company.\n\nNow Covenant spotted more Masters on the levels above him: groups of four widely scattered. They were too few to save his companions; too far away.\n\n\" _Coldspray!_ \" he cried as if he were falling.\n\nThe Ironhand and Handir exchanged shouts. Coldspray bellowed commands at Bluff Stoutgirth. The Anchormaster answered with curses. His glare held madness.\n\nClutching their unfamiliar weapons, the sailors charged to the right. With strength and mass, if not with skill, they rushed to support Stonemage and Bluntfist.\n\nBhapa and Pahni hesitated for a moment, spoke to each other. Then they followed the Anchormaster.\n\nTogether _Haruchai_ , Giants, and Ramen began to force the Cavewights backward.\n\nAt the same time, Coldspray and Grueburn appeared to redouble their efforts. They chopped down creatures, tore through flesh and bone, flung bodies off the ledge. Handir and Canrik fought as one, striking high and low simultaneously. Samil and Dast knocked Cavewights off their feet. Vortin and his comrades broke necks, cracked skulls, disabled limbs.\n\nFor a moment, Covenant did not understand. The Ironhand had divided the company. Surely she had made it weaker? But then he realized that she had also divided the Cavewights. They were fighting for their homes now, not for Lord Foul. They rushed to oppose two threats instead of one.\n\nNear Covenant, Coldspray's tactics seemed to accomplish nothing. Only savage fighting pushed the creatures back.\n\nNevertheless fewer foes gathered on the bridges which the company had to cross.\n\nColdspray and Grueburn gained the foot of the nearest span, the shallow arc to the third level. Handir and his warriors fought to secure the Ironhand's position.\n\nCavewights tried to burst from the tunnel at Covenant's back. Masters repulsed them.\n\nBranl hauled Covenant after Coldspray. Covenant caught Linden's hand, pulled her with him. Stave brought Jeremiah.\n\n\"Mom!\" Covenant could barely hear the boy. \"What do you want me to do?\"\n\n\"Stay with Stave!\" she called back. \"He'll tell you!\"\n\nColdspray and Grueburn started onto the bridge. Ahead of them, a fresh onslaught of Cavewights came howling down the span. Branl and Stave followed the two Swordmainnir with Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah. Somehow Handir and his comrades finished their immediate foes.\n\nSwift as swords, Handir and Canrik ran to join the Ironhand. Dast and Samil. Vortin and a few _Haruchai_ guarded the rear.\n\nAt the mouth of the tunnel, Masters died one by one. Numberless Cavewights gained the ledge. Some sped after the group escorting Covenant. Others pursued the sailors.\n\nWith Bhapa and Pahni, warriors reached the crossing to the fourth level. Stoutgirth and his crew fought as if they were caught in a hurricane. Stumbling on a slashed leg, Far Horizoneyes fell from the ledge. Blustergale scattered creatures with every swipe of his spear. Stoutgirth's shouts sounded like hysteria as he herded his crew onto the bridge.\n\nColdspray and Grueburn surged upward. Confusion spun through Covenant, lethal as vertigo, fatal as blades. The chasm gaped below him. It breathed his name. If Branl and Linden had not held him\u2014\n\nDizzy and wandering, he followed the Swordmainnir.\n\nThey were still a dozen strides away from a collision with charging Cavewights when other creatures began to fling spears from the upper levels.\n\nPartially protected by their cataphracts, the Ironhand and Frostheart Grueburn did not pause. Cursing fiercely, Coldspray hastened to meet her foes. Grueburn slapped shafts aside with her longsword or her open hand.\n\nHandir and his warriors formed a shield around Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah. The _Haruchai_ countered a barrage of throws. Handir caught one spear, blocked another. A third pierced his chest, cast him silent as a stone into the chasm.\n\nSnagging shafts from the air, Canrik and the other Masters advanced as though their leader's death changed nothing. When one of Vortin's comrades mistimed a catch and was gutted, none of the warriors flinched.\n\nCovenant felt the shock as Rime Coldspray crashed against the torrent of Cavewights. She should have fallen: the impact would have split a slab of marble. Yet she stood. At her back, Grueburn braced her with one hand\u2014and Canrik, Dast, and Samil attacked as if they were born to the use of weapons\u2014\n\n\u2014and the enfilade of spears stopped. The creatures thronging along both walls could not throw now without hitting their own kind.\n\nCavewights plunged like detritus from the bridge as Coldspray and Grueburn powered ahead.\n\nOut of the heights, a boulder struck the span where the sailors and the Cords raced upward. Bouncing away, the stone took two Masters with it.\n\nAfter that, Covenant lost sight of Stoutgirth and the others. He hardly knew where he was. His boots skidded in blood: he could not imagine how Branl and Linden kept him on his feet. His mind was whirling madness. He seemed to rise borne on a gyre of carnage.\n\nThen he was gasping on the flat shelf of the third level, and Linden was shouting his name, urgent as fever, and the bridge back across the gulf to the fifth level was only a dozen paces away. Cavewights came from both directions, but he had no time for them. He caught his balance on the sight of the span he had just crossed. Up the curve slick with slaughter, more Cavewights rose like executioners; like deserved death. They poured from the passage where the company had entered this habitation, gushed upward in a flood released by the dying of Masters.\n\nThey were too many. That was all: they were just too many. The Swordmainnir and the _Haruchai_ were already fighting desperately, drenched in blood. Trusting Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah to Stave, Branl sprinted to support his kinsmen. Jeremiah trembled on the verge of panic, ready to hurl black devastation in all directions. Linden stood with him, but she looked lost, unable to help him: appalled or paralyzed. A deranged part of Covenant wanted to demolish the whole place, children and families and everything living. He and his companions could not survive _more_ Cavewights.\n\nSuddenly calm, almost at peace with his dizziness, he went to face the creatures rising in rage up the bridge. Once again, he shaped wild magic along the blade of the _krill_ , formed a longsword of fierce argent. With it, he began hacking great hunks of granite out of the span.\n\nWhen the Cavewights there saw what he was doing, they froze.\n\nThree blows cut halfway through the indurated substance of the bridge. The fourth sent shivers down its length. The stone screamed at its own weight.\n\nShrieking, the creatures turned to flee. Most of them reached the lower ledge before the bridge fell in thunder. The rest plummeted.\n\nStill swinging, Covenant nearly followed the wreckage into the depths. Stave dragged him back.\n\nCovenant did not pause. Every thought was gone from his head: every notion or awareness except a compulsory desire to get his people out of here. He would never rid himself of the taste of blood. Brandishing slaughter, he ran to help his companions reach the next bridge.\n\ne and those with him were only able to gain the fifth level because new groups of Masters entering the habitation converged where they were needed. Fresh and unbloodied, they threw their lives into the mass of Cavewights. They were _Haruchai_. In a distant region of the Land, two hundred of them rode to oppose the Worm of the World's End with their bare hands. Fighting and dying like men who had never known fear and did not count the cost, they helped Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn clear the top of the span.\n\nOf the Masters ascending with the Swordmainnir, only Canrik and Samil remained. Branl alone guarded the rear, contesting every step with Longwrath's flamberge. Somehow Stave kept spears away from Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah.\n\nFortunately the tunnel toward Kiril Threndor was near. And the Cavewights blocking the way had been scattered by unexpected Masters. From the opposite wall, more creatures came, loud as thunder, vehement as lightning; but most of them were not close enough to strike.\n\nStill they were too many, as they had been from the first. They would follow the company into the passage ahead. Eventually they would kill everyone.\n\nAt Canrik's urging, Coldspray and Grueburn led their companions into the blind dark of the tunnel. He and Samil joined Branl and Stave guarding the rear. The surviving Masters arrayed themselves at the opening, braced to die so that the Cavewights could not pursue.\n\n\"No,\" Covenant panted at them. \"Come with us.\"\n\nHe had seen too many _Haruchai_ killed.\n\nBranl silenced him. \"Will you seal the passage, ur-Lord?\"\n\nCovenant struggled to breathe. \"Yes.\"\n\nHe could not have done so in the earlier tunnels. The company might have needed to retreat. Now he had gained a path to the Despiser. There was no going back.\n\n\"Then,\" said Branl flatly, \"these Masters will aid the other Giants and the Cords.\"\n\nCovenant tried to move; tried to lift the _krill_. Are you serious? You want me to leave them out there? His arms refused to obey him until the warriors outside the tunnel met his frantic gaze and nodded their approval.\n\nEven here, they made their own choices. He could not gainsay them.\n\nGroaning curses, he forged fire along the blade of Loric's dagger for the last time. Unsteady as a man who had forgotten the use of his limbs, he slashed silver at the walls and then the ceiling. With wild magic, he cut down great chunks of stone until the passage was sealed.\n\nAfter that, he collapsed inwardly. He could still walk, still go where he was guided; but he could not think or speak. Images of slaughter filled his head. Wounds gaped at him like the grins of ghouls. The tumult of falling stone volleyed against the boundaries of his mind. So much killing. So many dead. And he had lost the sailors. He had lost everyone with them.\n\nHe had brought carnage into the dwelling-place of the Cavewights: just one more item on the long list of his crimes.\n\nWhat was it all for? Covenant knew his own reasons, but Lord Foul's daunted him. The Worm could not be stopped. At last, the Despiser could be sure of his long-sought freedom. Then why had he been so profligate with the lives of his servants? Did he simply _enjoy_ sacrificing them? Or did he secretly fear that Covenant might yet find a way to thwart him?\n\nNo. The Despiser knew Covenant too well.\n\nBut Lord Foul did not know Linden and Jeremiah: not with the same intimacy. The fane which had preserved the _Elohim_ and delayed the Worm demonstrated that he had underestimated Covenant's wife and her adopted son. Without their efforts, their opposition, he might already have escaped the Arch of Time.\n\nMaybe that explained the brutality of his defenses.\n\nThe tunnel rose. Dragging the weight of his sins behind him, Covenant trudged upward.\n\nAt his side, Linden stared ahead, wide-eyed as a woman who saw a holocaust waiting for her. Jeremiah wrung the Staff as though he wanted to twist it apart. His every step was a flinch. Leading their few companions, Coldspray and Grueburn slumped like derelicts. Only Stave and Branl, Canrik and Samil paced the ascent like men who could not be appalled by any sacrifice.\n\nA rift cut across the tunnel. It split the floor as though it had been made by an axe sharp enough to wound mountains. It yawned at Covenant, too black to be relieved by the _krill_ 's shining. But it was thin: a fracture no wider than his thigh. Pretending to ignore it, he stepped across.\n\nMore fissures appeared. They were little more than cracks, yet they served to remind him of the times when violence had torn through Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder.\n\nHe was getting close\u2014\n\nWhen the Giants halted, he nearly walked into them. Blinking and stupefied, he looked around.\n\nThey had entered a chamber like an exaggerated vesicle, a natural formation left behind by some accident of volcanism. The passage continued, but Coldspray and Grueburn stood wavering as if they had come to the end of themselves: they looked like they wanted to lie down. The cavity was more than large enough to accommodate them prone. It could have held a dozen sleeping Giants.\n\nTo one side rested a pair of large boulders. They seemed strangely out of place. Covenant could not imagine how they had come to be here. But plenty of room remained, and the floor was approximately level. When he found himself swaying on his feet, he realized that he was tired enough to stretch out and rest in spite of the Earth's peril.\n\nAnd yet his weariness was a drop in the ocean of Coldspray's and Grueburn's exhaustion. Even the _Haruchai_ were probably worn down, although they concealed it.\n\nGrueburn's longsword dangled from her fingers. \"Is it conceivable,\" she asked, plaintive as the cry of a distant tern, \"that we are done with combat? I cannot raise my arms.\"\n\n\"'The mightiest of the Swordmainnir,'\" muttered Coldspray dully. \"So I have vaunted myself, and so I am. Behold.\" She lifted her glaive. \"My hand is firm.\" It shook like a dying leaf. \"My eye is keen.\" Fatigue glazed her gaze. \"Beyond question, I am\u2014\" Abruptly she dropped her sword. Her shoulders slumped. \"Stone and Sea! I am undone by woe and killing. I cannot spit out the taste of blood. It will fill my mouth to the end of my days.\"\n\nSighing, Covenant roused himself enough to respond, \"Join the club.\"\n\nJeremiah said nothing. He appeared to have lost interest in everything except his ambiguous struggle with the Staff of Law. Folding his legs, he settled himself against one wall, sat cross-legged with the black wood resting across his thighs. His head he kept bowed as if he did not want anyone to see the darkness deepening in his eyes.\n\nLinden studied him for a moment, then turned away. She had spent too long clenched inside herself; too long crowded with needs and fears which she had not allowed herself to express. She was a rightful white gold wielder: for hours now, she could have struck her own blows. Yet she had contained herself, passive as dust amid the winds of battle. Somehow she had withheld\u2014\n\n_But I'm done fighting._\n\nIn spite of endless provocations, she had kept faith with her decision. The cost of so much restraint must have been severe. Now she seemed ready to explode.\n\nNevertheless her voice stayed clenched as she asked the Ironhand, \"What about the others? We left them to die.\"\n\nHer bitterness resembled the edges of Longwrath's sword.\n\nColdspray shook her head. \"They will not perish while they are able to fight and flee.\" She spoke as if she sought to reassure herself. \"Having lost us, they will retreat for their lives. My commands were plain. And Halewhole Bluntfist and Onyx Stonemage are Swordmainnir. They comprehend that they must not sacrifice the Anchormaster's crew and the Masters of the Land\u2014and assuredly not the Ramen Cords\u2014to no purpose. Rather they will seek an egress from the habitation.\"\n\nThen her tone frayed. It seemed to tear. \"Now we have played our part. Ask no more of us. We can go no farther.\"\n\nOnce before, Covenant had seen despair in the eyes of a Giant, when Saltheart Foamfollower had tasted the ecstasy of killing Cavewights\u2014and had found that he wanted to kill more. That despair had kept Foamfollower alive when all of his people were murdered. Coldspray's surrender, and Grueburn's, made Covenant want to weep.\n\nHe drew a shuddering breath. Well, then, he told himself. This is as good a place as any.\n\nHell and blood.\n\nTo the Ironhand, he said, \"Don't worry about it. You've brought us far enough. Nobody could have done more.\"\n\nThen, wincing inwardly, he told Linden, \"If you're going to do it, now's the time. You won't get another chance.\"\n\nOn the walls, silver made dark streaks like the ichor of mountains.\n\nAlarm flared across her face as she turned to him; but she did not protest. Instead she tightened her grip on herself, increased the pressure until it threatened to break her. \"Already?\" she asked without hope or humor. \"Are you sure? I still want to live.\"\n\nHer gaze said, I still want to live with you.\n\n\"Kiril Threndor isn't far.\" Covenant choked for a moment. He had to swallow a rush of grief. \"You can't go there with me. Neither can Jeremiah. This is it.\"\n\nAs if he were asking for forgiveness, he added, \"I'll take Branl. Jeremiah will have Stave and Canrik and Samil.\"\n\nShe looked away. Her eyes avoided Coldspray and Grueburn as if she felt shamed by the prices which they had paid for her. Instead she regarded her son again.\n\nTo no one in particular, she said, \"All right. I chose this. Some of those poor Masters might still be alive if I had made a different choice.\" She seemed to choke momentarily. \"Or Baf Scatterwit. Cirrus Kindwind. God, I loved her\u2014\n\n\"Losing them will be wasted if I change my mind now.\"\n\nCovenant's vision blurred. He squeezed his eyes shut to clear them. Taunting her, Lord Foul had called Linden his _daughter_. He was wrong.\n\nFrom the floor, Jeremiah asked suddenly, \"What're you talking about?\"\n\nLinden did not let herself look away. \"Jeremiah, honey\u2014\" Her voice was breaking. \"I have to go.\"\n\nIn one motion, Jeremiah surged to his feet, lifted his gaze into the light of the _krill_. His eyes were as black as the Staff. Even the whites had become midnight.\n\n\"Go where?\"\n\n\"I can't put it off any longer.\" She sounded tight enough to snap. \"I need to face the only thing that scares me worse than losing you. You and Thomas.\"\n\nHis face twisted. Protests clawed at his features. \"But you'll come back,\" he said as if that were not a question. \"That's what you do. You come back.\"\n\nShe flinched\u2014but she did not falter. \"I don't think so, honey. Not this time.\"\n\nJeremiah stared horror at her. \"You're going to leave me? You're going to let Lord Foul have me?\"\n\n\"No, Jeremiah.\" Her tone sharpened. \"I'm not going to _let_ him anything. But I can't fight him for you. Even if I took back the Staff and stood right in front of you, I couldn't help you.\" More gently, she said, \"I wish that I could spare you, but I can't. If you don't want him to take you, you have to stop him yourself.\n\n\"I know it's hard\u2014\"\n\nHer son cut her off. Vicious as a denunciation, he sneered, \"'I know it's hard.' You keep saying that. You don't know anything. I've already tried to fight. I'm not strong enough. The _croyel_ thought I was easy. How am I supposed to stop the Despiser?\"\n\nLinden shook her head. Her distress made Covenant ache. \"I don't know. But I believe in you. You can do it.\"\n\n\"I _can't_!\" His shout was like the tearing of flesh, full of pain and awash with blood. \"I'll have to watch the Worm destroy _everything_!\"\n\nCovenant's balance shifted. Only grief kept him from dropping to his knees. Only a whetted empathy kept him from raging at Jeremiah. But grief and empathy were enough. He braced himself on them when everything else spun away.\n\n\"You can always decide to give up,\" he said as if he were steady and sure; as if he had strength to spare. \"You have that right. If it's what you really want.\" Or the boy could join Lord Foul. \"But I need you. I'm going to need you absolutely. And Linden can't help me. Nobody else can. There's only you.\n\n\"But first we have to let Linden go.\"\n\nJeremiah flung a look black enough to kill at Covenant.\n\nA heartbeat later, the boy turned his back on his mother.\n\n\"Then go.\" He sounded as lightless and fatal as the path toward Kiril Threndor. \"You never loved me anyway. I was just an excuse. You don't want to have to blame yourself for letting me put my hand in that bonfire.\"\n\n\"Jeremiah\u2014\" Linden was weeping now. \"Honey\u2014\"\n\nAh, hell, Covenant thought. Visions of the Worm had raised all of Jeremiah's demons. He had spent days suppressing them. They ruled him now. Deliberately he sat down again, put his back to his mother; to Covenant and their companions. His hands wrestled ebon flames along the wood of the Staff as if he wanted to rewrite Caerroil Wildwood's runes.\n\n_Maybe we should all try to become gods._\n\nThe Giants watched blank-eyed, caked in drying blood, mute as cenotaphs. Branl studied Jeremiah with a speculative frown, as if he were considering where to cut the boy.\n\nCovenant gave the _krill_ to Stave. Then he took Linden's arm and pulled her away. While she stifled sobs against his chest, he held her tight.\n\nWith as much tenderness as he could manage, he promised quietly, \"I'll talk to him, love. He doesn't know it yet, but he's just proving your point. You can't do his fighting for him. No matter what happens to him, he's the only one who can do anything about it.\"\n\n\"Oh, Thomas.\" Distress shuddered through her, harsh as spasms. \"I'm so scared. What if he gets it wrong?\"\n\nFor a moment, she could not go on. She slumped against Covenant as if she had lost the will to stand on her own.\n\nHe hugged her in silence. He had no words\u2014\n\nBut gradually she responded to his embrace; drew a steadier breath. Freeing one arm, she wiped her face, smeared tears and blood across her cheeks. \"And I swore that I would love you as long as you never let me go. Now I'm the one who's leaving. I have to let both of you go.\"\n\nCovenant held her as hard as he could. \"I understand. You can't get rid of me this easy.\" Then he said more seriously, \"In any case, I'm like you. I believe in Jeremiah. He has to feel this way. If he doesn't, he won't ever get past it.\"\n\nAt one time, Covenant himself had embraced despair\u2014\n\n\"Also,\" Stave put in like a man who had been biding his time and was done with patience, \"you will not depart alone.\" The _krill_ shone full on his face; on the scar of his lost eye. \"Linden Avery, I have said that I will not be parted from you again. The Chosen-son I entrust to Canrik and Samil, and to the Swordmainnir. You I will accompany.\"\n\nSurprise seemed to loosen some of Linden's tension: surprise or relief. She ignored the former Master long enough to kiss Covenant quickly, wipe her face again. Then she turned to Stave.\n\n\"Do you know where I'm going?\"\n\n\"Mayhap.\" Stave may have smiled. \"Or mayhap I am mistaken. I care naught. At one time, I declared that Desecration lies ahead of you. Now I am persuaded that there is no Desecration in you. I will not stand at your side to ward against you. I will do so because I have not learned humility, though you have endeavored to teach me. I crave further instruction.\"\n\nHis assertion sounded like an example of _Haruchai_ humor.\n\nLinden tried to say his name. Apparently she could not. Instead she went to him, put her arms around his neck.\n\nPast her hair, Stave met Covenant's gaze. \"You have wed well, Timewarden,\" he said as if his characteristic stoicism had become a form of jesting. \"I will strive to ensure her return.\"\n\nCovenant nodded. What could he have said? There were no words in all the world for his gratitude.\n\nWhen Linden released the former Master, he returned Loric's dagger to the Unbeliever.\n\nCovenant took it; gripped it. His throat was as tight as his grasp on the _krill_. He had to force himself to ask Linden, \"Are you ready?\"\n\nThe corner of her mouth twisted: a failed smile that nearly broke his heart. \"I'm never ready. I've given up waiting for it.\"\n\nHe rubbed his scar roughly, tried to compose himself. \"Then remember I love you. I _love_ you.\n\n\"And don't worry about Jeremiah. You did your part. I refuse to believe anything you did for him is wasted. The rest is up to us.\"\n\nHer mouth said, \"I'll try.\" Her eyes said, Thomas of my heart.\n\nThe Giants offered her no farewell. Frostheart Grueburn set her teeth on her lower lip: a woman stifling protests. Tears streamed openly down her cheeks. Rime Coldspray hung her head as if she could not bear her weariness\u2014or her dismay.\n\nJeremiah did not look at any of them.\n\nTogether Linden and Stave moved to a clear space a few steps from the walls and the Swordmainnir. There they waited like contradictions or counterweights. His poised relaxation balanced her trembling tension. After a moment's consideration, he tossed Cabledarm's sword to Canrik. No weapon would serve him now.\n\nGrim as a deliverer of damnation, Covenant stood beyond Linden's reach. He could not afford to hesitate now. He had no time; and his resolve might fail at any delay. He knew where she was going. He was more afraid for her than he was for himself.\n\nAs if he had begun preparing for this days ago, he gave fresh wild magic to the dagger's gem and thrust the blade into the stone between his boots. When the hard surface caught silver, he dragged the _krill_ to the side, cutting granite like damp clay. Step by step, he sliced a circle around Linden and Stave.\n\nAlong the line of his cut, his power shone as if rock were the fuel for which it yearned.\n\nHe did not need a large circle to enclose his wife and the former Master. In spite of his awkwardness and grieving, he returned to his starting point quickly. Then he forced himself upright. Wild magic reached for the ceiling. Through its brightness, he met Linden's gaze.\n\nFor his sake, she kissed a promise onto her wedding band, held it up with her hand clenched.\n\nWeeping like Grueburn, Covenant slapped his ring against the _krill_ 's gem.\n\n_The world will not see her like again._\n\n_Care for her, beloved, so that in the end she may heal us all._\n\nToo late, Jeremiah cried out, \"Mom!\" Linden and Stave were gone.\n\nCovenant turned away as if he were falling.\n\nElena, he thought obliquely, I'm so sorry. I'm doing what I can. Somebody else has to care for you.\n\ntill he had no time. He could not afford his own weakness, or the wailing of his wrenched heart. He had to keep moving. He would find some form of peace soon enough.\n\nAh, God.\n\nJeremiah was standing now, showing Covenant a face fretted with ruin. \"I keep doing that,\" he said in such misery that Covenant wanted to turn away. \"It's like I don't even remember her until it's too late.\" His head hung as if he were talking to the floor. \"By the time I understand what she's doing, she's already gone. I don't even say goodbye.\"\n\n_I'm never ready._\n\nCovenant knew the feeling.\n\nHe allowed himself to postpone speaking to Linden's son for a moment. While he tried to gather up the shreds of his courage, he asked Branl, \"How much farther?\"\n\nThe Humbled glanced at the tunnel ahead. \"Kiril Threndor is near, ur-Lord.\" Then he frowned. Tension in the lines of his face betrayed anxieties which his tone concealed. \"Yet my heart misgives me. I cannot credit that Corruption has no other defenses close about him.\" Briefly he appeared to consult with Samil and Canrik. \"Also, ur-Lord, I do not discern Corruption's presence. His malice is particular. It cannot be mistaken. That some great evil awaits us is plain. Yet it is not Corruption. He is absent\"\u2014Branl cocked an eyebrow at a sudden thought\u2014\"or veiled by glamour.\"\n\nCovenant swore privately, but he could not pretend that he was surprised. Lord Foul knew that he was coming\u2014and the Despiser was cunning.\n\nRubbing numbly at the scar on his forehead\u2014the mark of his sins\u2014Covenant turned to Jeremiah.\n\n\"It's probably a good thing you can see the Worm.\" He did not try to be gentle. \"You'll know when it's time.\"\n\nJeremiah jerked up his head. \"Stop that.\" His doom was stark in his eyes. Tattered and soiled, stained with old blood, his thin pajamas made him look as unloved as an empty house. \"Stop saying things you know I can't understand. You keep saying you need me, but you won't tell me how or why. You act like you think I'm important, but I don't know what you're talking about.\n\n\"Why can't I come with you?\"\n\nCovenant grinned without humor or kindness. \"It's fun, isn't it. You're like all the rest of us. Nobody ever hands you an answer. The only thing you can do is guess. Then you have to take your chances.\"\n\nAt once, however, he reached out, wrapped the fingers of his halfhand around the Staff of Law. Another test of truth: he wanted the boy to believe him.\n\nTo his touch, the wood felt dead; almost brittle. Ripe for consummation.\n\nStartled, Jeremiah quenched his flames. But he did not look away. His gaze clung to Covenant's. For a moment, his eyes resembled the Harrow's, deep as voids, hungry for some life that was not his own. But slowly they became harder, flatter: the black of obsidian and anger.\n\nDistinctly Covenant said, \"You can't come with me because I don't want you that close to Lord Foul until I can distract him. But I do want you to come. I think you'll know when. You'll be able to sense it.\" He glanced at the Masters. \"Or Canrik and Samil will. Or watching the Worm will tell you.\"\n\nJeremiah stared.\n\nHolding the Staff and the _krill_ so hard that his forearms ached, Covenant tried to explain.\n\n\"I need you because I don't think I can beat Lord Foul by myself. You aren't strong enough? Neither am I. He's too much a part of me.\n\n\"When the Worm drinks the EarthBlood, the Arch of Time will start to crumble. That's when Foul can escape. More than anything else, he wants _freedom_. If he has to, he'll even give up trying to trap the Creator. Being stuck here\u2014\" Covenant let go of the Staff. He shoved his fingers into his hair and pulled, trying to drag his thoughts into language. \"There's no word big enough for that kind of despair.\"\n\nIf Jeremiah understood nothing else, he would understand _that_.\n\nAgain Covenant found himself swaying, unsure of his balance. His intentions became impossible as soon as he articulated them. He wanted to fall down; just hit the floor and lie there while he could still choose the moment of his last collapse.\n\nBut he had made promises to Linden. Hell, he had made promises to practically everybody, one way or another. And he could not turn his back on Jeremiah's distress.\n\n\"I need your help to keep him busy. If we can, I want to make him miss his chance. As long as he's stuck here with us, he'll be vulnerable. Then I might be able to find an answer of my own.\"\n\nIs that plain enough for you? Hellfire, Jeremiah! It's all I've got.\n\nThe boy glared blackness. His breath came in ragged chunks, as if the labor of his heart did not leave room for his lungs. He swallowed as if his mouth and throat were full of blood.\n\n\"I _can't_. Don't you understand? He's the _Despiser_. He can take me whenever he wants. I won't able to do _anything_.\"\n\n\"Oh, stop,\" Covenant snapped. He might have yelled, We're out of time! \"There's always something you can do. You have talents. You have the Staff. And you know what _possession_ is like.\" _He broke me_. _I hate being used_. \"If nothing else, you can just hide. You can hide as long as you want.\"\n\nJeremiah had freed himself from years of dissociation. Maybe he would be able to find his way out of Lord Foul's grip.\n\nThe boy bared his teeth as if he wanted to take a bite out of Covenant; but Covenant was done with him. Intuitively, if not with any of his truncated senses, he felt the end of Time approaching. He had to go.\n\n\"Help me,\" he finished. \"Don't help me. It's up to you. I'm out of time.\"\n\nLike a man who had recovered his balance, he turned his back on Jeremiah's stained struggle; on the lost boy's naked need. At one time, Covenant had risked the Land's ruin for the sake of a snake-bitten child. More than once, he had approved when Linden had made similar choices. This was different. No matter what Jeremiah believed about himself, he was not helpless. He was _not_.\n\nAnd Lord Foul did not understand him. After all of this time, the Despiser still had no real idea what he was up against.\n\nAs Covenant left Linden's son, Rime Coldspray spoke. In the _krill_ 's light, she looked like a closed door. Her voice was rusted iron, a blade gnawed by neglect. Yet her gaze was sure in its mask of blood.\n\n\"Do not fear, Timewarden. While we live, we will stand with the Chosen-son. If we cannot guide him, mayhap Canrik and Samil will do so. They have shown their worth. They will not fail in Stave's stead, or in Branl's.\"\n\nMute as an unmarked grave, Frostheart Grueburn nodded her assent.\n\nWith that hope, Covenant followed Branl out of the chamber.\n\nhe Humbled held Longwrath's flamberge ready. He walked lightly, silent as a breeze. _That some great evil awaits us is plain_. Behind him, Covenant stepped over cracks in the wracked stone, carrying the illumination of Loric's courage and lore into darkness. The tunnel twisted from side to side as if it were writhing. _I cannot credit that Corruption has no other defenses close about him_. Here and there, flecks of mica or quartz in the walls caught silver and glittered like eyes.\n\nMore fractures flawed the gutrock. The forces unleashed here must have been appalling: High Lord Prothall's struggle with Drool Rockworm for the old Staff of Law; Lord Foul's fierce and increasingly frantic efforts to destroy Covenant's spirit. Clutching the _krill_ , Covenant rushed past thin splits that called out to him, urging vertigo and surrender. He had surrendered once. Not again. Not now. Linden had gone to meet her worst fear. He intended to do the same.\n\nThen argent caught the edges of an opening ahead. Covenant smelled sulfur, the dire reek of brimstone. He felt distant heat like the withering touch of Hotash Slay long ago. And attar.\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" Branl said sharply. \"Be warned. There is might and evil. Though I cannot name their source, they vow death.\"\n\nAttar, Covenant thought. The sweet sick stink of funerals; of preserved corpses. Lord Foul.\n\nThe _Haruchai_ as a people did not know that smell. They had never confronted the Despiser.\n\nHardly aware that he was struggling for breath\u2014that sweat ran like tears down the galls of his visage\u2014that his hands shook as if he had fallen into fever and delirium\u2014Thomas Covenant accompanied the last of the Humbled into Kiril Threndor.\n\nHe knew this place. He would have recognized it in any nightmare. Here he had been killed with his own power, his own ring. Here he had ascended in agony to participate in the Arch of Time, to defend with his soul the most necessary of the Laws which made life possible.\n\nThe space was a chamber like an abscess in the deep chest of Mount Thunder, Gravin Threndor: round and high, large enough to hold scores of Cavewights worshipping, and acute with patches of rocklight like plague-spots. Random illumination oozed like pain from the walls. The walls themselves looked like they had been shaped by a brutal blade, cut angrily into facets that cast radiance in all directions. From the ceiling, the light was thrown back like a spray of shattered glass by stalactites that resembled burnished metal: reflections so bright and broken that they seemed to swirl on the verge of madness. Some of the stalactites, too, had shattered, leaving gaps like gouges overhead, scattering their debris across the floor. Around the cave's borders, tunnels opened like unuttered screams. Among them were scattered a few boulders that resembled the stones where Covenant had left Jeremiah, displaced by violence or theurgy from where they belonged.\n\nHere was the source of the gutrock's fracturing, here in Kiril Threndor. Those cracks were memories of terrible battles, recollections expressed in the language of wounds. Within the chamber, more splits spread insanity across the floor. From their depths, darkness swirled into the air. In places, the surface had buckled, tilting slabs at tormented angles.\n\nBut the fissures did not touch the time-worn dais in the center of the chamber. Flaws avoided that stone as if they had been denied; as if no form of harm could alter the fundamental substance and meaning of the low platform.\n\nTwo steps into Kiril Threndor, Covenant halted. He no longer noticed the stench of attar. He did not regard the allure of cracks in the floor, or the entrances from which Cavewights might pour forth at any moment. He was transfixed where he stood by the figure on the dais.\n\nThe sight was as _wrong_ as a knife to the heart; as hurtful as the piercing which had twice ended his life, once in the woods behind Haven Farm, once here at the Despiser's hands.\n\nRoger Covenant.\n\nObviously waiting, Roger faced his father. A grin like a rictus stretched his fleshy cheeks. The slouch of his shoulders and the heaviness of his torso betrayed his disregard for his mortal flesh; his disdain. On his shirt and pants, he bore the scorch-marks of his battles with Linden. The puckered skin of healed burns showed through holes and tears in the fabric. For his deeds, he had paid a price in pain\u2014\n\nHis hands were empty of weapons, of any instruments of power. But his right was Kastenessen's, hot and ruddy as lava, flagrant with power. It blazed like the jaws of the _skurj_. It, too, must have cost him excruciation.\n\nHe gnashed his teeth at Covenant. \"Well, hi, Dad.\" His mouth sneered; but his voice was a tortured thing, twisted on a rack of unappeasable desires until its joints opened and its sinews tore. \"You took your own sweet time getting here.\"\n\nHis eyes were Lord Foul's, carious as rotting fangs.\n\n## 10.\n\nAll Lost Women\n\nLinden had chosen this. It was not a reaction to the Despiser's manipulations: it was her own doing. She had stepped off the path of his desires. If she served him now, she could not pretend that she had been misled or tricked.\n\nHer choice. Her doing, for good or ill.\n\nAnd she had promised herself that she would remember; that she would allow no effect of shame or pain, horror or failure, to confuse the fact that she had acted of her own free will. She would not blame Lord Foul, or fault Thomas for failing to spare her, or think less of Jeremiah because he had been weak.\n\nShe had made that promise to herself. Nevertheless she forgot it in the first instant of translation. She forgot who she was, and why she was here, and what she had intended to do. Such things were washed out of her by a scend of enchantment. Her world had become magic and majesty, and nothing was required of her except wonder. Something more than translation had occurred. She had entered a realm of transubstantiation where delight was the only possible response. Here she found contentment in awe and tranquility, the ineffable mansuetude of the redeemed.\n\nThe rich rug luxurious under her feet was distilled solace. It overlapped others as hieratic as arrases depicting scenes of worship, humility, sanctification: tableaux in which the devout ached with joy. She could have gleaned comfort endlessly from each of them; but her eyes and her heart were enticed by rapture on all sides. Somehow the richness of the rugs was both complete and transparent, solid and evanescent. They lay on a lucent floor pristine as aspiration, enduring as marble. Enhanced by the intervening substance of the rugs, the stone seemed polished to the point of incandescence. She was only able to bear its marmoreal radiance because she had been exalted to the tone and timbre of her surroundings.\n\nGazing around her, rapt and delirant, she saw a space like the ballroom of a grandiloquent palace; saw beauties in such profusion that she could not hope to appreciate them all. Loveliness effloresced in every direction. Near the walls, braziers of burnished gold offered flames redolent with incense and purity. Among the rugs, delicate filigree shafts like spun glass clean as crystal stretched upward to form arms that supported chandeliers as bright as the splendor of worlds. Beyond them, wide staircases graceful as wings swept toward higher levels and finer glories. Yet their treads and their immaculate banisters did not call her to rise and explore. She was satisfied where she stood, more than satisfied; already so dazzled and enraptured that any ascension\u2014any movement\u2014would diminish her perfect peace.\n\nHigh above her, mosaics sang like choirs: a reverent hymnody audible only as praise. They displayed constellations and firmaments like burgeoning creations, like galaxies and stars and worlds always new.\n\nYet more delicious to her senses than any other munificence was the fountain. A geyser in the center of the floor, it reached high, flawless and faceted as a single diamond, until it spread its arching waters wide: a feathered spray of droplets as precise as wrought gems. There no small jewel fell. Each clinquant bead hung in abeyance, suspended, motionless. Static and lovely as ice, the fountain displayed its own splendor: an icon of transcended time, sealed against change as though its perfection had been made eternal\u2014and eternally numinous.\n\nBespelled, she gazed about her like a figure in a dream, forgetting life and love and peril for the sake of an ecstasy that surpassed comprehension.\n\nBut Stave stood in front of her. She did not know him; or she did not see him; or he had no significance capable of distracting her from wonder. The scar of his lost eye dragged a frown across his visage. His hands gripped her shoulders and conveyed nothing.\n\n\"Chosen,\" he said as if he spoke from the far side of the world. \"Linden Avery. Will you not hear me?\"\n\nShe gazed past him or through him as though he were only a figment, too tenuous to require notice. He may have been no more than a blur in her vision. Soon her sight would clear, and he would be gone.\n\n\"This place is known to me.\" Every word vanished as soon as he uttered it, absorbed by astonishment. \"I have learned to set aside its power.\" For no apparent reason, he studied her closely. \"It is known to you as well, Linden. We stand where we have stood before, among the mazements of the Lost Deep. Then, however, Earthpower and the Staff of Law enabled you to turn aside from enchantment. Now you must reclaim yourself by other means.\"\n\nIn a small voice, Linden asked, \"Why am I here?\" But she was not talking to Stave. She simply did not understand how she had come to be blessed by so much beauty.\n\nHis frown deepened. \"A query with many replies, Linden. One is that I have guided you hither, knowing no better place for your purpose.\" He hesitated; gave a slight _Haruchai_ shrug. \"I have no apt language for such matters. It is my belief that translations by wild magic are directed by clarity of intent. Heretofore our courses and destinations were determined by the Ranyhyn. Matters obscure to us were plain to them. Now we have found our way unaided.\"\n\nHis hands tightened on her shoulders. \"Here, however, you did not choose our course. The burden of clarity was mine. As I once conveyed you to Revelstone without your consent, so also I have brought you to the Lost Deep. If I have erred, the fault is mine.\"\n\nHe was fading. Linden could hardly see him. By slow increments, an exquisite pleasure erased him from her sight. Soon her eyes would be clear, as untrammeled as the palace, and as precious. She wanted nothing in life except to see and hear and touch and smell\u2014\n\n\"Why have we come?\" he continued as if he did not know that he was almost undone. \"Another reply is that the bane rises. Though the distance is great, Her emanations are distinct. Seeking your son, Linden, we roused She Who Must Not Be Named. Thereafter it was conceivable that She would relapse to somnolence. She had been deprived of her prey by the Timewarden. Doubtless Her wrath was great. Yet She had also fed upon the soul of High Lord Elena. At another time, She might have resumed Her ancient sleep.\n\n\"Yet now I perceive that She could not. The flood which was released against the _skurj_ has filled the abyss of Her slumber. Indeed, those waters are withheld from the Lost Deep only by the lingering theurgies of the Viles. Such an inundation cannot harm a being such as She Who Must Not Be Named. Nonetheless it vexes Her. Therefore She rises.\"\n\nThe man's tone became more urgent, although he existed only as vagueness. \"She _rises_ , Linden. And I fear\u2014\" His fading hands shook her. \"Linden, hear me. I am _Haruchai_. I fear nothing, yet I tremble. I fear that the bane will ascend to Kiril Threndor. I fear that She will discern the scent of Corruption and the puissance of the Timewarden. I fear that She will fall upon them in fury and lay the Timewarden waste.\n\n\"For that reason I have guided you here. It is my hope that you will call out to Her with wild magic. It is my prayer, Linden, that you will draw Her to us before She nears Kiril Threndor.\"\n\nHe must have wanted something from her. Why else did he mar the palace with his voice, his hands, his insistence? But each word evaporated as soon as his mouth shaped it. He might as well have made no sound. He persisted in her sight as nothing more than a dwindling imperfection among the meretricious entrancements of the ballroom.\n\n\"Linden.\" Although he sounded as calm as snow-clad peaks in clear sunshine, he conveyed a subtle desperation. \"You must hear me. All of life tilts on the edge of a blade, and I am afraid. My hand remains able to strike you, and to strike again, until I am heeded. Alas, my heart will not suffer it. You must hear me.\"\n\nShe did not. She had forgotten him. She had almost forgotten that language had meaning. His words slipped past her. Then they were gone. Only ensorcelments remained.\n\nBut Stave was not alone. At his back, an array of creatures crouched in the act of rising to their hind legs. Black things, no more than a dozen. And grey ones, smaller, half that number. Above the cruel slits of their mouths, they had no eyes. Wet nostrils dominated their faces. Pointed ears twitched on their skulls. Their heads and bodies were hairless.\n\nStave turned and bowed to them as if they had earned homage.\n\nThey made chittering sounds like his, language without meaning. One of them taller than the others held a jerrid of black iron, a scepter like a short javelin. A fuming liquid as dire as poison dripped from the iron. The tall creature snuffled at Linden, then turned away. With low growls and snarls, it used the point of its jerrid to sketch incomprehensible symbols in the air. Acid drops scattered here and there; but they evaporated before they touched the floor.\n\nFor a moment without measure or duration, nothing changed. Linden remembered nothing. Only the ballroom endured. Like Stave, the creatures faded, the black ones and the grey. Like him, they were almost gone.\n\nThen a subtle tremor ran through the fountain, a vibration so brief and untenable that it defied sight. She could not believe that she had seen it. She hardly recognized her own fright.\n\nSlow and horrid as a plunge from a nightmare precipice, a single jewel of water high in the fountain began to fall.\n\nLight shone all around the small bead. It looked like an epiphany; like the essence of the Earth's gems; like the last gleam of the ravaged heavens. It fell and fell forever, infinite and fatal; and while Linden watched it, her heart did not beat, her lungs did not draw breath. When at last it reached the floor, the largesse of the rugs, it made a tiny splash: the first faint quiver of a world about to shatter.\n\nSomewhere in the distance, hundreds of leagues away, the Worm\u2014\n\nLinden blinked. A small frown knotted her forehead. Her heart offered up a weak beat.\n\nThe creatures continued their guttural invocation\u2014and another bead of water began its interminable demise\u2014and Stave stood in front of her again, clutching her shoulders.\n\nWhen he repeated her name, she wanted to weep.\n\nA second little splash. A few ripples. In rugs? In marble?\n\nA third rare jewel of water, and a fourth, dropping from perfection into time and ruin. When they struck, they made a pattering sound, delicate and awful.\n\nOh, God, she thought. Stave. The Worm. The bane.\n\nUr-viles and Waynhim. Once again, they had come to her rescue when she did not know how to save herself.\n\nIn this place, rescue was an atrocity. It destroyed a supernal achievement, the triumph of lore which had preserved the palace through the ages. And the effect on Linden was no less cruel. Raindrops brought back memories like devastations. Thoughts were carnage and cataclysm.\n\nJeremiah. Thomas!\n\nSomehow she reached out to the _Haruchai_. Her voice was softer than the accumulating drip of the fountain. Her eyes should have been full of tears.\n\n\"What did you say? About the bane?\"\n\nHis back straightened. His chin rose proudly. His eye shone.\n\n\"She rises, Linden. If you do not call out to Her, She will assail the Timewarden. She will consume your son.\"\n\n_Damn_ it! Linden wished that Stave had hit her. She wanted to pummel herself. She had chosen to face her worst fears. Then she had forgotten all about them. And while she had lost herself among marvels, the Earth's peril had increased beyond bearing.\n\nShe Who Must Not Be Named might take Thomas and Jeremiah.\n\nIn a different life, a bullet had struck Linden. A scar over her heart matched the perfect circle in her shirt. There was no going back. Choices made could not be recanted.\n\nThomas had unforeseeable strengths. He might survive. But mere Law and Earthpower would not suffice to ward Jeremiah.\n\nFor Linden's sake, or for the Earth's, the ur-viles and Waynhim had disrupted the prolonged theurgies of the Viles; sacrificed their own heritage of splendor. Around the ballroom, a light drizzle fell. The fountain cast a fine mist that gathered into droplets. Drips leaked from the music of the ceiling. Ripples ran down the stairways. Gradually the chandeliers released their lights. Spots of water stippled the woven rugs, the immemorial floor.\n\nNo going back. Now or never.\n\nGod help me.\n\nLinden delayed only long enough to say to the ur-viles and Waynhim, to the eyeless features of the loremaster, \"You keep helping me, no matter how much it costs, and I still don't know how to repay you.\" Then she wheeled away.\n\nClenching her fists, she raised her face to the leagues of blind stone above the Lost Deep. Rain spattered her cheeks and forehead. Its sheer age stung her eyes. In her mouth, the drops tasted like dust.\n\nAs if she had always known what she could do, she invoked her wedding band. She had no more use for despair and recrimination; inadequacy. Only power would serve. Like a woman screaming, she flung a roar of wild magic into Mount Thunder's gutrock.\n\n\" _I'm here!_ You lost me once! Come get me now!\"\n\nHer theurgy could have torn vast stone to powder; could have brought the weight of the mountain crashing into the caverns of the Lost Deep. But her health-sense was precise. She did not hurl silver against the rock: she tuned it to pass through Mount Thunder's substance, sharpened it to a pitch that only the bane would be able to hear.\n\n\"Come and _get_ me! I can save you!\"\n\n_Melenkurion_ Skyweir was already falling. She felt its massive collapse like atmospheric pressure on her skin, heard it like the grumble of impossible thunder. At any moment, the Worm would begin to drink EarthBlood from the world's heart.\n\nSlowly the drizzle became rain. Details among the mosaics blurred and ran as their melodies dwindled to liquid. The staircases slumped, shrugging thin streams from their sides. The shafts of the chandeliers bowed as if they had lost faith in themselves. Rills curled around Linden's boots, flowing nowhere. Argent made raindrops as bright as exploding stars.\n\n\"I can tell you how to save yourself!\"\n\nShe felt Stave's hand on her shoulder. His touch seemed almost diffident as he asked for her attention. But she did not acknowledge him until her power and her shouting failed; until she could no longer sustain her summons.\n\nSilver stains danced like little suns across her vision as she turned back to her friend.\n\nThrough a veil of rainfall, Stave told her, \"It is enough. If your call is not heard, no other will suffice.\"\n\nThe ur-viles and Waynhim barked to each other like dogs, excited or fearful. The loremaster gestured resignation or encouragement with its jerrid. Water glistened on the skin of the creatures as if the fluid were dying, giving up its last magic.\n\n\"Therefore I must speak,\" continued the former Master. \"I will not be vouchsafed another occasion to do so.\"\n\nLinden glared and squinted, trying to clear the spots from her eyes. Wet hair straggled across her cheeks.\n\n\"I must state plainly, Linden, that you have become wondrous in my sight. Here my life is forfeit. It may be that the bane will heed you. Me She will not suffer. In Her sight, all men are betrayers. I will be devoured.\"\n\nWater streamed on Linden's face, scattered from the lines of her jaw. Drops snapped against her skin. Here my life is forfeit. How had she failed to consider this? For hours, she had imagined her intentions as though they threatened only her. But of course Stave was right. He could not withstand the bane. She Who Must Not Be Named would not tolerate him.\n\n\"As farewell,\" her final companion told her, \"I must say aloud that I regret nothing. My fears are gone. You risk much, as you have ever done. Whatever now ensues, know that I am made proud by my place at your side.\"\n\nShe Who Must Not Be Named only slew men; only killed and ate them. She had no other use for them. Women She consumed in an entirely different fashion. She craved the torment of their living spirits when their bodies were destroyed. Her hunger was for the anguish of their souls, undying and endlessly tormented. It resembled or confirmed or justified Her own agony.\n\nIn some sense, literally or metaphorically, the bane was here because Lord Foul had betrayed Her; seduced and ruined Her with lies; gaoled Her within Time. Now She could only suffer\u2014and feed on the sufferings of any woman who came within Her grasp. _Diassomer with fear and dread_ \u2014Unforgiven Elena, Covenant's daughter by rape. Emereau Vrai, Kastenessen's mortal lover. An Insequent whom the Ardent had called the Auriference. Hundreds or thousands of women across the ages of the Earth. As far as She was concerned, all women and every love had been betrayed.\n\nIf She had not forgotten Her true name\u2014Her real scope and power\u2014She would have brought everything to an end long ago.\n\nLinden peered through splashes and rivulets at Stave. The rain was becoming torrential as millennia of lore failed, unloosed by these few ur-viles and Waynhim according to the arcane dictates of their Weird. Lashing drops and spray fraught with residues stung like acid. She tried to find her voice; swallowed bitterness so that she might shout refusals at her friend. If he would not ask the Demondim-spawn for protection, she meant to plead on his behalf.\n\nBut she did not. She was already overwhelmed.\n\nI am made proud by my place at your side.\n\nIn the small space between instants, the rainwater running over her body became vermin. It became centipedes as long as her hand, feasting maggots, spiders with hundreds of pincers, lice that scuttled and squirmed, worms burrowing. Noisome things crawled and clawed and pecked everywhere, intimate as lovers, avid as eaters of death. Desperate to quash the feeding, she thrashed like a madwoman, hit herself frantically, dug at her scalp until she drew blood.\n\nStave may have shouted her name. If he did, the rain slapped his voice from the air.\n\nCascades filled her mouth with biting insects. They laid their eggs in her eyes, breeding. When she tried to breathe, she gasped abhorrence into her lungs and retched. Beetles and centipedes scuttled down her throat.\n\n\u2014 _written in water_. The Despiser had named her fate. Water was horror. It was eager excruciation. It transformed her to carrion and shrieking.\n\nNow Lord Foul laughed at her from an insurmountable distance. _You have become the daughter of my heart_. Laughed as he must have laughed at She Who Must Not Be Named. Soon Time would begin to crumble, and he would be free. Linden had brought this on herself. She had given it to the world as if it were the sum and consummation of her life. It would never stop. Across every inch of her flesh, it drove her mad. She could not bear it. If she had been given a knife, she would not have hesitated to flay the skin from her bones.\n\nSuch desecration should have finished her. But it was endless. It could always get worse.\n\nAnd while Linden flailed in torrents, the bane shouldered Her way into the cavern.\n\nHer power was immense. No doubt She could have shaped Herself to slip through the passages of the Lost Deep. Yet She did not. Damage suited Her: She liked wreckage in Her wake. As She entered, the rolling bulk of Her fury made a ruin of the stone. With every shrug, Her advance flung rubble at the walls. Her many faces were etched in fire. Mute screams stretched their mouths. Torment gouged their eyes.\n\nWithout knowing what she did, Linden stopped thrashing. The scale of the bane's extremity and rage demanded her absolute attention. Suddenly worms and maggots were no longer sensations. They became insights.\n\nWhen She Who Must Not Be Named spoke, the impact of Her voice seemed to stop Linden's heart. The ferocity of the sound changed the rain to steam and scalding.\n\n\"Do you speak to me?\" The roar crushed Linden's hearing. \"Do you speak to me of _save_? _Do you dare?_ My pain cannot be redeemed. It can only feed and _grow_.\n\n\"You are mine. I will relish you. I require only a moment to chew the marrow from the bones of the man who has betrayed you to me. Endure your suffering. It will be brief. Then I will consume you, and you will know the ecstasy of eternal woe and regret\"\u2014She gathered Herself to cry like a beast\u2014\" _and agony_!\"\n\nLinden could not protest. The bane's intent was just. Linden deserved centipedes and spiders. Horror was her true heritage: the legacy of her pitiful, self-pitying parents. By audacity and blind carelessness and insufficiency, she had awakened both the Worm of the World's End and her own worst nightmares. She had brought this doom upon herself.\n\nNevertheless it was intolerable. The bane would kill _Stave_ , her friend when she had no other. The knowledge that he was about to die for her sins was more than she could bear.\n\nDays ago, the foundations of her life had begun to shift. Now they settled into new alignments. Like a woman rising from her own grave, she changed. In a rush, her whole reality was transformed. Faster than the febrile stutter of her heart, maggots and squirming and misery became a wail of wild magic.\n\nShe had no power to equal the bane's. She Who Must Not Be Named transcended everything mortal. Nevertheless Linden was Thomas Covenant's wife. He had wed her in love and joy. In passion and courage, he had made of her a rightful white gold wielder. She was not helpless.\n\nSwift as her pulse in her veins, she spun silver puissance around her treasured friend, caught him in a fist of bright flame: a fist or a circle. She had no _krill_ to enable a translation, but she had other resources. She had the unthinking reflexes which had allowed her to step outside the sequences of time during the collapse of Kevin's Watch. She had the whetted senses with which she had created _caesures_ without stumbling into Joan's madness. And she was not hampered by her husband's necessary reluctance.\n\nWhile the bane surged forward, Linden grasped Stave and _threw_ him. Away from this moment. Away from this place, this stone, this fate. Trusting his instincts\u2014his _clarity of intent_ \u2014to choose his destination, she spared him the cost of her choices.\n\nPerhaps he would forgive her.\n\nWhen he was gone, she wrapped herself in wild argent a heartbeat before the bane pounced on her, shrieking.\n\nThe ur-viles and Waynhim did not try to help her now. Shrouded in rain, they stood apart like witnesses: creatures condemned to watch the extinction of their obscure hopes.\n\nThe bane's rage took Linden, snatched her into incandescence and infernal torment. But the bane did not _have_ her. Vermin and pestilence did not have her. She was cloaked in her own fire, cocooned heart and soul. Within the bane's appalling body, she was not devoured. Instead she left the sensations of horror and eaten death behind as if they had become irrelevant.\n\nAccording to Kasreyn of the Gyre, white gold was an imperfect tool able to fashion perfection in a flawed world. But she did not seek perfection. She wanted only to preserve herself until she could at least try to keep her promise.\n\nShe thought of herself as an embolism, a tiny clot or bubble in the flagrant bloodstream of She Who Must Not Be Named. Untouched because she was trivial. Wild magic warded her against time, against mortality. She controlled nothing. She could not harm the bane. But she could remain herself. She could think and strive. The vast being roared in frustration and bafflement, thwarted hunger; but Linden ignored Her.\n\nLinden Avery had chosen this fate. She knew why she had done so. She knew that she was lost. She would die as soon as her resolve and her fire failed. Nevertheless she did not falter. While she could, she pursued salvation.\n\nThrough the tremendous roil of wracked souls, the seething turmoil of the bane's victims, Linden searched for Elena.\n\nElena Lena-daughter, child of rape, prey of Despite. Seeking to oppose Lord Foul, she had broken the Law of Death to raise Kevin Landwaster's spectre\u2014and by that crime, she had become the Despiser's servant. When Linden had seen her among the Dead in Andelain, Elena had still borne the galls and wounds of her self-Desecration. Yet Linden had given her no pity, no kindness. Of Elena's later sacrifice to the bane, Linden knew only what she had been told. But she remembered too well what she herself had done to the first Law-Breaker. Now she considered it the least forgivable of her sins.\n\nAs if she had the right to judge\u2014 _she_ , who had set the world's last crisis in motion\u2014she had denied to Elena the understanding and consolation which Berek and Damelon and Loric had given Kevin. Instead of mercy, she had offered Elena only demands: the selfish expostulations of her own guilt.\n\n_Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It doesn't accomplish anything._\n\nThat memory still made Linden cringe. It had brought her here. Because of it\u2014and because the implications of carrion required this\u2014she had forsaken her husband and her son and the imminent destruction of the Earth.\n\nThroughout the bane's clamoring chaos, she drifted, searching for Covenant's daughter.\n\nScores of faces wailed in front of her and fled. Hundreds. Thousands. She believed that she knew how to save them all. Or perhaps she only hoped. But she had to start with Elena, who had been four times betrayed: by the circumstances of her birth, by her own actions in the cave of the EarthBlood, by Linden, and by being cast into the inferno of the bane's mad agony.\n\nElena was here. Finding her was only a matter of time\u2014and Linden was immune to time while her strength lasted.\n\nWhen the aghast ravage of Elena's face appeared, Linden clutched it with silver before the spectre could be swept away.\n\nElena did not struggle, yet Linden could barely hold her. The bane's wrath lashed the eidolon in every direction. She Who Must Not Be Named pressed down on Linden's shield with all of Her accumulated mass: the weight of ages. Only Linden's cocoon preserved her. Only wild magic kept Elena with her, face to face.\n\n\"Oh, Elena.\" She spoke in flames. She had no other voice for her remorse and shame. Her words were the lament of her wedding band: the grief of an absolute promise broken absolutely. \"I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve what I did to you. You and Caer-Caveral brought Thomas to me. I should have been grateful. But I couldn't think about anything except how much I hurt. I treated you like it was your fault. I wanted you to be stronger than I was. I wanted you to forgive me, but I couldn't say that. I can't forgive myself.\n\n\"I'm like Kevin. I chose my own Desecration. You just made a mistake. You don't deserve\u2014\"\n\nElena's cries made no sound that Linden could hear. Nevertheless the High Lord's protests silenced Linden. They appeared like avatars in her mind; like reifications of every injury which had ever flensed Elena's heart.\n\nWhy have you come? My suffering is enough. I do not desire the sufferings of others. I did not call you to this doom.\n\nTerrible pressures distorted Elena's features: stretched them until they tore; compressed them into granite knots. Her eyes were wounds.\n\nDo you conceive that I was compelled to eternal horror? The Dead are not so cruel. I acceded to the pleas of Sunder and Hollian out of love for my father, and because you are his beloved, and because you must be preserved.\n\nLinden Avery, you multiply my torment. You have damned yourself. I must go mad, as She is mad. Why have you come?\n\nAt an unconceivable distance, the thunder of _Melenkurion_ Skyweir's destruction boomed. Surely the Worm had begun its feeding at the wellspring of the Earth's Blood? Surely the world's remaining life could be measured in heartbeats?\n\nLinden did not care. She had been trained as a physician, a surgeon, a healer. She knew in her bones that her first and only responsibility was to find an answer for the need in front of her.\n\n\"To free you,\" she answered in conflagration. \"I'll free as many of you as I can. I'll tell the bane how to free Herself. But I have to start with you. You're the one I hurt.\"\n\nThomas Covenant's daughter, as precious as her own son.\n\nElena's wailing was inaudible. Still Linden heard her. Her voice seemed to burst from her eyes, from the veins throbbing in her temples.\n\nYou cannot. Do you hear? You cannot. We are souls. Her anguish binds us. As we are, we cannot be divided from Her. We must live again to be free of Her. We must have flesh. We must be truly separate, spirit from spirit, thought from thought. Pain from pain. To release us, you must unmake our deaths.\n\nWe cannot be freed!\n\nThat cry rent Linden's heart. It nearly snapped her resolve. For a moment, she could only gape at Elena. _Unmake_ your death? _How?_ Elena was not Thomas: she was not imprinted on Linden's nerves, Linden's needs, Linden's love. Her body was gone beyond comprehension. And Linden did not have either the _krill_ or the Staff. She had only her ring.\n\nDon't tell me that I have to leave you like this!\n\nBut then her preconceptions shifted. She had spent her life making promises that she did not know how to keep. She had never sufficed to keep them. And yet she had accomplished more than she could have imagined. But not because _she_ was more\u2014or not only because she was more. No, she had been able to do so much because she was not alone. From Liand and Anele and Stave to the Ranyhyn and the Swordmainnir and Thomas himself, she had been aided in every deed. She had been given gifts\u2014\n\nThey had taught her truths which should have been obvious, but which had nonetheless eluded her. Berek Halfhand had seen Gallows Howe in her, a mound of ruin made barren by bitterness and slaughter. In Garroting Deep, however, she had discovered a deeper truth beneath the drenched dirt.\n\nMore than bloodshed and revenge, the olden forest had yearned for restitution. The trees would have turned their backs on killing entirely if they could have recovered their ravaged expanse and majesty.\n\nShe understood that now. She recognized, if the bane did not, that healing was both more arduous and more worthy than retribution. And sometimes healing required measures as extreme as the patient's plight. Surgeons amputated or extirpated. They performed sacrifices. They transplanted. They did not judge the cost. They only did what they could.\n\nAnd even here, in the Lost Deep at the onset of the World's End, Linden was not alone.\n\nIn a blaze of wild magic, she reeled against the current of the bane's savagery, dragging Elena with her.\n\nThe bane's resistance was brutal and blind, undirected. She Who Must Not Be Named could shatter entire landscapes, but She did not know how to fight within Herself. She had never needed to do so before. Linden seemed to struggle endlessly\u2014and to find what she sought in an instant.\n\nThrough the flame and hunger and abhorrence of the bane's boundaries, she saw the Demondim-spawn.\n\nUnder a deluge of collapsing theurgies, the ur-viles and the Waynhim stood together as if they had finally become kin, united by a common interpretation of their Weird. As one, they studied the bane with senses other than sight; or they studied Linden.\n\nTime and again, they had helped her when she had not known that she needed their gifts. Like Thomas. Like the Land itself.\n\nPeering at the creatures, she understood at last that they had not unbound the ancient magicks of the Viles merely so that she would be able to remember and act. They had cast down their purest heritage for reasons greater than her needs and desires. Their Weird demanded more. They had undone the wonders of the Lost Deep for the same reason that they had aided her and the Land repeatedly: so that they would be vulnerable now. So that they would be accessible\u2014\n\n_If you can ever figure out a way to let me know what you need or want from me\u2014_\n\nWhat had the ur-viles and the Waynhim ever wanted, except to escape their loathing for their own forms?\n\nLinden waited until the loremaster met her gaze; until the tall creature nodded its assent. Then she did what she could for Elena.\n\nRisking the shroud of wild magic which protected her, Linden flung Elena out of the bane; tossed her like a wisp of hope or a kept promise into the waiting embrace of the loremaster.\n\nThe creature appeared to swallow. The spectre of Elena seemed to vanish. Linden could not be sure. She Who Must Not Be Named was roaring: a howl that stunned Linden's chest, rattled her mind in its chamber of bone, stopped her ears and eyes and mouth and lungs. She hardly knew who or what she was.\n\nTime was fraying at the edges around her, starting to unravel. Soon its deterioration would unweave the world. Reality would lose its shape. Existence would cease.\n\nStill wild magic shielded her. Her own needs shielded her; her own loves. She was not done.\n\nShe grasped the first spectre shrieking past her: a woman who could have been anyone, Diassomer Mininderain, Sara Clint, Joan herself, anyone at all. As she had with Elena, she gave the savaged soul to the loremaster, or to all of the Demondim-spawn. Then she reached for another victim.\n\nBefore Linden could do more, the bane found a defense. Her ferocity seemed to have no beginning and no end as She began to compress Herself, condensing Her might and bulk around Linden, making Herself more solid. Linden no longer drifted on currents of fire and fury. Pressures great enough to rive mountains clamped down on her. Forces which dwarfed her threatened to rupture her eardrums, burst vessels in her lungs, squeeze blood from her eyes. Lost women were held motionless in their unutterable screams.\n\nBut Linden did not need ears or eyes or air to hear She Who Must Not Be Named.\n\n\"You diminish me! You dare to diminish me! You will not! You speak of save, but your purpose is _betrayal_. I will not permit you!\"\n\nLinden had no voice. It had been crushed out of her. She could speak only with wild magic: the blazing paradox, _save or damn_ , which formed the keystone of life.\n\n\"This isn't betrayal. It's kindness. I can save all of these poor women. I can tell you how to save yourself.\"\n\n\" _How?_ \" The bane's roar was a sneer, contemptuous as vitriol. \"You are nothing! What do you offer that I have not attempted endlessly?\"\n\nLinden could not move. She was effectively dead. The bane's power was too much for her. Nevertheless she answered.\n\n\"The Arch of Time is breaking. If you don't believe me, look for yourself. You can see it. The Worm of the World's End is drinking the EarthBlood. Everything is going to be destroyed. Your prison is starting to fall apart.\n\n\"While it falls, you can slip out. You'll be free. But you have to go now. Otherwise I don't know what might happen. You belong to eternity. If you don't leave\u2014if you stay inside Time\u2014you might be extinguished along with everything else.\"\n\nPerhaps She Who Must Not Be Named craved extinction, an eternal end to Her suffering. If so, Linden had failed. But at least her own anguish would end as well.\n\n\"All I want,\" she insisted in fire, \"is to release your women. You don't need them anymore. Not now. They're part of this world.\" They were dross, imperfections. \"If you take them with you, they'll only hinder you. They may even prevent you. You won't be truly free.\"\n\nThe bane contracted around her. Terrible strength made pulp of her flesh and organs, her bones, her mind. Nothing existed for her except the raw rage of She Who Must Not Be Named.\n\n\"Fool! Madwoman! Treacher! Do you conceive that I desire _freedom_? You do not know me. Freedom is _agony_. It is _abhorrence_. It is not _redemption_. I am anguish because I have forgotten who I am.\n\n\"The destruction of this world is nothing to me. I cannot die. _I must have my true name!_ \"\n\nConvulsions shook Mount Thunder to its roots. Shocks distorted the definitions of existence. Slabs fell from the ceiling and were pulverized. Granite sifted like ash onto the heads and shoulders of the ur-viles and Waynhim. Stone lurched under their feet. Yet they stood as if they were rooted by pride: legs straight, backs regal, arms open to welcome released souls. The loremaster's eerie visage shone with an inward exaltation.\n\nLinden felt ripples like imminent _caesures_ trembling toward her, confusing the structure of instants. There were no risks left except this one.\n\n\"Then give me Emereau Vrai.\" Kastenessen's lover: the only woman who had ever been loved by an _Elohim_. He had given her some of his magicks. How else had she been able to create the _merewives_? Perhaps he had also revealed secrets which no one mortal\u2014which none of the bane's other victims\u2014could have known. Why else had his people considered his crime so heinous that he deserved his Durance? Linden had heard long ago that he had been punished for harming an ordinary woman with his love; but she did not trust that explanation. When had the _Elohim_ ever been so protective of individual lives? Emereau Vrai might know\u2014And if she did, the Demondim-spawn might be lorewise enough to understand her. \"Let me show you that I'm telling the truth.\"\n\nI'm a woman, damn it! I don't want to seduce you.\n\nThe bane contracted in fury. Her vehemence increased. It was unbearable, unanswerable. Though Linden clung to wild magic\u2014to her wedding band\u2014to the promise of Thomas Covenant\u2014she was little more than a spark, a fading ember within the virulence of She Who Must Not Be Named. Hundreds or thousands of women shrieked their pain and despair, but they made no sound.\n\nThen the pressure eased. Yowling to Herself, the bane receded slightly. Linden remembered to breathe. She blinked at the blood in her eyes.\n\nAn excoriated face appeared in front of her. A voice that registered only in Linden's mind said, I am Emereau Vrai. Does Kastenessen love me still? I am betrayed to this doom, but not by him. It was his kindred who made of me a plaything for damnation. All that I have done, I did because he was taken from me.\n\nYou have spoken my name. Know that I forgive nothing. Alone among this host, I approve my fate. She Who Must Not Be Named is my god. My anguish is worship.\n\nLinden might have said, Of course he still loves you. In his heart, he never let you go. He made himself insane for you. But she did not have the strength. Her life and her will were almost gone. She needed the last of herself to clasp Emereau Vrai and send Kastenessen's lover into the arms of the Demondim-spawn.\n\nThey accepted her gladly, barking their homage amid the devastation of the Lost Deep.\n\nThen Linden was done. Wild magic drained out of her, and she was swept unshielded into the excoriation of the bane. As far as she knew, she only remained alive because she had slipped into a fracture between instants. When the currents of the bane's fury carried her back into the sequences of time, she would die.\n\nYet that fracture\u2014or some other pause\u2014held her. She did not die, or move, or think. Entire realms of pain slid past her as if she had become untouchable.\n\nAs if she had finally become worthy of her husband.\n\nWith senses other than vision or hearing or touch, she recognized the Demondim-spawn. They stood like kings in the wreckage of their eldritch legacy. Every visage among them now shone like the loremaster's. The proportions of their bodies were changing, as if they were becoming human; sharing the loremaster's transfigured spirit. They seemed taller.\n\nIn unison, they chanted at the bane: a paean or invocation as alien as their guttural speech, and as incomprehensible. With every rise and fall, every beat, their hymn appeared to accrue peril, as if they were hazarding more than their own destruction; as if the accumulation of their words threatened the pediments of reality. And yet their eagerness was plain on their eyeless faces. Somehow they had arrived at a crisis of extermination or apotheosis toward which they had striven for millennia.\n\nThey may have been extolling the bane\u2014or forbidding Her.\n\nHer response was a cry that sent spasms through the gutrock for leagues in all directions:\n\n\"I AM MYSELF!\"\n\nWhen Linden's heart beat again, she was no longer inside the bane. Instead she had the sensation that she was being carried; cradled with the tenderness of a lover. Powers that surpassed understanding protected her from the ruination of the Lost Deep.\n\nShe was given a moment to watch the bane release souls into the waiting arms and mouths and bodies of the ur-viles and the Waynhim: a torrent of long anguish so suddenly relieved that she could not name what became of it. Then the bane began to rise like music, intangible as mist, and potent as divinity, through Mount Thunder's stubborn foundations; and Linden was lifted with Her, passing among the mountain's complex rocks and cavities as if she were as transient as a wraith.\n\n## 11.\n\nOf My Deeper Purpose\n\nFor a moment that felt like a protracted sob, Jeremiah watched Covenant and Branl recede along the passage toward Kiril Threndor; watched the silver of the _krill_ fade like the last light in the world. Then he folded back down to the floor. Sitting with the Staff of Law gripped across his thighs and images of the Worm chewing at the edges of his mind, he stared into absolute blackness and tried to believe that he was not out of time. That the subtle trembling of the stone did not announce the collapse of the Arch. That Covenant would come back to him, since Linden had said that she would not. That he would be spared.\n\nHis mother had not even bothered to explain where she was going; or why.\n\nHe was angry; too angry to speak or grieve. Linden and Covenant had left him with an impossible burden, as if he were somehow responsible for saving the Earth. As if he were not still the same boy who had been too small to rescue his sisters from Lord Foul's bonfire.\n\nOn some level, he knew that he was also angry at himself. Angry because he hated his own childishness. Because he felt useless and stupid. Because he had not tried to get an explanation from Linden, or to change her mind, or to say goodbye. Angry because Covenant expected too much from him. But that anger belonged to some other Jeremiah\u2014to a piece of who he had become when Kastenessen had broken him\u2014not to the boy who had been left by his mother and his first friend.\n\nSure, he understood Covenant's reasons for walking away. _I don't want you that close to Lord Foul until I can distract him._ The words sounded like they made sense. _But I do want you to come. I need your help to keep him busy._ That was simple enough.\n\nBut it was not simple at all. Covenant had also said, _You aren't strong enough?_ _Neither am I_.\n\nAnd _Then let him be too strong. You don't need to beat_ _him_. And _Just do_ something _he doesn't expect._\n\nSo what was _that_ supposed to mean?\n\nAnd what would it accomplish? Nothing that Jeremiah or Linden or Covenant himself ever did would stop the Worm. It was already drinking EarthBlood: Jeremiah could feel or see or hear it. The whole world did not contain enough power to prevent its own death.\n\nWhat good would it do to make Lord Foul _miss his chance_?\n\n_As guerdon for his puerile valor\u2014_\n\nJeremiah was angry, all right. Of course he was angry.\n\nIn some ways, sitting there in Mount Thunder's stark midnight hurt more than being possessed by the _croyel_. That bitter creature had made him truly helpless, as unable as a corpse to affect how he was used or what he became. But he was not helpless _now_ : not literally. He had the Staff of Law and his own Earthpower. He could kill Cavewights. Eventually he could maybe teach himself how to help Coldspray and Grueburn recover. If nothing else, he should have been able to fill this cave with light and warmth. But the Staff's possibilities only taunted him. They emphasized all of the things that he could not do.\n\nCovenant and Linden might as well have asked Jeremiah to remake the world.\n\nGnawing his futility, he ignored the exhausted rasp of the Giants' breathing, the useless stoicism of the _Haruchai_ , the slow drip of blood from too many wounds. He had nothing to say to his companions. They could not help him.\n\n_Maybe Roger had the right idea. Maybe we should all try to become gods._\n\nThe idea was a cruel joke.\n\nHe should never have listened to Linden. He should never have accepted her Staff. He should have stayed in his graves, hidden. He would have been better off. Nobody would have expected him to produce miracles.\n\n\"Chosen-son?\" asked Rime Coldspray: an abraded whisper. \"Jeremiah? Do you hear me?\"\n\nHe wanted to snarl at her. The floor trembled under him. A fever gripped Mount Thunder's gutrock. In the distance, the implied roar and clatter as _Melenkurion_ Skyweir collapsed shook the world. He could feel it. Towering plumes of dust and ruin cast a pall across the Land's last dusk. He could see it.\n\nCovenant was wasting his time. Linden had thrown her life away.\n\nBut naturally the Ironhand and Grueburn did not hear what Jeremiah heard. He was alone.\n\n\"I'm busy,\" he muttered. \"What do you want?\"\n\n\"Chosen-son.\" Rime Coldspray made a palpable effort to speak clearly. \"I am loath to burden you further. We are not altogether sightless in such dark. And I do not doubt that the vision of the _Haruchai_ exceeds ours. Nonetheless some small flame would comfort our spirits.\n\n\"I do not ask a _caamora_ ,\" she added as if she feared that he would misunderstand. \"I am undone by weariness, and have no heart for lamentation. Yet fire and light would be a kindness.\" She sighed. \"Mayhap they would enable me to remain upright until we are summoned by the Timewarden's need.\"\n\n\"Aye,\" breathed Grueburn. She sounded too weak to say more.\n\n\"Then you should sit down.\" Jeremiah remembered seeing a couple of large boulders against the walls. They were invisible now, blank to his health-sense, indistinguishable from the surrounding stone; but the Giants could rest on them. \"Don't you feel it? The floor is starting to shake. The Worm is sending out ripples. The more it drinks, the bigger they'll get. Soon you won't be able to stand. You'll last longer if you don't try.\"\n\n\"Stone and Sea!\" the Ironhand panted. \"Does the world end? Does time remain for the Timewarden to accomplish his purpose? Have we come so far at such cost, and arrived too late?\"\n\n\"How should I know?\" countered Jeremiah sourly. \"I've never watched a world die before.\" Then he rasped, \"Of course we're too late. That's what all those Cavewights were for. Lord Foul sent them to slow us down.\"\n\nWe were doomed, he added to himself, as soon as Mom and Covenant started thinking I could hold up my end.\n\nBut Canrik said like a reprimand, \"He is the ur-Lord, the Unbeliever. Twice he has wrested life from the clutch of Corruption, for the Land if not for himself. We are Masters and have doubted much. Now we are done with uncertainty. While Branl remains able to speak to us, we will fear nothing.\"\n\nJeremiah grimaced. \"Fine. You do that. Fear nothing as long as you want. Just don't say I didn't warn you when this place starts to shake so hard you fall down.\"\n\nThe darkness of the cave and the darkness inside him mirrored each other. He could not distinguish between them.\n\n\"Ah, Chosen-son.\" Coldspray's voice seemed to scrape the floor. It sounded as unsteady as the stone. \"Your straits are indeed bitter. I know not how you may be consoled.\n\n\"Yet surely you also would find comfort in light.\"\n\n\"Don't you think I'm trying?\" Jeremiah retorted, caustic as lye. \"I've been trying ever since Mom\"\u2014he raised the Staff, slammed it back onto his thighs\u2014\"gave me this thing. But I can't change what I am. It's all just black.\"\n\nThe Staff had turned against him soon after he had begun trying to use its stained resources. Before that, his power had been the warm yellow of sunshine. He could have provided at least a taste of kindness for Coldspray and Grueburn. But his efforts with the wood had not changed it. Instead it had stripped away his denials, his defenses.\n\nIt had exposed the truth\u2014\n\nThe Ironhand sighed again. \"Ah, then.\" She may have shrugged. \"Lacking other illumination, I will emulate the certainty of the _Haruchai_. I will trust that Linden Giantfriend and Covenant Timewarden will exceed every expectation, as they have done from the first. And also\u2014\" She groaned softly. \"Also I will heed your counsel, Chosen-son. Until we are summoned to Kiril Threndor, I will rest.\"\n\nJeremiah heard the creak of her joints as she forced herself to move. He felt the mute crying of her muscles, the catch and strain of her respiration, the lurch of her pulse. With Grueburn, she went to the wall opposite him. The weight of their armor and swords seemed to make their shoulders moan as they lowered themselves to lean or sit, apparently on the boulders.\n\n\"The ur-Lord has begun,\" Canrik announced. \"He confronts two great evils. Branl now discerns that Corruption has taken possession of the ur-Lord's son. They stand as one.\" A moment later, he added, \"In such a conflict, Branl is of little use.\" His tone had a grim tinge. \"His flesh cannot withstand the fire and fury of the _skurj_. Therefore he cannot ward the ur-Lord.\"\n\nTaken possession, Jeremiah thought. Oh, joy. In spite of his own despair, he felt a reflexive pang for Covenant's son. When Roger lost his partnership with the _croyel_ , he must have decided that Lord Foul was his only path to godhood; his only way to survive the shattering of the Arch. But he should never have trusted the Despiser. He must have been so desperate\u2014\n\nThen Jeremiah forgot about Roger. The ur-Lord has begun. Time was running out\u2014and Jeremiah was still as helpless as a kid.\n\nMore than anything else at that moment, he wished that he had refused the Staff of Law. How could he have believed that _he_ would be able to make a difference?\n\nThe Worm appeared to drink slowly: it looked ecstatic. Nevertheless shockwaves multiplied among the Land's bones, ran through the gaps between instants. Far to the southwest, time was beginning to twist and flow. Mountains which had once leaned against _Melenkurion_ Skyweir slumped as if they were melting. Confusion distorted the foothills. Trees which had died thousands of years ago in Garroting Deep flashed into existence and blurred away.\n\n_Melenkurion_. The Seven Words. Abruptly Jeremiah decided to try them. He could not imagine what they might do, but he had to try _some_ thing. Anything would be better than simply waiting to die.\n\n_Melenkurion abatha. Duroc\u2014_\n\nHe blinked; scowled into the darkness. There was light in the cave. How had he not noticed it before? It was faint, yes. But still\u2014\n\nIt had to be new. It must have appeared while he was distracted by the Worm.\n\nFaint but distinct: a disturbing actinic blue, eerie as necromancy. Except where it was blocked by the Giants, it limned the boulders as if they had begun to bleed magic. And yet it conveyed nothing to Jeremiah's nerves. His health-sense insisted that the light did not exist.\n\nIn the strange glow, he saw the _Haruchai_. Vague as ghosts or will-o'-the-wisps, they faced Kiril Threndor with their backs to him and the Giants and the stones. He could feel their tension, their desire to aid Covenant.\n\nHe blinked again and again. What was causing that acrid blue? And why was it only visible to ordinary sight?\n\nHe tried to say Coldspray's name, or Grueburn's. He struggled to speak the Seven Words aloud. But his mouth and throat were suddenly too dry.\n\nHe and his companions were not alone in the cave.\n\nWith a ponderous ease that made him flinch, the boulders began to expand.\n\nThey unfolded like crouching behemoths: monsters of living rock that had concealed themselves by curling down until they resembled balls. Now they stood, pitching the Swordmainnir headlong. Jeremiah saw lumpen heads without necks, actinic eyes, massive arms and legs outlined like sketches in phosphorescent blue.\n\nSoundless as figments, voiceless as hallucinations, the creatures moved.\n\nColdspray and Grueburn crashed to the floor. At the sound, Canrik and Samil wheeled. As if they did not need time to gauge their peril, they sprang at the monsters.\n\nBurning eyes flared. Jeremiah watched in horror as one of the creatures moved to meet the Masters. A swinging arm hit Samil like a bludgeon, threw him against the wall. Jeremiah heard the horrid smack of smashed bone when Samil's skull split. The _Haruchai_ collapsed in a mess of blood and brains, sprawled lifeless as a doll.\n\nCanrik evaded a killing blow. He delivered a kick to the monster's shin, a strike that nearly broke his leg. Then he was swatted away like a clod of dirt. Only a frantic twist in the air kept him alive when he collided with the wall.\n\nAt the same time, the other stone-thing approached the Giants. Lifting one heavy foot, the creature stamped at Coldspray's back, tried to crush her spine.\n\nShe struggled to roll aside; failed. But her armor protected her. The stomp drove the air from her lungs. Her backplate cracked from neck to waist. Nevertheless she was not broken.\n\nThen Frostheart Grueburn heaved herself to her knees, swung her longsword in a wild cut at the monster. The iron bounced away, ringing like a shattered bell: it almost tore itself from her grasp. The stone-thing appeared unharmed. But her blow forced it to step back while it recovered its balance.\n\nPanting curses, the Ironhand wrenched herself upright, gripping her lore-hardened glaive in both fists.\n\nCanrik came to attack again. He moved as quickly as he could; but even his great strength could not mask his limping, or his unsteadiness.\n\n\"No!\" Coldspray gasped. \"Await an opening! We must combine our efforts!\"\n\nHe staggered to a halt.\n\nAt once, she raised her blade as if she meant to chop at the monster's head. Then she surged forward, committed all of her bulk to a straight kick at the creature's chest.\n\nJeremiah thought that he heard the thews of her knee tear, but she did not cry out. The stone-thing was driven two steps backward, three\u2014\n\n\u2014and Canrik leapt onto the creature's back, clamped his hands over its eyes\u2014\n\n\u2014and Grueburn rushed the other monster. Discarding her longsword, she tackled the creature, wrapped her arms around it, forced it away from Jeremiah. By plain force and desperation, she strove to pitch it into a fall\u2014\n\n\u2014and _moksha_ Jehannum slipped into Jeremiah as easily as an indrawn breath.\n\nAfter that, Jeremiah only knew what was happening to his companions because the Raver cast glances outward. Everything that he might have chosen for himself was taken away.\n\nhe first jolt of possession was cruel as the heat of a wildfire. It burned through Jeremiah leaving nothing but ash. Yet the scalding emotional violation passed in an instant. It was gone before he could even try to scream.\n\nIn its wake, it left an utter and unutterable peace.\n\nThe tranquility of complete helplessness dismissed his fears, his bitterness, his frantic floundering. Sudden as a crisis of the heart, every responsibility and desire and need was lifted from him. Nothing more could be asked of him\u2014he could ask nothing more of himself\u2014because there were no choices left. He was free at last of anything that resembled humanity.\n\nOh, he was conscious of _moksha_ Jehannum's presence and power, aware in every nerve and fiber. He knew that he had been claimed. He felt the Raver's vast glee, a sensation of triumph like ecstasy or delirium. He recognized the Raver's insatiable hunger for havoc. He knew that he had finally become _moksha_ 's tool, and Lord Foul's: a thing that only lived to serve the Despiser.\n\nYet the effect was not hurtful. It was pure relief, a soothing that mimicked bliss. This act of possession was a gift, a benison, a benediction. It eased him like an act of grace. He had finally become the boy he was meant to be; the boy he should have been ever since he had thrust his hand into Lord Foul's bonfire ten years ago. He had come home to himself.\n\nDo you now discern truth? asked the Raver kindly, eagerly. Long have you striven to evade our intent, long and at great cost. Long have you concealed yourself from suffering, though your wounds festered with every avoided day. Do you now grasp that there can be no surcease or anodyne for an implement, except in its condign use? Do you comprehend that there is both freedom and exaltation in the acceptance of service?\n\nThis all true believers know. They submit every desire and gift to the will of beings greater than themselves, and by their surrender they gain redemption. Self-will accrues only fear. It achieves only pain. The highest glory is reached solely by the abdication of self.\n\nDo you understand? Do you acknowledge at last that you are the Despiser's beloved son, in whom he is well pleased?\n\nThere the Raver paused. He appeared to be waiting for a response from Jeremiah; a sign of acquiescence. But Jeremiah did not reply. He had forgotten himself and did not remember what was at stake. He was simply at peace. The only part of him that seemed to have an independent existence was the part that regarded the Worm. Yet that sight conveyed neither dread nor anticipation. It had no personal implications. It merely _was_ : a fact as real as possession, and as inevitable.\n\n_Moksha_ did not prod him. Patient as the ages, the last of Lord Foul's Ravers waited as if together he and Jeremiah could take all the time in the world. When moments or hours or years had passed, and still Jeremiah had not stirred from his relief, _moksha_ Jehannum looked away as if he were mildly interested in the fate of Coldspray and Grueburn and Canrik.\n\nIn spite of their exhaustion, Jeremiah's companions fought. With a shout that seemed to rend her heart, Frostheart Grueburn succeeded at toppling her foe. But the stone-thing twisted as it fell, pulled her beneath it. When it landed on her, the impact broke her cataphract as if it were dried clay, tenuous and brittle. Air burst from her lungs.\n\nNevertheless she rolled away as the monster shifted to strike her. Its blow shook the floor; or the Worm's feeding did. A fretwork of cracks marred the rough surface. Gasping frantically, and shedding shards of armor, she regained her feet.\n\nThe other creature flailed blindly, trying to fling Canrik from its back. But its arms could not reach him. Somehow he kept his hands over its eyes. It could not see Coldspray. Through _moksha_ , Jeremiah heard or felt the wail of pain from Coldspray's damaged knee. Still she was the Ironhand. She did not relent. She kicked the stone-thing in the chest again; growled through clenched teeth; kicked again. At the same time, Canrik exerted all of his strength to drag the creature's head back. Off balance, the creature stumbled toward the wall.\n\nWhen it hit, Canrik would be crushed.\n\nThey were Jeremiah's friends. Even Canrik\u2014\n\nSamil was already dead.\n\nA vague unease drifted through the boy's tranquility. He felt himself or the Raver frowning.\n\nTo _moksha_ , Jeremiah admitted, I don't know how.\n\nHow? asked the Raver. He sounded bright as new coinage: shining gold stamped with Lord Foul's feral eyes.\n\nI don't know how to be a tool. He hardly heard himself. I don't know enough. I'm like a knife that's too dull. I haven't been sharpened. I'm not ready.\n\nWell said. _Moksha_ Jehannum's approval had a salacious tinge; a hint of slaver. All implements must be refined to their purpose. The Despiser's intent is glorious beyond utterance. No mortal born is apt to his hand. You must become greater than the greatest of your former aspirations. You must transcend every demand placed upon you by those lesser beings who sought the profit of your gifts, misnaming their desires love. By submission, you will attain the stature of eternity and awe. The Raver chuckled: a sound like the jaws of a trap closing. As will I in the perfection of my service. Then his attention became more acute. For that reason, I am within you.\n\nCruel blue silhouetted the fighting beyond Jeremiah. The monster with Canrik on its back appeared to recognize its opportunity. It heaved its granite mass at the wall. But at the last instant, Canrik sprang away. He uncovered the creature's eyes just in time to let the stone-thing see Rime Coldspray thrust her glaive at its throat.\n\nBlue glared like delight. Her blade's point splintered: her sword skidded aside. Fragments as keen as poniards scattered to the floor. Weakness and her own force dropped Coldspray to her knees. Despair gripped her features like nausea.\n\nFrostheart Grueburn did not hazard another clinch with her foe. Evading heavy blows, she retreated, circled. As soon as she could, she dove to retrieve her longsword, rolled back to her feet. An instant of consternation twisted her mien when she saw the notch that her first blow had left in the iron. But she had no other weapon. Parrying frantically while the metal shivered and shrilled, she retreated again.\n\nReason? asked Jeremiah.\n\nIndeed, the Raver answered. Take no offense when I observe that you are sadly ignorant. There is no fault in you. The _croyel_ was sent to teach rather than to torment you. Alas, it was a petty being, seduced by its own desires. It did not prepare you. Therefore I have intervened.\n\nMy task is to whet the dull blade. Yet you are not mere iron. Neither force nor fire will refine you. You require knowledge.\n\nThat knowledge I will grant. Behold!\n\n_Moksha_ Jehannum gestured in Jeremiah's mind, and the Staff of Law appeared there as though it had been translated out of his clasp. His hands still held it: his fingers curled like claws on the black wood; like an atavistic denial. Nonetheless he saw its image, precise and tangible, with the vision of thought.\n\nThis instrument, said _moksha_ , I will not touch. It is loathly and vile, fashioned to thwart me. In your grasp, however, it is mighty, capable of wonders. When it is made to serve your gifts\u2014and when those gifts in turn serve the Despiser\u2014it is potent to affect eternity, shaping order out of shapelessness.\n\nI will guide you to the lore of its proper wielding.\n\nOh, Jeremiah breathed. Order out of shapelessness. The idea pleased him. Constructs. Building. His one joy. To his granted peace was added an unforeseen happiness, a sense of possibilities.\n\n_We do what we must so that we may find worth in ourselves._\n\nHe was beginning to understand that there was more than one path to godhood.\n\nBeyond the Staff in his mind, the Staff in his hands, the Giants and Canrik still struggled. Though their strength was waning\u2014though every step and effort drained the life from their muscles\u2014they circled and evaded, apparently trying to maneuver the monsters away from Jeremiah. But the stone-things were no threat to him. They protected him. They had been sent to keep his companions away from the Staff of Law.\n\nYes, Jeremiah said. Yes.\n\n_Moksha_ 's approval seemed to make reality bend and ripple. His voice seemed to be the Worm's.\n\nThen observe closely. That noisome wight, the hated Forestal of abhorred Garroting Deep, has written his will and power upon your instrument. He is among the most despised of our foes, yet even he must serve our lord and master. Such is the Despiser's majesty and cunning. Harken well while I read the runes.\n\nTheir import will distress you. This saddens me. The Raver did not sound saddened. I desire only your exaltation. Alas, all knowledge is hurtful. Yet it is also needful. And your discomfort will be brief. You will swiftly return to joy.\n\nJeremiah nodded his consent. Masked within himself, within the private quietude of graves, he began to ask questions which the Raver did not hear. His time as the _croyel_ 's host and victim had taught him that possession was torture. He had only been able to endure it because he had no choice. Why, then, had _moksha_ entered him bearing only relief and ease? Why did the Raver trouble to lull him with peace or pleasure?\n\nHe suspected that he knew the answer. He had heard too many people talk about _the necessity of freedom_.\n\nAnd Kastenessen had broken him; but that violation had not destroyed him. Now he realized that the experience had taught him something useful. He knew how to be more than one Jeremiah at a time, each distinct from the others. He could think his own thoughts as well as the Raver's.\n\nWhat Lord Foul wanted from him, he told himself secretly, was not something that could be compelled. Like wild magic, his talent could not be coerced beyond the small uses which the _croyel_ had made of it. No matter how much he was whetted, he would not be able to exceed anything unless he agreed to it. At some point, the Despiser would need Jeremiah to serve him by choice. To submit. The tranquility which _moksha_ gave or imposed was a lure.\n\nThe idea did not disturb Jeremiah. The Raver's mastery did not allow resistance, or the emotions of resistance. It banished distress. Nevertheless there was more than one Jeremiah\u2014and some of them could be concealed or dissociated in ways which did not attract _moksha_ Jehannum's attention.\n\nBubbling with glee, _moksha_ read the Staff. His magicks lit the abstruse symbols, not with fire or shining, but with a deeper black that scorned human notions of darkness. His disembodied finger traced the script as he interpreted it. Yet he did not explain it in words. Instead he gave Jeremiah images.\n\nWhile the runes came to life, Jeremiah found himself standing on the ruined dirt of Gallows Howe surrounded by the ire of trees.\n\nHis presence there was only a vision. He had not passed through time to an age when Caerroil Wildwood's outrage ruled Garroting Deep. His body still sat on the floor of a cave in Mount Thunder, holding the Staff of Law across his thighs, feeling tremors rise through the gutrock; apparently watching his companions fight with their last strength. But his mind\u2014\n\nHis mind had followed the Forestal's symbols into the recesses of _moksha_ Jehannum's memories.\n\nEverything that Jeremiah beheld, _moksha_ viewed with hate, with savagery and revulsion. The dirt under his feet had drunk the deaths of Ravers. Their assumed bodies had dangled from the gibbet of the Howe while their spirits had shrieked in agony. Anywhere else in the Land, anywhere at all, _moksha_ or _samadhi_ or _turiya_ could have simply slipped away when their flesh was taken, sparing themselves the horror of being slain. But in Caerroil Wildwood's demesne, they had been denied that luxury. The Forestal had _forbidden_ them. They could not escape.\n\nThe recollection made _moksha_ Jehannum froth with fury and frustration. Nonetheless what the Raver sought was here, in the innate lore of forbidding; in Caerroil Wildwood's ability to draw power or sentience or resolve or rage from every leaf and branch, every twig and trunk and root, throughout his loathed realm\u2014and then to express that force in ways which _moksha_ and his brothers could not withstand.\n\nFor the Raver, Gallows Howe summed up everything that he abhorred about forests. But his hatred was more than that. It was wide as well as deep. It included every tree of every variety everywhere: young and old, graceful and gnarled, upright and outstretched. Alone they were each as vulnerable as kindling. Together they were as mighty as mountains. Therefore _moksha_ hated them with a vehemence that trembled in every particle of his being. They were everything that he was not: stately, grand, generous, welcoming, austere, fecund. Their existence justified every stretch of ground where they flourished\u2014and the Raver hungered for their extinction.\n\nJeremiah saw all of this as _moksha_ Jehannum saw it. He felt the Raver's fulminating outrage so keenly that he appeared to share it. And he knew that _moksha_ wished him to share it. But he also saw the Howe and the Deep with his hidden eyes. He knew the wrath and grief of the innumerable trees. He understood how those passions formed the essence of the Forestal's power. More, he recognized that the forest's vast appetite for bloodshed was not inherent. It was a response to a terrible crime.\n\nThe force which lay behind it was not rage, but rather a bereft adoration for the green and living world in all of its fragile guises. The substance and sorrow of everything that Caerroil Wildwood had been and done was his love.\n\nAnd Garroting Deep was an emblem of the Land. _Moksha_ 's hatred of trees was only one manifestation of a more encompassing evil: the fury and despair that despised or feared every aspect of the Land's rich beauty.\n\nThis, too, did not trouble Jeremiah. He felt no indignation, no desire to protest. Instead he considered it among his private selves. He resisted nothing, and so nothing was taken from him. Passive as a victim, he kept his thoughts to himself, as he had done for most of his life.\n\nFrostheart Grueburn still circled on unsteady legs, flailing with her blunted longsword. Rime Coldspray hacked and hacked at her foe until her glaive was shattered to the hilt. Canrik twisted between the stone-thing's legs, trying to trip or topple the monster. But that tactic failed him. The creature was too strong, too heavy.\n\nStill the _Haruchai_ struggled. And he had resources of stamina which exceeded even the Swordmainnir: he could still think. When he realized that he was too weak to bring down the monster, he slipped away. Snatching up a long sliver of the Ironhand's sword, he sprang again onto the creature's back. His ragged dirk he pounded into one of its eyes.\n\nThe force of his blow sliced open his hand. Blood spurted between his fingers. But the sliver penetrated. Actinic blue blazed for an instant. Then the eye went dark.\n\nThe stone-thing had no voice. It could not scream. Nevertheless the reflexive slap of its hands at its face was as wounded as a shriek. One hand swept the shard from its eye. The other caught Canrik's wrist. A fierce swing flung him away.\n\nEntirely by chance, the monster threw him into the tunnel toward Kiril Threndor. He vanished from the cave.\n\nJeremiah did not see what became of him. He did not know how the Giants stayed on their feet. Yet this sight also did not distress him. He watched his friends impassively, as if he had already succumbed.\n\nHe understood forbidding now: the how of it, the why, the necessary power. He had absorbed it without the hindrances of language because _moksha_ and the Despiser needed him to understand it. It was essential to Lord Foul's deeper purpose. But Jeremiah's epiphanies went further. On Gallows Howe, with Garroting Deep unfurled like a banner around him, he realized that forbidding was essential to other purposes as well, to desires which were not the Despiser's.\n\nForbidding was Earthpower, of course; but it was Earthpower transformed by trees and their Forestal into an entirely different form of magic.\n\nTo _moksha_ , Jeremiah said, I need more.\n\nIf forbidding alone had been enough, the Forestals could have defeated Lord Foul themselves.\n\nIndeed. _Moksha_ Jehannum's approval was incandescent. Abhorrence is but one refinement. Other whetstones are needed to perfect the blade.\n\nWhile Jeremiah watched, helpless and unmoved, the Raver took him on a coruscating plunge through other memories, other expressions of recalled lore.\n\nHis passage was a whirlwind, a giddy chiaroscuro, a torrent of glimpses and insights. He did not try to grasp them: he hardly looked at them. Instead he simply accepted them; allowed them to be imprinted on his nerves, written into his brain. Some were millennia old: a jeweled casket sunk deep into the mire of the Great Swamp, a tapestry sealed in a cavern lost among the snows of the Northron Climbs, a periapt as crowded with knowledge as a tome. Others were immeasurably ancient: the creation of Forestals from the substance of an _Elohim_ , the complex theurgies which had fashioned the Colossus of the Fall, the invocation of Fire-Lions. He did not need to make sense of them because they were already his, ready for his submission and use.\n\nBut among the swift confusion of those recollections, Jeremiah found one memory that filled _moksha_ Jehannum with a particular delight. It was the Raver's recall of that horrific, wonderful moment when _moksha_ had taken possession of Linden.\n\nPerhaps her straits should have appalled Jeremiah; yet they did not. He was intimately familiar with the excruciation which the Raver had inflicted on her, the relish for her torment. He had survived such things himself. And he knew that she had somehow expelled _moksha_ Jehannum for Covenant's sake, or for the Land's. She was Linden Avery. _Moksha_ 's cruelty could not define her.\n\nHowever, some of her own memories lived among the Raver's; and _those_ wrung Jeremiah's heart. They erased his calmness, dismissed his given relief as if it were nothing more than a mirage. For the first time, he learned what his mother had suffered when she, too, had been just a kid.\n\nRemembered by _moksha_ , Jeremiah stood in the attic with her, watching her father bleed out of his cut wrists, and helpless to force the blood back into his veins. Already gashed and dying, that aggrieved man had locked her in with him so that she would not be able to go for help. In effect, he had compelled her to witness his surrender to self-pity: her father.\n\nShe had been only eight.\n\nMom. Jeremiah wanted to wail. _Mom_. But the Raver was not done.\n\nCrowing, _moksha_ remembered Linden's mother. At about Jeremiah's present age, she had been at her mother's bedside while her mother had prayed for death. According to _moksha_ , the woman's illness may not have been terminal. But Linden had heeded her mother's pleading. Her mother had blamed her, Linden, for causing her husband's death; for making her life unsupportable. And Linden had been left alone to provide care. Wipe away sweat. Mop up dribbling mucus. Tend bedpans. So when Linden had exhausted her own misery, she had\u2014\n\nJeremiah did not know how to bear it.\n\n\u2014taken wads of tissues and forced them down her mother's throat; forced more and more of them down until her mother would never blame anyone else again.\n\nThe Raver reveled in those events. _Moksha_ wanted Jeremiah to understand that his mother had always been a victim and a killer. The woman who had claimed to love him was as pitiful and weak as his natural mother. Linden's parents had made her who she was. She would never be anything more. Because of her\u2014 _moksha_ Jehannum insisted on this as if the truth were beyond question\u2014Jeremiah had always belonged to Lord Foul. From the first, he had been raised to serve Despite by women who had earned their own victimization.\n\nThe gift that Lord Foul offered now was more than mere peace, more than simple relief: it was transcendence. Jeremiah's submission would be rewarded with a place in eternity, a form of godhood in which his wounds and struggles would have no meaning. He would be free at last of his inherited unworth.\n\n_Moksha_ urged this vision of Jeremiah's future as if it were perfected delight. And Jeremiah heard the Raver. He recognized what the Raver wanted from him. But he was no longer listening. Within his secret silence, he cried out for the woman who had chosen to be his mother when no power in life could have required her to claim him.\n\nYes, he told Lord Foul's servant. Yes.\n\nEntirely dissociated from his real circumstances\u2014entirely concealed from his possessor\u2014he meant, Watch your back, you piece of shit. I'm coming for you.\n\n_Just do_ something _he doesn't expect._\n\nSpasms shook the cave. Forerunners of temporal rupture broke chunks of rock from the ceiling, scattered debris across the floor. Grueburn staggered from side to side gasping for breath, barely able to stand. Canrik lurched back into the cave. He kept his fist clenched to stanch the bleeding of his hand. Desperation twisted his features as he searched for a way to aid the Giants.\n\nIneffective as a cripple, Coldspray stood directly in front of Jeremiah. The one-eyed monster advanced on her, ready to strike. She waited for it as if she had come to the end of herself and could no longer raise her arms.\n\nBut when it reached out to wrap her in a crushing embrace, she lifted the remains of her glaive and hammered the pommel into the creature's good eye.\n\nAs the light of that eye died, the blinded stone-thing lashed out. In mute pain, it tossed the Ironhand aside as if she had become trivial.\n\nNow, however, the monster could not see. Confused by its hurts, it seemed unable to locate Coldspray. Instead of pursuing her, it continued its advance. Swinging its massive arms, it came toward Jeremiah.\n\nOne inadvertent impact would be enough. He would not survive even a glancing blow. Lord Foul's plans for him\u2014\n\nInside Jeremiah, _moksha_ Jehannum snarled an obscenity. Distracted, he snatched Jeremiah's halfhand off the Staff of Law, drew a swift symbol in the air.\n\nThe creature began another step. Halfway through the motion, it suddenly collapsed into dust: a pile of remains stirred only by the tremors rising through the floor.\n\nDuring that brief instant, Jeremiah took his chance.\n\nHe had absorbed astonishing kinds and quantities of lore from the Raver, more knowledge than he could have named. Forbidding was a part of it. An expression of Earthpower called a Word of Warning was a part. The wood-magicks of the _lillianrill_ were a part, as were the elaborate healings which the Lords had once wrought in Trothgard, and the music with which Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir had invoked a bower among the wastes of the Lower Land. He knew how the great tree-city of Revelwood in the Valley of Two Rivers had been fashioned.\n\nBut that was not all: he had learned more. If he had been released, he could have devised a prison which would have snared _moksha_ Jehannum until Time was extinguished. Given a few uninterrupted days, he could have repaired the damage that ancient violence had done to Mount Thunder's heart. With a few years and a Forestal's aid, he could have made a garden of the Lower Land.\n\nBut the Raver had not released him, and he had only an instant. When his opportunity came, he did not hesitate.\n\nOne small sip of Earthpower from the Staff restored his inherited theurgy. Then he rose up from helplessness to trade places with his possessor.\n\nIn the space of a single heartbeat, he trapped _moksha_ Jehannum inside himself.\n\nThe Raver struggled, screaming. Of course he struggled. He knew everything that Jeremiah did. He had long ages of experience to guide him. He had frenzy and ripe terror. And Jeremiah was only mortal. He lacked the intransigent metal of a _Haruchai_. He did not have the great spirit of a Giant. He had no inborn capacity to defy possession.\n\nBut he had resources which Lord Foul's servant could not match. Linden had blessed him with long years of care and tenderness. Anele had given him power. He had learned how to walk away from the helplessness with which he had protected himself. And he was not afraid to grasp the Staff of Law.\n\n_Moksha_ howled horror at the ceiling. He thrashed and writhed, raked frantic claws across the barriers which Jeremiah raised against him, sank sharp teeth into the flesh of Jeremiah's resolve. Wild and despairing, the Raver fought.\n\nYet Jeremiah refused the fight. He did not need to measure his strength against his foe. Instead he relied on knowledge which _moksha_ did not share. Retracing his own past, he _dissociated_ the Raver; committed Lord Foul's servant to the graveyard where he himself had once lain, hidden and lost. Almost effortlessly, he dropped the Raver into the waiting earth.\n\nWith Earthpower and newly acquired lore, he clamped down on _moksha_ Jehannum until he could no longer hear the Raver's screams. He piled dirt over the malign spirit, stamped the grave flat. Then he turned away.\n\nAt one side of the cave, Rime Coldspray tried to regain her feet, but she could not. Trying to evade the second monster, Frostheart Grueburn had crumpled to her knees. Canrik had found another splinter of Coldspray's glaive. Now he looked for an opening, a chance to sacrifice his other hand.\n\nGritting his teeth, Jeremiah rose up in power. A detonation like a thunderclap from one heel of the Staff tore the stone-thing apart. Rendered to powder, it fell.\n\nThe floor heaved. The ceiling shed more rocks. Cracks yawned open, grated shut. Here and there, wounds split the walls. Patches of gutrock oozed and ran as if their essences were being squeezed out of them.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" Jeremiah panted: a faint echo of his friends' gasping. \"I mean, I'm sorry that took so long. First I didn't know how to do it. Then I had to wait for a chance.\"\n\nA chance which the Swordmainnir and Canrik had given him.\n\n\"Do not heed us,\" the Ironhand managed to say between broken breaths. \"The Timewarden\u2014The Worm\u2014\"\n\nJeremiah did not have time to think. Covenant needed him. Canrik was already waiting for him at the tunnel toward Kiril Threndor.\n\nHe took the time. \"You're joking.\" His tone hinted at _moksha_ 's glee. He had enjoyed immuring the Raver. \"I can't leave you like this. You don't look strong enough to stand.\n\n\"This is Mom's Staff. It doesn't really belong to me. But I know how to use it now.\"\n\nThen he released a second blast of Earthpower.\n\nThis detonation was as fierce as the force which had destroyed the stone-thing; but it was an entirely different kind of theurgy, a more natural magic. It hurt Coldspray and Grueburn, but it did not damage them. Instead it delivered violent healing, a ferocity of repair. He had learned too much too quickly: he was not capable of gentleness. And the Worm was feeding. Concussions spread through the substance of the world. Disruptions of Time mounted toward the last crisis of the Earth. He had to reach Kiril Threndor and Covenant.\n\nIn a moment, he was done. He stamped the Staff on the floor once because he had no words for what he felt. Then he gathered himself to follow Canrik.\n\nUntil he saw Rime Coldspray climb to her feet and test her limbs, trembling as if she were feverish\u2014until he felt Frostheart Grueburn standing near him, and Canrik watching with open surprise\u2014Jeremiah did not notice that the cave was full of warm light. He had taken it for granted\u2014\n\nThe Staff felt like recognition in his hands. It sent out broad swaths of flame as kindly and soothing as sunshine. Its shaft shone with the cleanliness of healthy heartwood. Along its surface, Caerroil Wildwood's runes remained, distinct as promises, but their meaning was no longer obscure. They were an offering and an appeal: they enabled and prayed.\n\nTo Jeremiah Chosen-son, the descendant of Sunder and Hollian in spirit if not in body, the Forestal's script pleaded for restoration.\n\n## 12.\n\nYou Are Mine\n\nAt the edge of Kiril Threndor's high chamber, Thomas Covenant stood motionless, held by shock and fury while he scrambled to absorb what he saw.\n\nAnger was not what he needed here: he knew that. If he had failed to see the truth for himself, he could have heeded High Lord Berek among the Dead. _He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage_ \u2014Ire would mislead him when he absolutely had to be the master of himself.\n\nBut he could not control what he felt.\n\n_Well, hi, Dad_. That was his son. His _son_ , wracked like a plague victim by power and malice. _You took your own sweet time getting here_. His son with Lord Foul's putrescent eyes.\n\nThe Despiser had claimed Covenant's lost boy at last. Lord Foul had taken possession\u2014\n\nThe sight set a spark to the driest tinder in Covenant's soul. Between one breath and the next, he became conflagration; incandescent wrath. Wild fire flushed across his skin in waves like the urgent knot and release of his heart. Flames spat from his eyes, lashed out from his arms and chest. His vehemence cast argent through the diseased chiaroscuro of rocklight. Bright killing gathered like a blade in the scar on his forehead.\n\nBerek had warned Linden. He had warned Covenant. But he had said nothing about the means by which Lord Foul might gain freedom.\n\n\"What's the matter, Dad?\" Roger glared as though his whole being had been consumed by scorn; as though he had been torn apart and put back together wrong. Denied anguish contorted his visage. At every moment, he looked more like a maimed thing, twisted beyond recognition. His right hand was sick lava, fuming and rotten. \"Aren't you glad to see me?\"\n\nHis plight demanded pity. For Covenant, pity was rage.\n\nA step ahead of Covenant, Branl regarded the figure on the dais. He held Longwrath's flamberge negligently, as if he had no further use for it. \"Ur-Lord,\" he remarked as though he had been studying a particularly uninteresting icon, \"I now comprehend why I was unable to discern the presence of Corruption. His aura was both blurred by Kastenessen's _skurj_ -born theurgy and disguised by his human vassal. Here his evil is plain. Corruption has taken your son, or your son has given himself. We must oppose both or neither. We cannot harm the spirit while the flesh shields it.\"\n\nHell and blood. Covenant had no answer for the Humbled. He had none for Roger. Wreathed in flame, he tightened his grip on the _krill_ and started forward. Fissures marred the floor in front of him like the outcome of his anger; but he ignored them. Dizzying reflections and stalactites and tortured slabs of granite meant nothing to him. With every stride, he raised Loric's dagger higher. The radiance of its gem filled his voice.\n\n\"Let him go,\" he snarled at the Despiser. \"This is between you and me. _Leave him out of it_.\"\n\n\"Dad!\" Roger feigned surprise. He feigned dismay. \"You still don't get it.\" He lifted his inhuman hand to match the _krill_. A brimstone stench covered the reek of attar. The redder heat of magma daunted the rocklight. \"None of this would have happened if you and that damn woman hadn't interfered. All I wanted was the _croyel_ \u2014the _croyel_ and Jeremiah\u2014but you wouldn't let me have them. If you had stayed out of my way, I wouldn't be here.\n\n\"This is _your_ doing, Dad. It's the only choice I had left.\"\n\n\"I don't care,\" Covenant retorted. \"You did this to yourself. Nobody forced you. All you had to do was take pity on your mother,\" on poor, deranged Joan, who had no defense, \"and none of this would have happened.\"\n\n\"Really?\" drawled Roger. His grimace mimicked a sneer. \"You actually think that? You should care. I'll tell you why. Since you seem oblivious to what's been going on, I'll explain it.\n\n\"My _mother_ \"\u2014he spat the word\u2014\"was useless. She couldn't help me. She was just a distraction to keep you away from me. The _croyel_ and Jeremiah were my way out. While I had them, I didn't have to _serve_ anybody. _I_ didn't have to care. But you took that away, you and that damn woman. You slammed the door on me, _Dad_. This is what I have left.\n\n\"I'm not going to die no matter what you do, and do you know why?\" Pressures within Roger clawed terrible shapes across his face. Lurid fires filled his eyes. Threats dunted from his halfhand. \"Lord Foul is going to take me with him. That's the deal. I gave myself to him, and he's going to give me eternity. We're just waiting until the Arch crumbles enough to let us out. Then we'll be gone. It'll be like you and this whole disgusting place never existed.\n\n\"I'm letting him do what he wants because _he's going to save me_!\"\n\nHalfway to the flawless dais, Covenant halted; froze on the verge of howling his fury. The pain in Roger's voice stopped him. He could almost hear the hollowness of his son's soul.\n\nBranl was right. Of course he was. Covenant could not strike at Lord Foul without hitting Roger first. He would have to kill his son in order to hurt the Despiser\u2014and he had already killed his son's mother.\n\nHe needed a better answer. Somehow he had to set anger aside, swallow horror. Roger's sarcasm and arrogance masked the truth. The young man was appalled by what he had done to himself.\n\n\"No,\" Covenant snapped, wrestling for composure. \"He won't take you with him. Whatever he offered you won't be what you think it is.\" He had cloaked himself in fire and outrage as if they were a shield, but he could shrug them off his shoulders if he dared. If he could find the courage. \"You're scared, Roger. You're too scared to think. You aren't using your brain.\n\n\"You're physical. Don't you understand that? You're mortal. Time is all you've got. It's the only thing that makes life possible. Without it, you're nothing. You're just\u2014\"\n\nThe floor heaved, shaken by Roger's impatience or the Worm's feeding. Cracks groaned in the walls. The stalactites scattered rocklight and silver in pieces sharp as shards. Covenant lost his balance, staggered until Branl caught him.\n\n\"Well, duh,\" Roger snorted. \"Of course I'm physical. That's why he needs me. That's why I can trust him. He needs me to get rid of you.\n\n\"I'll give you this, Dad. Lord Foul is afraid of you. You've surprised him too often when he thought he had you beat. But that won't happen this time. That's what _I'm_ for. That's why he made a deal with me. I'm going to make sure you don't surprise him again.\"\n\nResisting a rush of frenzy, Covenant shouted, \"No! He's just _using_ you. He doesn't _need_ you. He can be as physical as he wants whenever he wants.\" Covenant had not forgotten the tangible impact of the Despiser's contempt when Covenant had faced the Illearth Stone in Foul's Creche. \"But you can't be as eternal as you want. You're _dross_ to him. You're more than a hindrance, you're a prison. He can't escape the collapse of Time while he's inside you. If he tries that, he'll die when you do. He won't get out unless he leaves you behind.\n\n\"And when he does, you won't be able to follow him, and you sure as hell won't be able to accompany him, because you're just _you_. You aren't made for eternity. You're just a frightened man who can't stand being afraid. Giving yourself to Foul isn't hope, it's _panic_.\"\n\nRoger was roaring like his hand, poised to strike; but Covenant did not pause. \"You're going to die like the rest of us,\" he insisted. \"No deal can save you. Foul can't make you a god. He knows that as well as I do. If you can convince yourself otherwise, you've been serving him longer than you think.\"\n\n\" _No_ , Dad.\" Tremors like hysteria shook Roger's voice. Pain wrenched at the corners of his mouth. \"You've got it all wrong. Lord Foul doesn't lie. He promised I would stop being afraid. He promised what's happening now is temporary. He promised I would never be in pain again.\"\n\nSure, Covenant wanted to reply. It's all true. You _won't_ be afraid. You'll be dead.\n\nBut a sudden surge of power from the dais closed his throat. Abruptly Roger's voice changed. \" _Enough_.\" It became the sound of crushed boulders, falling mountains. It had the depth and resonance of a tectonic upheaval. \"That promise I will honor. I will put an end to your fawning. Now you will be silent. I will speak to this doomed wight who deems himself my foe.\"\n\nInvoluntarily Roger bit down on his tongue. Blood leaked from his mouth. His eyes bled venom.\n\nAt the same time, behind or within or through Roger, Covenant saw another figure, a towering shape taller than Giants, mightier than the spectres of High Lords. Authority and rocklight limned the form; but within its outlines was nothing but absence, an emptiness like the chasm of the Lost Deep. The figure's sole feature was its fanged eyes. They resembled Roger's, yellow and bitter. But the ferocity in them, or the despair, was fiercer than Roger's denied terror.\n\n\"Ur-Lord,\" Branl warned unnecessarily. \"Corruption manifests. Yet he also retains possession of your son.\"\n\n\"Oh, good,\" Covenant snarled at the Despiser. \"I'm glad. Now I can talk to you directly.\n\n\"You really ought to be ashamed of yourself. You don't need surrogates. You should have the decency to let Roger go. Or if you can't manage decency, you should at least have the dignity. Using him just makes you look craven.\"\n\nLord Foul expanded. He made himself too big to be confined by Kiril Threndor. Yet his lambent silhouette remained visible, as if he had superimposed himself on the rock.\n\n\"We are well met, Timewarden.\" He did not shout, yet every word was a blast of ruin. \"In times past, I have named you groveler, anile and foolish, but I now perceive that you have become worthy of me. Your death has been made certain. No exertion is required of me to assure it. Nevertheless I acknowledge that at last you merit extinction at my hand.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" Covenant readied the _krill_. As much as he could, he ignored Lord Foul's fierce shape, concentrated on Roger. \"Try it. I'm not going to surrender again. And I am done with restraint.\"\n\nThe Despiser laughed like grinding stones. \"Yet you have not forgotten folly. That pleases me.\" His eyes and Roger's bit at the air. \"I find delight in your misbelief that you are potent to oppose me.\n\n\"Have you forgotten, Timewarden? Does mortal recall fail within you even now? I have assured you that you are mine. You have been my servant always, though you have twice refused submission. Each and all of your efforts to thwart me have conduced to my present triumph. Because you have dared to oppose me, I will be made free.\"\n\nCovenant shook his head. \"Maybe _you're_ the one who's forgotten. We've talked about this before. It goes both ways. If I'm yours, you're also mine. Maybe I've always been yours, but I made you mine when I let you kill me.\n\n\"And apparently you've forgotten Linden. You tried to tell her the same thing. According to you, everything she does guarantees your escape. But she's still here. She's still doing things you didn't expect and couldn't imagine. She may even find a way to keep you here when reality falls apart.\"\n\nThe Despiser swelled. He appeared to gather vehemence. But Covenant did not flinch.\n\n\"And haven't you forgotten Jeremiah? Don't you need him? Isn't he essential to your _deeper purpose_? How can you even hope to use him when he has the Staff of Law?\"\n\nLord Foul's laughter was savage. It felt unanswerable.\n\n\"Indeed, the boy holds the Staff of Law. But my servant _moksha_ has taken possession of him. Even now, he awaits my will. Through him, Law itself promotes my intent.\"\n\nOh, hell! In spite of his fire, Covenant faltered. _Moksha_ had Jeremiah? The walls of the chamber seemed to contract around him. Futures for which he had prayed faded like hallucinations. He had gambled on the boy: gambled and lost.\n\nHow would Linden bear it when she learned that her son served the Despiser?\n\nAt that moment, Roger struck. His halfhand hurled a bolt of incineration at his father.\n\nReflexively Covenant caught the blast with Loric's _krill_ ; blocked it with the gem's radiance and an outpouring of wild magic. Argent against laval crimson, flame against the savagery of molten stone, he fought to save himself.\n\nBut he hardly knew what he was doing. He lost track of Branl. The dagger bucked in his grasp: Roger's force tried to tear it from his numb fingers. The coruscation of powers blinded him. Briefly Kiril Threndor inverted itself. He depended from the floor, felt himself falling toward the ceiling. Then the whole chamber reeled, giddy as vertigo.\n\nHe clung to the _krill_ instinctively, sent his heart's need like lightning through the blade's cut jewel; floundered to survive.\n\nHis son's might appalled him. Roger was stronger now. The severing of his human hand from Kastenessen had not weakened him. Nor had Kastenessen's passing into the fane of the _Elohim_. Roger's given fist retained the ravaging force of the _skurj_. And Lord Foul stood behind him or within him, supporting him.\n\nSoon the _krill_ would start to melt. It had to. Nothing mortal-made could endure Roger's virulence, or Covenant's wild response.\n\nUpright beyond the ceiling and the stalactites, the breaking gutrock, Lord Foul watched. His eyes gnashed approval.\n\nBlasts like magma knocked Covenant's weapon from side to side. Feral heat chewed into his hands, gnawed at his arms. And his dead nerves betrayed him. They spared him from the worst of the pain, but they also weakened his grip. The hilt twisted. The skin of his fingers seemed slick as spilth. He could not hold.\n\nHe had to hold. The moment of his last crisis was upon him. Catastrophes burned in the bones of his forehead. Everything that he required of himself while life remained in his body depended on his ability to grip and hold.\n\nSomehow he withstood Roger's assault. He had more than the _krill_ : he had wild magic. In some sense, he _was_ white gold. The power possible for him was limited only by his humanity, his flesh and sinew and passion. Loric's dagger was not melting. Even Covenant's hands were not. They were preserved by the theurgies that saved and damned; by the contradiction of renewal and ruin that formed the keystone of the Arch of Time. As long as he did not let go\u2014\n\nBut he could not do more; could not advance to threaten Roger or the Despiser. Together they were too strong. Roger's savagery demanded his utmost, and his utmost was not enough.\n\nAnd while he fought to withstand lava and malice, he gave no heed when the boulders against the walls opened themselves and became monsters.\n\nTwo of them. Three.\n\nApparently the Despiser was not satisfied. He desired Covenant's death too much to let Roger fail.\n\nThe stone-things were vacancies. Despite their actinic auras, they were only visible to ordinary sight. Branl did not sense them. His attention was fixed on Covenant's struggle. One step at a time, he circled obliquely closer to the dais. But he was looking for an opening, a chance to attack while Covenant distracted Roger. He was not watching for other threats.\n\nAs massive as monoliths, and as silent, two of the creatures lumbered toward the Humbled from opposite sides. The third advanced on Covenant.\n\nCovenant saw nothing except white fire and ruddy brimstone; felt nothing except the tearing heat of Roger's theurgy. Roger had called him _oblivious_. He was oblivious now. There was no room in his heart or his mind for anything beyond the extremity of his need to hold on.\n\nBut Branl was _Haruchai_. He may have been as transfixed as Covenant; may have felt as desperate. Nevertheless he was a warrior to the bone, defined by combat. A heartbeat before the nearer stone-thing drew close enough to hit him, he saw it.\n\nWhatever he thought or felt at that moment, he did not hesitate. Spinning away from the dais, he swung a two-handed cut at the side of the creature's neck.\n\nThe clang of iron shivered among the stalactites. The flamberge bounced back, singing with stress.\n\nThe monster lurched to a halt. A third of its throat had been sliced open.\n\nBranl needed an instant to regain control of his blade. Then he swung again.\n\nThis time, the creature folded to its knees. Slow as a sigh, it collapsed on its face and became dust.\n\nFebrile with pain and hate, Roger fed the mounting holocaust. Through the glare, Covenant descried Roger's features. Their agonized contortion seemed to cry out, wailing of needs and fears that surpassed sound, exceeded the firestorm of powers. Roger's mouth shaped words which Covenant could not hear.\n\nDad, Covenant's son seemed to be saying, help me.\n\nAbruptly his own dread and hurt fell away. The burning of his hands lapsed into numbness. His grip steadied the _krill_ against Roger's onslaught. Wild magic rose to a pitch too acute for perception. _Moksha_ Jehannum had taken Jeremiah. Covenant did not know what had become of Linden, but he knew that She Who Must Not Be Named was too strong to be defeated. And the Worm of the World's End was feeding. Forces mightier than Covenant's struggle shook Mount Thunder to its roots. He was losing everything that he had ever striven to preserve. Nevertheless he was not daunted. He still had something to fight for.\n\nHis son was possessed. Roger bore the immedicable wound of Kastenessen's hand. He had been a fool\u2014a fool and a coward\u2014but that changed nothing. He had not chosen his parents; had not caused his mother's weakness or his father's absence. Now the extravagance of his distress made Covenant's voluntary hurts seem trivial.\n\nA different kind of anger dismissed Covenant's pain; his earlier wrath. This new ire resembled his old, familiar rage for lepers. It was a passion colder, calmer, and more complete than his desire to hurt the Despiser: a sympathy so furious that it felt like exultation.\n\nClenching Loric's dagger, he concentrated his outpouring of fire through the gem. Then he began to force his way toward the dais. One step at a time, he advanced against torrential magma and malevolence.\n\n\"No!\" the Despiser shouted. \"I will not permit it!\"\n\nWhile Branl stood over the fallen stone-thing, the second creature came at his back. One sweep of its granite arm smashed his shoulder, flung him at the wall. Noiseless amid the cacophony of magicks, the flamberge clattered to the floor. He struggled to rise, but his legs failed him.\n\nIn that instant, Stave appeared in Kiril Threndor as though he had dropped from the ceiling. Somehow Linden had translated him here. He would not have left her side willingly.\n\nNonetheless he was _Haruchai_ : he did not need time to gauge what was happening around him. As his feet touched the floor, he dove for Branl's longsword. A roll brought him upright with the flamberge in his fists. His momentum carried him into a straight lunge at the creature which had struck the Humbled.\n\nIn spite of its antiquity, the blade retained some vestige of Kasreyn's lore. It drove deep into the monster's chest. When Stave wrenched out the longsword, the stone-thing toppled to one side. Dying, it turned to powder and drifted away.\n\nReflections of brimstone and wild magic flashed in Stave's eye as he hastened to stand between Covenant and the third monster. His mien was a taut mask of outrage and grief.\n\nLinden, Covenant thought. Oh, God. What have you done?\n\nBut he did not stop fighting.\n\n\"No!\" Lord Foul roared again. \"I will not _permit_ it!\"\n\nScourged by his possessor, Roger shifted his aim. Fierce as a scream, he turned his power away from Covenant.\n\nA mistake\u2014In the space between instants, Covenant thought that the Despiser had misjudged his foes\u2014or had simply been overcome by his own fury. The _Haruchai_ could not oppose him. Covenant was the real danger.\n\nThen, however, Covenant saw the frenzy in Roger's eyes\u2014saw the Despiser's bitterness dulled by a more human anguish\u2014saw Roger hurl coerced scoria, not at Stave, who shielded Covenant, but at Branl, who could not.\n\nThe Humbled lay gasping against the wall. One shoulder had been shattered. Other bones were broken. His legs refused to hold him. Still he managed to wrench himself aside.\n\nRoger's blast did not destroy him. Instead it made a smoking ruin of his wrecked arm, stripped the flesh from his ribs. Even that lesser damage might have killed him; but Roger's attack cauterized as it burned. Branl was stricken unconscious: he did not bleed. His chest still heaved for air.\n\nRoger had done that: _Roger_. It was as close to an act of mercy as he could manage. In spite of Lord Foul's mastery, Roger had left Stave alive to protect Covenant.\n\nAnd Covenant\u2014\n\nCovenant recognized his chance.\n\nIn a stumbling rush, he ran at Roger, gained the dais. Faster than he could think, he slashed with the _krill_.\n\nOne swift stroke severed Kastenessen's hand.\n\nThe hand exploded; or Lord Foul's presence in Roger did. The concussion tossed Covenant away. He hit hard enough to crack his skull. A whirlwind of little suns wheeled across his mind. He lost the dagger somewhere. Blood started from his eyes. It ran from his ears. He could not feel his arms, his legs. A gyre of disconnected instants sucked at the verges of reality.\n\n\" _You_ ,\" raged the Despiser, \"will not _prevail_!\"\n\nA clutch of theurgy yanked Covenant from the stone, threw him farther. He skidded like scattered bones over slabs and fissures.\n\nHe had no strength, no weapon. He might as well have had no limbs. Another throw would finish him.\n\nSightless and desperate, he answered with wild magic. His mind became white fire. Violent flames poured from every part of him that still had living nerves and could feel pain.\n\n\"You bastard.\" Roger seemed to be shrieking at Lord Foul, but Covenant heard only whispers. \"You lied to me.\"\n\n\"And do you now take offense, little man?\" snorted the Despiser. \"I do not regard your umbrage. I do not speak lies. If you heard falsehood, it was of your own making. Now you will suffer the outcome of your folly. Take comfort in the knowledge that your abjection will be brief.\"\n\nRadiating fire like waves of fever, Covenant tried to blink the blood out of his eyes; struggled to see.\n\nHe lay on a canted sheet of basalt. Vaguely past its rim, he glimpsed the unharmed dais, the broken clutter of stalactites. The furious shape of Lord Foul still dominated the chamber, too immense to be opposed or endured.\n\nBranl lay where he had been struck. Stave had vanished or fallen. Had he confronted another monster? Covenant had no idea how many stone-things still moved in Kiril Threndor.\n\nBut over there, to the left of the dais, stood Roger, unpossessed and human. Fountains of blood had streaked his clothes, stained his face. Facing the Despiser, he huddled over his pain with his gushing wrist clamped under his arm to slow the bleeding. He glanced at Covenant; at Covenant's undifferentiated, useless flail of power. Then he turned back to Lord Foul.\n\nTremors ran through the floor. They staggered Roger, rocked Covenant mercilessly. The Despiser and the dais they did not affect.\n\nLord Foul's biting eyes loomed over Covenant. \"As for you,\" he sneered, \"beaten Unbeliever, impotent Timewarden, I have reconsidered your doom. Though I hunger for your death, I also crave your despair. Therefore I have asked of myself which end will wound your spirit more grievously, a death in agony at my hands, or an occasion to witness the final devastation of all that you hold dear. Remain as you are, and you may observe my return to majesty. Continue to oppose me, and I will snuff your frail life as you would a lantern.\"\n\nSquinting, Covenant located the _krill_. It was too far away.\n\nGrip and hold.\n\nTry it, he panted, although he could not speak. See what happens. He could hardly move. You haven't won yet.\n\nNevertheless his shining faltered. He let his power fall away.\n\nThen he found himself rising to his feet. Stave lifted him from behind, supported him when he could not stand alone.\n\nThe last of Lord Foul's stone defenders was gone.\n\nThe chamber juddered as if it had been struck by the leading edge of a tsunami. Covenant's guts and chest knotted, threatening to retch blood. But Stave's arms sustained him.\n\nSoftly Stave breathed, \" _Moksha_ Jehannum has taken the Chosen-son.\" He had dropped the flamberge. He had no more use for it. \"Canrik cannot succor him. The Ironhand and Frostheart Grueburn cannot. Samil has been slain.\"\n\n\"Linden?\" Covenant coughed: an effort that seemed to grind the broken ends of ribs against each other.\n\n\"I know not.\" Stave did not disguise his bitterness. \"She cast me from her ere she was claimed by the bane. I desire to hope that she lives, yet I cannot.\"\n\nA moment later, the former Master whispered, \"I do not comprehend, Timewarden. Time comes unbound. Soon it will unravel entirely. Why does Corruption remain?\"\n\nThrough a mouthful of blood, Covenant panted, \"He's enjoying himself too much.\" After uncounted millennia of imprisonment\u2014\"He knows he's already won. He's just waiting for Jeremiah.\"\n\nAnd while Lord Foul waited\u2014\n\nCovenant wanted to strike. He ached for the strength to stop the Despiser. But he was too weak. Too badly hurt. Sick with grief for Linden and Jeremiah. He had nothing left except waiting.\n\nRoger deserved a better father.\n\nRoger was crying. He may have wanted words, but he could only manage sobs. A young man who had dreamed of eternity\u2014\n\n\"Timewarden,\" Stave demanded, uncharacteristically urgent, \"some deed we must attempt. We cannot condone this doom.\"\n\nI know, Covenant thought dimly. I just need a chance to breathe.\n\nHe needed something to believe in. Something to hope for.\n\nWhat kind of idiot thinks he can save the world by himself?\n\nHe had forgotten how seductive despair could be.\n\n\"Hear me, Timewarden,\" ordered Stave. \"I will endeavor to retrieve the _krill_. Should I succeed, you must wield it. You must\u2014\"\n\nCovenant gripped Stave's arm weakly; tried to restrain the _Haruchai_ , although of course he could not. Spitting blood, he croaked, \"Wait. He wants Jeremiah. We still have time.\"\n\nToo much wild magic would only hasten the fall of the Arch. It would ease the Despiser's departure.\n\nStave did not move. He may have trusted Covenant. He may have simply hesitated.\n\nLord Foul's gaze had turned away. He appeared to peer through rock toward the cave where Covenant had left Jeremiah. His eyes dripped eagerness. He was as vulnerable as he would ever be.\n\nWe still have time.\n\nCovenant had abandoned Linden's son to _moksha_ Raver.\n\nSuddenly the Despiser's eyes flared. They blazed like torches. His outrage stunned Covenant's ears. Kiril Threndor lurched in the mountain's chest as though Mount Thunder had suffered a fatal crisis.\n\nStave said something. He may have been shouting, but Covenant could not hear him.\n\nRoger was moving.\n\nBroken as a derelict, as the wreckage of his dreams, Roger stumbled toward the dais. He crouched. When he rose again, he clutched High Lord Loric's dagger.\n\nAs he raised his arm, fresh blood pumped from his severed stump. Red splashed across the stone like an accusation.\n\nHis screaming seemed soundless as he hammered the blade into Lord Foul's impalpable shape.\n\nA puny attack, too low and frail to accomplish anything. And the Despiser was mighty: he was scarcely physical. Nevertheless wild magic coruscated in the dagger's gem. Loric had forged his blade to mediate between irreconcilable possibilities. It was the highest achievement of his vast lore. Somehow it _hurt_ \u2014\n\nIn spite of Lord Foul's vast power, the _krill_ appeared to nail him where he stood; fix him in one place. He gathered his fury into a fist. With a single punch, he crushed Roger to wet pulp. But he did not leave the dais. Did not slip past the restrictions of time.\n\nRoger\u2014\n\nNow Covenant heard Stave yelling, \"The Chosen-son has freed himself!\"\n\nAt last. Now or never.\n\nCovenant was battered and deadened, too weak to support his own weight, broken in ways which he was too fraught to name. But he was still a white gold wielder, a by God _rightful_ white gold wielder. And he had made promises. _I am done with restraint_. He hit Lord Foul with fire as fierce as a bayamo.\n\nThe Despiser thrashed, howling. As if the effort were insignificant, he expelled the _krill_. Then he turned on Covenant. Enraged and savage, he countered with so much force that Covenant's bones should have been pulverized.\n\nStones heaved. Igneous slabs were tossed like dried leaves. Repercussions ripped down the remaining stalactites, filled the air with whirling debris.\n\nBut Covenant withstood the blast. Wild magic withstood it. He had surrendered once. Never again.\n\nJeremiah had found a way to defeat _moksha_ Jehannum. Help was coming. All Covenant had to do was survive. And keep hurting Lord Foul. Prevent his escape. The Despiser must have believed that he would still be able to claim Jeremiah before Time collapsed in on itself. Covenant had no intention of letting that happen.\n\nPowers mounted in Kiril Threndor. Incinerating silver and Lord Foul's sledge-hammer blows staggered the chamber. Covenant only knew that Stave still lived because he, Covenant, had not fallen to his knees. He no longer saw anything, heard anything. Yet he _felt_ everything as if his nerves were white gold, as if his senses were wild magic. He recognized every concatenation of Lord Foul's malevolence. He could have named each of his own responses.\n\nHis millennia within the Arch of Time had not been wasted on him. His heart and his mind and even his leper's body understood wild magic. He was half translated out of reality himself, refined by fire and determination until he hardly needed his own physical existence.\n\nHe could not keep the Despiser here: he knew that. Instants were fraying. Moments bled into each other. Causes and sequences were becoming confused. Lord Foul might outlive such uncertainties: Covenant could not. He fought only to distract his foe, to engage the Despiser's endless hatred. To make the Despiser _miss his chance_.\n\nThen the chance came, Lord Foul's or Covenant's.\n\nWith flame and effort rather than sight, Covenant saw Jeremiah enter the chamber; saw Jeremiah running wreathed in Earthpower as clean and necessary as sunlight. The heartwood Staff in his hands blazed with a purity that pierced rocklight and argent, defied Lord Foul's savagery.\n\nBehind him came Coldspray, Grueburn, and Canrik, but this contest was not for them. Like Stave and Branl, they had done more than Covenant could have asked or imagined. Their part in the Land's fate was finished. Only Jeremiah had the power to alter the terms of Covenant's struggle.\n\nAnd Jeremiah knew what was needed. While Covenant fought to block Lord Foul, preclude Jeremiah's possession, Jeremiah fashioned his magicks\u2014\n\nThe Despiser's instant reaction was glee, triumph, exultation. He reached for Jeremiah as if he were pouncing. But wild magic tore through the hands of Lord Foul's power, shredded his grasp. Covenant ripped apart the Despiser's clutch while Jeremiah wrought Earthpower.\n\nIn the guts of Mount Thunder, the consequences of the Worm's feeding expanded. Shock after shock, they mounted toward their final outcome. Waves ran up and down the walls as if the rock had become water. Granite pain dripped from facets of rocklight. Unnatural heat and cold gusted at Covenant's face like gasping, like strained exhalations of time.\n\nIn a moment or an hour\u2014in no time at all\u2014Lord Foul appeared to realize what was happening. He appeared to recognize that he had to flee. If he wanted freedom, he had to abandon his _deeper purpose_ against the Creator. He would be trapped otherwise. He would cease to exist.\n\nShrieking like the deaths of stars, he turned away.\n\nBut he was already too late. Because Jeremiah\u2014\n\nOh, God, Jeremiah!\n\n\u2014had learned how to _forbid_.\n\nWith Earthpower and extravagance\u2014the whetted extremity of a boy who had been hurt too much and was finally done with helplessness\u2014Jeremiah forbade Lord Foul's escape.\n\nIn horror, the Despiser wheeled to face his foes again.\n\nCovenant he ignored. Wild magic ripped through his fleshless form, sent fiery harm careering everywhere along his disembodied nerves; but he was not dissuaded. He knew pain too well: he had spent eons wrapped in his own agony. Damage and diminishment could be repaired. His chance for freedom would never come again.\n\nEvery force at his command, Lord Foul focused on Jeremiah. But now he did not strive to take possession. Instead he sought to destroy.\n\nHe knew more about forbidding than Jeremiah did. He was stronger than the boy would ever be. When Covenant wounded him, he could call on long ages of despair to secure his concentration.\n\nAt first, Jeremiah wielded the Staff with an exalted certainty. He had freed himself from _moksha_ Raver: he had earned his power. And he had spent too much of his life immured in dissociation. His need to repudiate Despite defined him. Nevertheless he was only himself; only human. Lord Foul was the Despiser, eternal and insatiable. Although Covenant fought as hard as he could, flailed desperately and did ferocious damage, Jeremiah began to falter.\n\nThe Staff trembled in his grasp. His arms shook. His eyes were cries of dismay. He gave his utmost\u2014and it was not enough. Bit by bit, his forbidding began to crumble.\n\n\" _Jeremiah!_ \" Covenant yelled: a shout of conflagration. \"Hold on! _I'm coming!_ \"\n\nWith Stave's help, he floundered toward the dais, flaying his foe as he approached. But he already knew that he would fail. He could have torn open Mount Thunder's entire torso\u2014he felt destructiveness on that scale within him\u2014but he could not block Lord Foul's flight. Wild magic was the wrong kind of power. Like the Despiser, white gold aspired to freedom; and any forbidding required the structures and commandments of Law.\n\nJeremiah dropped to one knee. Blood burst from his mouth. Earthpower pouring from the Staff began to gutter. In another moment\u2014\n\nJeremiah! Oh, God!\n\nWithout warning, an overwhelming thunder swept through Kiril Threndor. It staggered the whole mountain. For an instant, Covenant thought that the Worm had drunk its fill; that the World's End had come. Then he saw more clearly.\n\nA hand like the fist of a god struck down the Despiser. Strength that threatened to crack Covenant's mind left Lord Foul crumpled on the dais, almost corporeal, almost whimpering. A transcendent touch secured Jeremiah's forbidding. As if as an afterthought, something supernal deposited Linden at Jeremiah's side.\n\nA heartbeat later, the thunder passed on, leaving the Earth to its own ruin. In the power's absence, the rising convulsions of the Worm's feeding felt like a reprieve.\n\nLinden clasped Jeremiah, helped him stand again. Her return renewed his resolve, his strength. Fresh Earthpower crowded the chamber. Refusals tightened around the Despiser.\n\nCovenant believed that he was deaf as well as blind. Wild magic was all that kept him alive. Nonetheless he heard Linden say, \"She Who Must Not Be Named is gone. I gave Her what She needed. This must be what She calls gratitude.\n\n\"I love you, Thomas.\"\n\nIt's enough, Covenant thought. Thank you. It's enough.\n\nBut he could not afford to pause. Reality was coming undone around him, and he had not confronted his worst fears.\n\nHe could do that now. Linden had come. She was whole and here. The emblem and summation of all betrayed women had given Covenant that gift.\n\nMustering his own gratitude, he urged Stave to support him until he gained the dais.\n\nThe Despiser was smaller now, beaten down or reduced by the bane's retribution. He was almost Covenant's size. He hunched into himself as though he sought to hide. As though he wanted to be smaller still.\n\nWith wild magic and leprosy, Covenant reached out to him. With pity and terror, Covenant lifted Lord Foul upright.\n\nThis was his last crisis. There could be no more.\n\n\"Do you understand?\" he asked like a man bidding farewell. \"If I'm yours, you're mine. We're part of each other. We're too much alike. We want each other dead. But you're finished. You can't escape now. And I'm too weak to save myself. If we want to live, we have to do it together.\"\n\nThe Despiser met Covenant's gaze. \"You will not.\" The voice of the world's iniquity sounded hollow as a forsaken tomb. His eyes were not fangs. They were wounds, gnashed and raw. \"You fear me. You will not suffer me to live.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Covenant answered, \"I will.\"\n\nHe was blinded now, not by fires and fury, but by tears as he closed his arms around his foe. Opening his heart, he accepted Lord Foul the Despiser into himself.\n\nhen it was done, Thomas Covenant turned to the people who had redeemed him. If he could have looked at himself, he would have seen the scar on his forehead gleaming.\n\n\"Thomas,\" Linden breathed. Earthpower and argent shone like wonder in her gaze. \"Oh, Thomas. I don't understand. I don't know what it means. I'm just glad that I got to see it.\"\n\nStave nodded his acknowledgment. His assent.\n\nCanrik's face was hidden. Squatting beside Branl, he did what he could for the Humbled. Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn simply stared, too exhausted to recognize their relief.\n\nKiril Threndor stumbled as if Mount Thunder itself had flinched. Chunks of the ceiling broke loose. Fissures clenched the walls, unclenched. In the distance, the mountain's shoulders shrugged avalanches. Covenant felt the Earth's foundations failing. But Jeremiah's forbidding protected everyone in the chamber. He hardly seemed to notice his own prowess.\n\n\"So am I,\" the boy admitted. More sourly, he said, \"Too bad we won't get to enjoy it.\"\n\nCovenant tried to smile. \"What are you talking about?\" He spoke to Jeremiah, but he poured out his heart to Linden. \"This is our chance. We can't stop what's happening, but that doesn't mean we can't try to save the Earth. I know that sounds impossible, but maybe it isn't. We don't have to create an entire reality from scratch. We just have to put the pieces of this one back together.\n\n\"If we follow the Worm\u2014and if we pick up the pieces fast enough\u2014and if we know where they belong\u2014\"\n\nPerhaps the Arch and the world could be rebuilt from the fragments of their destruction.\n\n\"We have everything we need,\" he assured Jeremiah. \"Two white gold wielders. The Staff of Law. Linden's health-sense. Your talent. Hell, we still have the _krill_. And I think\u2014\" His face twisted with pain and chagrin and hope. \"I'm not sure, but I think I know everything Lord Foul knows.\"\n\nThe Despiser had striven for eons to escape his prison. His knowledge of the created world was both vast and intricate.\n\nJeremiah stood straighter. His hands tightened eagerly on the Staff. \"I've learned a few things myself.\"\n\n\"And I've seen She Who Must Not Be Named without all of that agony and bitterness,\" offered Linden. \"I know what She means.\"\n\nIn spite of its galls and strain, hers was the most beautiful face that Covenant had ever seen.\n\n\"We can do this,\" he said as if he were sure. \"We can do it together.\"\n\n_There is no doom so black or deep\u2014_\n\nLinden looked at Jeremiah. \"Then you had better get rid of that Raver. He's holding you back.\"\n\n_Moksha_ had probably exacerbated Jeremiah's faltering earlier.\n\nJeremiah nodded. He closed his eyes. For a moment, he grimaced. He may have feared losing what he had gained from the Raver; feared losing a part of himself. But then he became a brief flare of Earthpower and forbidding.\n\nDarkness billowed out of him. _Moksha_ writhed uselessly, seeking a body that could sustain him. But the Giants were too weary to be used, Branl was too severely injured, and Stave and Canrik were too obdurate. Howling, the Raver fled.\n\nBraced on Stave's shoulder, Covenant left the dais. When he had reclaimed Loric's dagger, he stabbed it into the stone where Lord Foul had stood. It had held the Despiser there briefly. Perhaps it would do something similar for Mount Thunder's heart.\n\nIn the light of the gem, Covenant went to stand with Linden and Jeremiah.\n\nTheir faces were starting to blur. Bits of them seemed to fade in and out of solidity. The ichor of the mountain streamed from the walls, spattered from the ceiling. The dust of pulverized gutrock rose like spume from the cracking floor. For an instant, Branl appeared to be whole again. For another, he resembled a desiccated corpse. Canrik's wounds and those of the Swordmainnir wavered between past and future.\n\n\"If it will be done,\" Stave said, or had said, or would say, \"it must be done now. Do not fear for us. We are at peace. Our deeds here would content the heart of any _Haruchai_.\"\n\n\"And of any Giant,\" Rime Coldspray managed faintly.\n\nCovenant took the time to embrace Linden; to give her the best kiss that he had in him. He delayed long enough to ruffle Jeremiah's hair. Then he said simply, \"Now.\"\n\nWith his halfhand, he clasped Linden's left. Sharing his burdens, he raised both arms, held high his bright wedding band and hers. After an instant's hesitation, Linden reached out to grip the cleansed Staff between Jeremiah's hands, trusting the influence of the _krill_ , or the accelerating collapse of Law and Time, or her own rightful use of wild magic to protect her from incompatible theurgies. She smiled at her son. He was concentrating too hard to smile back.\n\nA final convulsion tore through Kiril Threndor. Wracked beyond endurance, the whole chamber became rubble.\n\nLifted by fire, Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah stepped into the wake of the World's End and rose like glory.\n\n## Epilogue\n\n\"The soul in which the flower grows\"\n\nTogether in deep night, Thomas Covenant, Linden Avery, and Jeremiah walked west from the slopes of Gravin Threndor through the enduring woodland of Andelain.\n\nAt first, they could hear the distant turmoil of the Soulsease as it rushed between the walls of Treacher's Gorge: a plaint like a lament, compelled and swift. But gradually the sound faded among the rich hush of the trees. Stately Gilden and high oaks comforted the heavens. Broad-boughed sycamores and gnarled cottonwoods spread their limbs in welcome. Occasional rills chuckled through the dark, and lush greenswards cushioned walking. Amused breezes wafted their small jests here and there, caressing the Andelainian largesse with tranquility as pellucid as Glimmermere. Along the hillsides, _aliantha_ and flowering forsythia gathered like guides or guardians, confirming a path through the night.\n\nThe three carried no light, although Covenant and Linden could have etched the trees with argent, and Jeremiah bore the restored Staff of Law as well as his legacy of Earthpower. They preferred to make their way among the monarchs and nobles of the Hills without other illumination because they themselves had become light. The three of them glowed gentle silver as though they lived half in the realm of the Dead; as though they were in transition, passing into or leaving a dimension of refined spirit. And the scar on Covenant's forehead held a more concentrated lucence both oneiric and definitive. He wore it like an implied coronet, the crown of all that he had loved and done.\n\nThe ambiguous auguries of their marred clothes were gone. Instead of ruined red flannel or a cut T-shirt or blood-soaked pajamas, instead of jeans and boots, they were clad in robes of fine sendaline supple as woven ghost-silk, soothing to their hard-used skin, and their feet were bare. In their passage beyond Kiril Threndor, they had been made clean.\n\nLifted by the verdant luxury of the grass, they walked easily, and the crisp air was an elixir in their lungs. On some other night, an atmosphere which had not known the sun's touch for days might have left them shivering. On this night, the chill was refreshment, balm: an anodyne for iniquity and travail.\n\nThe three figures luminous as spectres did not feel distance. They did not notice time. They had done what they could to answer their own questions, and were free of impatience. Certainly Covenant and Linden could have walked for hours in silence, content with Andelain, and with the communion of their clasped hands. But Jeremiah was young. He spoke first.\n\n\"We did it.\"\n\nLinden smiled at him. \"We did.\"\n\nAfter a while, Jeremiah asked, \"Did we do it right?\"\n\n\"I think so,\" Covenant said. Old and present pains complicated his tone. He did not share himself with his essential enemy without cost. \"It's hard to be sure.\" Too much had been lost.\n\nThen he gestured ahead. There a glade bedecked with wildflowers opened among the trees. \"But we did that part right.\"\n\nPast the boughs, the reaching twigs, the abundance of leaves, a vast multitude of stars emblazoned the heavens, distinct and glittering and inspired, complete in their loveliness. Their myriads made magnificence of the sky's black void.\n\nThe three stopped in the heart of the glade. For a time, they simply gazed upward, rapt and reveling.\n\n\"Of course,\" Covenant added, \"we had help.\"\n\nFrom an innominate distance, Infelice came to stand with them. Sumptuous in her gems and beauty, the suzerain of the _Elohim_ was herself an incarnation of stars. \"Indeed, Timewarden,\" she said like the chiming of faraway bells. \"We who were preserved from the Worm have given our aid, though our diminishment has been grievous. Chiefly we have concerned ourselves with guiding the Worm's return to its proper slumber. Doing so, we have assisted in the restoration of the One Tree to its full leaf and bloom. Yet these were lesser tasks gladly undertaken. The greatest deeds were yours, Timewarden, and yours, Wildwielder, and also yours, Chosen-son. Your achievements transcend us.\n\n\"You have made the world new.\"\n\nJeremiah nodded, grinning.\n\n\"But all those people,\" Linden said sadly. \"Millions of them. Tens of millions. All that devastation. I did that. I have to live with so much death\u2014\" She did not continue.\n\nCovenant tightened his grip on her hand.\n\nInfelice shook her head. \"Yet had you not roused the Worm,\" she replied, \"he whom you name the Despiser would have wrought graver harm by some other means. Damning the Earth, you enabled its redemption. Therefore do not fault yourself, Wildwielder. Though it shames me to confess it, your folly has surpassed the wisdom of the _Elohim_. We erred in our opposition, erred cruelly. Now we accept the outcome without regret.\"\n\n\"'Beings from beyond Time,'\" murmured Linden.\n\n\"Indeed,\" the _Elohim_ said again. \"For that reason, if for no other, there can be no fault in you. You were chosen for your task. You did not seek it out. Nevertheless you have found it within yourself to prevail.\"\n\nThen she faced Covenant. \"For your sake, Timewarden, I am grieved. You have elected to bear the lasting burden of this restoration. You have given the living Earth a gift which exacts anguish. The Despiser is not defeated. He strives within you. While you live, he must be defeated continuously. I have come to proffer my obeisant gratitude\u2014and also to inquire how you contrive to endure your triumph. Your willingness defies my comprehension. I could more readily grasp the surrender of your spirit to the Arch of Time. Your acceptance now surpasses me.\"\n\nCovenant grimaced. He almost smiled. \"It's easier than it looks. Or it's harder. Or maybe it's just worth the effort.\" He ran his halfhand through his hair. \"I don't know how else to explain it. Lord Foul makes us strong.\"\n\n\"Strong?\" Jeremiah objected. \"The Despiser? He would have slaughtered the whole world and laughed about it.\"\n\n\"Well, sure.\" Covenant shrugged. \"But ask yourself why he's like that. Berek said it. 'Only the great of heart may despair greatly.' All that malice and contempt is just love and hope and eagerness gone rancid. He's the Creator's curdled shadow. He\u2014\" He grimaced again. \"I'm not saying this right.\n\n\"He gives us the chance to do better.\"\n\nJeremiah and Infelice studied him, frowning.\n\n\"In any case,\" Covenant added, \"taking a stand against him is what makes us who we are.\" He looked more sharply at the _Elohim_. \"When we don't, we aren't anything. We're just empty.\"\n\nUncharacteristically gracious, Infelice bowed. \"A just charge, Timewarden. I perceive now that it is condign. I am content to acknowledge it.\n\n\"Contemplating the paradox of your folly and wisdom, I bid you joy.\"\n\nRiding a delicate loft of bells, she took herself away.\n\nLinden watched her husband's face and smiled like a new day.\n\nAs if he were answering her, Covenant said, \"I can feel my fingers. They seem to have nerves again, what's left of them. And the soles of my feet\u2014They used to be numb. Now I know I'm standing on grass. I can almost feel individual blades.\n\n\"I've always thought you were beautiful, but I had no idea you're _so_ beautiful.\"\n\nShe kissed him for a time while Jeremiah rolled his eyes. Then the companions walked again.\n\nThe Hills displayed themselves like treasures. Leagues may have passed, unmeasured by Andelain's kind ease. In the east, Mount Thunder's dark bulk showed against the paling sky. Intimations of morning lifted birds into the air. Chirps and twitters began like introits, the preliminaries of worship. Every in-drawn breath was a sacrament. Every exhalation released care.\n\nAnd from out of the fading night came Wraiths to do homage.\n\nFleet as candle-flames, and glad as an aubade, throngs of living fires danced among the trees, two or three at first, then scores, then innumerable hundreds. Sharing warmth and brightness like wealth, they gathered in the air. Harmoniously they measured the sequences of a stately gavotte around Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah. One at a time, they wafted closer to kiss blessings onto Linden's forehead, and onto Jeremiah's. But in front of Covenant they appeared to falter as though they were abashed or frightened, dismayed by awe. Eschewing his forehead, they touched lightly on his wedding ring, then scampered away, relieved and eager, piquant as trills.\n\nWhen the Wraiths had bestowed their approval and were done, the companions resumed their effortless travel.\n\nLater, on a rise crowned with larch and plane, they heard a snatch of song. There they paused to listen.\n\nSwelling around them, melodies arched and ached among the boughs. A counterpoint as deep as roots joined the music, and leaves offered a fluttering descant: the strophes of an ode to spring and fertile burgeoning, to anticipations of ripe summer. Soon the whole woodland seemed on the verge of full-throated song. But then the chorus shrank or condensed until it became Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir striding upward with the earned remains of his staff cradled in one arm.\n\nCalling his name, Linden started toward her dear friend. After a few steps, however, she halted at the sight of the crowd ascending behind the former Manethrall.\n\nTall figures followed the Forestal, creatures sculpted and kingly in their perfection. A few were grey, the rest as black as the departing night. Like Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir, they were eyeless. But he had lost his orbs in battle: they had been fashioned without the need for ordinary sight. Where gaping nostrils had once dominated their faces, they now had more human noses which they appeared to bear proudly; and their mouths could smile. The straight strength of their limbs matched the symmetry of their forms and the sovereignty of their carriage.\n\nThe tallest of the creatures accompanied the Forestal a step behind his right shoulder: the loremaster. The rest of the transformed ur-viles and Waynhim stopped a few strides away. The loremaster carried its fearsome iron jerrid in one fist, but the other creatures had exchanged their eldritch knives for wands like twigs with which they appeared to shape the verdant music.\n\n\"Mahrtiir?\" Linden began. \"Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir? You have no idea\u2014Are these\u2014?\" Unable to complete a question, she said through her tears, \"I am so glad to see you!\"\n\n\"We are well met,\" mused the Forestal, \"well met in all sooth, Ringthane, Linden Avery, friend. And well met also, Covenant Timewarden and young Jeremiah. Among unforeseen wonders, you are a particular delight. Though I sang against the Worm with every aspect of my given strength, I did not prevent the world's death. Nor could I evade it. Yet I am here. Indeed, all who clung to life at the moment of the Earth's extinction live still. While the restored Arch endures, you will be remembered and honored among all of the wide world's forests.\"\n\n\"But how did you get here?\" asked Linden. \"We left you\u2014I don't even know how far we've come.\"\n\n\"Andelain is here,\" answered the ur-Mahrtiir. \"Salva Gildenbourne is nigh. When the Worm had turned aside from my service to the fane, I wished to meet my passing among the trees and richness and innocence which I love. Therefore I sang to these woodlands, and was conveyed hither.\"\n\nAt once, he continued, \"I will not linger. The sight of you suffices for me, Linden Ringthane. A task immense and needful awaits, and I am avid to begin while my powers freshen within me. Much of lands and peoples, of wood and mountains, has been laid waste, much that cannot be restored. Yet much remains. And there can be no true healing that does not commence with trees.\n\n\"I am become the Earth's Forestal.\"\n\n\"Alone?\" Linden inquired like a plea. \"Alone, Mahrtiir?\"\n\nCaerwood ur-Mahrtiir sang mirth. \"Assuredly not, Linden Avery, friend. With me are these ur-viles and Waynhim, the last of their kind. Aye, they are Demondim-spawn, given life by lore rather than by natural birth. But they are also High Lord Elena redeemed from torment. They are the Auriference and Emereau Vrai and Diassomer Mininderain and many other women. They are the dark yearning of _merewives_ and the sunlit absorption of _Elohim_. And now they are also Forestals.\n\n\"Encountering each other here, and filled with wonder that we had been spared, we spoke at length, these regal creatures and I. I proposed to them a new interpretation of their Weird, one suited to their perfected forms and exalted spirits\u2014and they adjudged the meter and harmony and timbre of my music worthy. I will not labor for the Earth's renewal alone.\n\n\"In sooth,\" the ur-Mahrtiir admitted, \"our task is too great for us. But we are not daunted. We will grow, Linden Avery.\" His singing rose until it shivered every leaf, flourished along every bough; and every creature sang with him. \"We will _grow_.\"\n\n\"Guardians,\" Linden murmured as the Forestals carried their melodies through the Hills toward other, more distant forests. \"In the Creator's stead.\" _How may life endure in the Land, if the Forestals fail and perish, as they must, and naught remains to ward its most vulnerable treasures?_ \"I would never have guessed that Demondim-spawn were the answer to Caerroil Wildwood's question.\"\n\n\"They weren't,\" said Covenant. \"You were. You and Mahrtiir. You kept that promise, just like you kept your promise to the ur-viles and Waynhim.\n\n\"And you saved my daughter. Here I was, planning to punish myself eternally for what happened to her, and you\u2014\"\n\nJeremiah scowled, feigning disgust. \" _Please_ don't start kissing again. It's gross.\"\n\nLinden laughed until her son laughed with her. Then the three of them resumed their walk into the west.\n\nBehind them, Gravin Threndor\u2014mighty and long misused\u2014grew distinct as the sun ascended from its imposed ensepulture. Across the heavens, the stars appeared to withdraw, making way for daylight. The greying sky became pearlescent with promise. Winged flights graceful as birdsong articulated the air and the treetops like runes in motion, a script constantly modulating toward new interpretations. Implied flames touched the tips of the highest sequoias.\n\n\"Amazing,\" Linden breathed. \"Something as simple as sunrise. I didn't think that I would ever see it again.\"\n\nCovenant grinned. \"You call that amazing? _I_ didn't think I would ever see well enough to know the difference.\"\n\n\"I can't wait,\" Jeremiah said. But whether he felt impatient for the sun, or for some other wonder, he did not explain.\n\nGradually light came to the heights of Andelain. Bright day spread down branches and boles as though Mount Thunder had granted it passage. The mountain wrapped its cloak of shadow closer about itself. Sunshine enlivened the leaves with memories of music.\n\nAnd in a wide hollow defined by stands of mimosa, by wide-spread jacaranda and flowering rhododendron, with a giddy brook running past an abundance of _aliantha_ , Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah found the friends and companions with whom they had shared so much weariness and strife.\n\nRime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn were there, Onyx Stonemage and Halewhole Bluntfist. The Giants of Dire's Vessel, those who had survived their many battles: Bluff Stoutgirth, Squallish Blustergale, and their few comrades. Canrik and perhaps two score other Masters, all that remained of two hundred. Manethrall Bhapa. Cord Pahni. Branl, the last of the Humbled, who had killed Clyme and sacrificed an arm and become certain. And Stave, the former Master.\n\nThey had been healed and refreshed, all of them, and their raiment restored by the re-creation of the Earth. They lacked only the silver glow and sendaline of _beings from beyond Time_. They had come together in the hollow to feast on treasure-berries, drink pristine water, and share their astonishment.\n\nThey must have been conveyed here while the fraying strands of Time were rewoven.\n\nThey did not immediately notice Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah. But then the three were announced. Among the trees at the edge of the hollow, Ranyhyn whinnied a proud welcome: Hyn and Hynyn, Rallyn and Khelen, Rohnhyn and Naharahn. And as their call carried over the Hills, full sunlight struck the horses, burning away the last vestiges of dusk from their glossy coats. Among them, the Ardent's mount cropped grass as though it had no use for mere relief and wonder.\n\nBut the star-browed Ranyhyn did not remain to receive greetings or gratitude from Linden and Jeremiah, as they must already have done from Stave and Branl, Bhapa and Pahni. They were eager to rejoin their herds and their Ramen. They galloped away, taking Mishio Massima with them, and trumpeting praise to the new day.\n\nGiants and _Haruchai_ lifted their heads. Bhapa and Pahni looked around.\n\nA moment later, jubilation and awe filled the air. Linden wept for gladness, and Jeremiah wavered between shouts and tears. Covenant spread his arms like a man who yearned to embrace everyone simultaneously, and his scarred forehead shone like incarnated starlight.\n\nThen there were shouts and much laughter among the Giants, hugs and clasps and affectionate congratulations. As one, Stave, Branl, and the Masters did more than bow: they sank to one knee and lowered their heads in homage. Unable to contain himself, Manethrall Bhapa put his hands on Linden's waist and lifted her high until she begged him to put her down. With more restraint and sadness, Pahni offered her hopes for Linden's happiness, and for Covenant's.\n\nJeremiah joined the mirth and effusion of the Giants. Linden took the Ramen away from the others to make her peace with Pahni's bereavement, to speak of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir, and to share her heart with friends who had been as faithful as Liand. For his part, Covenant spoke first with the Ironhand and Stoutgirth Anchormaster, while Stave, Branl, and Canrik attended him.\n\nHis efforts to find words for his gratitude, the Giants brushed aside. \"The thanks are ours to give,\" Rime Coldspray proclaimed. \"We are wont to avow that joy is in the ears that hear. Upon such occasions, however, it is also in the mouth that speaks. Though our hearts are galled by loss, they also overflow with gladness. Wherever Giants remain in the Earth, the names of Covenant Timewarden and Linden Giantfriend and Jeremiah Chosen-son will be uttered in celebration and reverence.\"\n\nBluff Stoutgirth nodded his approval. But he smiled with difficulty, and his need for a _caamora_ was plain. He was a sailor, not a warrior: his losses bore a different emotional weight than Coldspray's. Nevertheless he accepted them with a spirit slowly lifting.\n\nCovenant had only one question for them: what now?\n\nThe Anchormaster answered without hesitation. \"With the Giants at my command, I will return to Dire's Vessel. It is my hope that we will sail at once for our homeland. I pine for the harborage of Home. I ache to learn the fate of our kindred. And I yearn for new ears to soften my sorrow with their joy.\"\n\nCovenant understood. He had his own sorrows to assuage. \"And you?\" he asked of Coldspray.\n\nBefore she could reply, Stave spoke.\n\n\"With the Ironhand's consent, we will welcome her and her Swordmainnir to Revelstone. We have much for which we wish to atone. First among our faults, doubtless, is the ignorance which we have inflicted upon the folk of the Land. Yet more immediate to us here is the manner in which we have rebuffed the friendship and valor of the Giants. We hunger to make amends.\"\n\nCovenant cocked an eyebrow at the outcast Master's use of _we_. But he did not interrupt.\n\n\"Also,\" Stave went on, \"I would seek a boon of the Ironhand, and perhaps of her comrades also, a boon which pertains to Revelstone, and which Revelstone may sway her to grant.\"\n\nNow both Coldspray and Stoutgirth stared at him, as surprised as Covenant.\n\nStave faced them with a smile: another surprise. \"You crave explanations.\" Amusement sparkled in his eye. \"Know, then, that I am Stave, by right of years and attainment the Voice of the Masters. I speak for these _Haruchai_ assembled here, and also for those who have retained the benison of their lives elsewhere.\"\n\nMore gravely, he said, \"Your example, Covenant Timewarden, and also that of Linden Avery the Chosen, and indeed of Jeremiah Chosen-son, have turned our thoughts to new paths. We have concluded that the Land has no need of Masters. Rather it will be better served by Lords. Therefore we wish to claim a different purpose. If you do not gainsay us, ur-Lord, we will form a new Council, emulating with our best strength the service begun by Berek Lord-Fatherer.\n\n\"And the boon which we will ask of the Ironhand is this, that she and her Swordmainnir join with us in that Council. By their kindness and merriment, we hope\"\u2014he smiled again\u2014\"to avoid the snares of our long past and severe judgments until the time when the folk of the Land discover a desire to stand among us.\"\n\nJeremiah had wandered closer while Stave spoke. Now the boy said, \"I can tell you where to find Kevin's Wards.\"\n\n\"And we will welcome that knowledge, Chosen-son, when our need for it is ripe.\"\n\nCovenant shook his head, but not in disapproval. \"I don't know what to say. It sounds practically ideal. But you'll have to give up your rejection of Earthpower. Or lore. You'll have to start from scratch.\"\n\n\"As we should, ur-Lord,\" Stave replied. \"The Earth has been vouchsafed a new beginning. The _Haruchai_ also must begin anew.\"\n\nAfter a moment's thought, Covenant observed, \"You'll need a High Lord. You, Stave?\"\n\n\"I?\" Stave countered. He seemed to hear a jest in Covenant's question. \"No. I do not stand so high in my own estimation. And I do not doubt that the day will come when the Voice of the Masters must speak for the _Haruchai_ rather than for the Land. The Council of Lords and the High Lord must regard wider concerns.\n\n\"I have named Canrik to lead the first Council. He is newly acquainted with uncertainty, and will gain much from an immersion in the necessary doubts of the Lords.\"\n\nCanrik nodded, expressionless as any Master or Bloodguard.\n\n\"But Branl\u2014?\" Covenant asked. \"Surely he's earned it?\"\n\n\"I will not shoulder that burden,\" the _Haruchai_ halfhand stated flatly. \"Clyme's death mars my heart. I desire a different atonement. I will return to Gravin Threndor, seeking High Lord Loric's _krill_.\"\n\nHe held up his remaining hand to forestall objections. \"Certainly the Cavewights will greet me with enmity. However, Corruption no longer goads them to madness. And they, too, must feel awe at their continuation in life. It is my hope, therefore, that soft words and a refusal to do harm will dissuade them from bloodshed. They are not mindless, ur-Lord. And I am not helpless in my own defense, though I will cause no more hurt. Mayhap I will elude death until they perceive that we are no longer foes.\n\n\"Should I succeed, I will bear the _krill_ to Revelstone. And should I fail\u2014\" Branl shrugged delicately. \"I will die content in myself. I will not perish grieving.\"\n\nCovenant thought of Cail, who had been rejected by his people, and had gone to find his fate alone. Branl was rejected only by himself. Still he would have to find peace on his own terms.\n\nFinally Rime Coldspray said to Stave, \"The boon you seek is too great to be granted readily, Rockbrother. My comrades and I must speak of it at length. Indeed, many Giantclaves await us, and we will spend whole seasons in delight and sorrow and hope. But first we will gladly accompany you to Revelstone. How can we refuse? We are Giants.\"\n\nTogether, Stave, Canrik, and Branl bowed their thanks.\n\nAfter a while, Linden came to join Covenant and Jeremiah. Resting one hand on her son's shoulder, she pointed into the west. \"Who do you suppose that is?\"\n\nLooking there, Covenant saw a lone figure standing in sunlight at the rim of the hollow. A woman, he thought, although he could not be sure. The figure's head was wrapped in cerements like the Theomach's. Ribbands as garish as the Ardent's ornamented the figure's upper body, while from its waist hung a motley skirt as haphazard and arcane as the Mahdoubt's.\n\nTo Covenant's gaze, and Linden's, and Jeremiah's, the figure replied with a beckoning gesture.\n\nAt first, Covenant smiled. \"It looks to me,\" he said wryly, \"like the Insequent are finally giving credence of the idea of acolytes.\" He almost chuckled. \"In fact, if I had to guess, I might say that's _the_ Acolyte.\"\n\nBut then his eyes darkened, and for a moment he resembled a man who had never recovered from his oldest wounds.\n\n\"It's time. We have to go.\"\n\nAs he spoke, the figure drifted out of sight.\n\n\"Go?\" Jeremiah protested at once. \"Why? We just got here.\"\n\nLinden studied her husband quizzically, but she did not contradict him.\n\n\"The Chosen-son speaks for me as well,\" began Rime Coldspray.\n\n\"And for me,\" put in Bluff Stoutgirth.\n\n\"We have sung no songs to honor you,\" Coldspray added. \"We have not truly begun to voice our wonder and gratitude, our esteem deep as seas. We have not told you of our love. And we have heard neither Linden Giantfriend's tale nor Jeremiah Chosen-son's. In sooth, we are scarcely able to estimate your own.\n\n\"What compulsion requires you to depart, Timewarden?\"\n\nCovenant rubbed his glowing scar to disguise a clench of woe and regret. \"Unearned knowledge,\" he answered brusquely. \"Right now, we're too dangerous. Jeremiah and me. Maybe even Linden. Jeremiah needs time to figure out what he's going to do with everything he got from _moksha_. He has to learn what it all means and decide how he wants to use it. Linden freed She Who Must Not Be Named. She freed Elena\"\u2014his voice caught for a moment\u2014\"and who knows how many other lost souls. That must have been shattering. She hasn't had a chance to recover. And I'm carrying the Despiser around inside me. What he knows isn't a problem for me. I used to be part of the Arch of Time. But he's _Lord Foul_. If I let him, he might spit in your faces. Or he might find a way to use my ring. I hope I can persuade him to relax. Maybe I can even convince him to think of me as something more or better or at least kinder than his worst enemy.\n\n\"We all need time.\"\n\nAnd possibly a teacher, he mused ruefully. If so, one of the Insequent might serve. The Theomach had certainly guided Berek Halfhand well enough.\n\nSoftly Rime Coldspray said, \"Though you conceal it, your hurt is evident, Covenant Timewarden. None here would choose to deny you. Do not take it amiss when I confess that your departure will sadden us.\"\n\nWith an effort, Covenant set aside his aching. He reached out for Linden's hand, smiled at Jeremiah. \"It isn't permanent,\" he said more cheerfully. \"It can't be. Our old lives are finished.\" By degrees, his distress receded. \"There's no going back. You can't get rid of us this easy.\"\n\nThen a new mood came over him, one that he had not felt for a very long time; and he found himself laughing as if he were a man for whom laughter came naturally.\n\nTake _that_ , he told his inner Despiser. And all this time, you thought I hated you.\n\nWhen he subsided, he said to his friends, \"I can't tell you how good it feels to know we can see you again whenever we want.\" Still chuckling, he added, \"But we won't until we're ready.\"\n\nLinden gave him a smile that sang in his heart; and Jeremiah nodded awkwardly, discomfited by recognitions for which he had not prepared himself. Together they walked away in the direction taken by the Insequent: the Unbeliever and his new wife and his obliquely adopted son.\n\nAnd as they walked, spring rainclouds gathered to the southwest. In the distance, sudden showers streaked the air, falling like chrism to the reborn ground. Struck by sunlight, the showers returned a rainbow to the heavens: one bright instance of the world's inherent splendor.\n\nWhen it faded, Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah appeared to fade with it. But their silver lingered for a time, until the day moved on.\n\nHere ends\n\nThe Last Dark\n\nand\n\n\"The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant\"\n\n# Combined Glossary for The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant\n\n**_Abatha_ :** one of the Seven Words\n\n**Acence:** a Stonedownor, sister of Atiaran\n\n**_Ahamkara_ :** Hoerkin, \"the Door\"\n\n**Ahanna:** painter, daughter of Hanna\n\n**Ahnryn:** a Ranyhyn; mount of Tull\n\n**Aimil:** daughter of Anest, wife of Sunder\n\n**Aisle of Approach:** passage to Earthrootstair under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir\n\n**a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells:** Lord of wickedness; Clave-name for Lord Foul the Despiser\n\n**_ak-Haru_ : **a supreme _Haruchai_ honorific; paragon and measure of all _Haruchai_ virtues\n\n**Akkasri:** a member of the Clave; one of the na-Mhoram-cro\n\n**_aliantha_ :** treasure-berries\n\n**Alif, the Lady:** a woman Favored by the _gaddhi_\n\n**_amanibhavam_ :** horse-healing grass, dangerous to humans\n\n**Amatin:** a Lord, daughter of Matin\n\n**Amith:** a woman of Crystal Stonedown\n\n**Amok:** mysterious guide to ancient Lore\n\n**Amorine:** First Haft, later Hiltmark\n\n**Anchormaster:** second-in-command aboard a Giantship\n\n**Andelain, the Hills of Andelain, the Andelainian Hills:** a region of the Land which embodies health and beauty\n\n**Andelainscion:** a region in the Center Plains\n\n**Anele:** deranged old man; son of Sunder and Hollian\n\n**Anest:** a woman of Mithil Stonedown, sister of Kalina\n\n**Annoy:** a Courser\n\n**_anundivian yaj\u00f1a_ :** lost Ramen craft of bone-sculpting\n\n**Appointed, the:** an _Elohim_ chosen to bear a particular burden; Findail\n\n**Arch of Time, the:** symbol of the existence and structure of time; conditions which make the existence of time possible\n\n**Ard:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land\n\n**Ardent, the:** one of the Insequent\n\n**_arghule\/arghuleh_ :** ferocious ice-beasts\n\n**Asuraka:** Staff-Elder of the Loresraat\n\n**Atiaran:** a Stonedownor, daughter of Tiaran, wife of Trell, mother of Lena\n\n**Audience Hall of Earthroot:** maze under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir to conceal and protect the Blood of the Earth\n\n**Aumbrie of the Clave, the:** storeroom for former Lore\n\n**Auriference, the:** one of the Insequent, long dead\n\n**Auspice, the:** throne of the _gaddhi_\n\n**_aussat Befylam_ :** child-form of the _jheherrin_\n\n**Baf Scatterwit:** a Giant (woman); crew aboard Dire's Vessel\n\n**Bahgoon the Unbearable:** character in a Giantish tale\n\n**_Banas Nimoram_ :** the Celebration of Spring\n\n**Bandsoil Bounds:** region north of Soulsease River\n\n**Banefire, the:** fire by which the Clave affects the Sunbane\n\n**Bann:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Trevor\n\n**Bannor:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Thomas Covenant\n\n**Baradakas:** a Hirebrand of Soaring Woodhelven\n\n**Bargas Slit:** a gap through the Last Hills from the Center Plains to Garroting Deep\n\n**Bareisle:** an island off the coast of _Elemesnedene_\n\n**Basila:** a scout in Berek Halfhand's army\n\n**Benj, the Lady:** a woman Favored by the ****_gaddhi_\n\n**Berek Halfhand:** Heartthew, Lord-Fatherer; first of the Old Lords\n\n**Bern:** _Haruchai_ slain by the Clave\n\n**Bhanoryl:** a Ranyhyn; mount of Galt\n\n**Bhapa:** a Cord of the Ramen, Sahah's half-brother; companion of Linden Avery\n\n**_Bhrathair_ :** a people met by the wandering Giants, residents of _Bhrathairealm_ on the verge of the Great Desert\n\n**_Bhrathairain_ :** the city of the _Bhrathair_\n\n**_Bhrathairain_ Harbor:** the port of the _Bhrathair_\n\n**_Bhrathairealm_ :** the land of the _Bhrathair_\n\n**Birinair:** a Hirebrand, Hearthrall of Lord's Keep\n\n**Bloodguard, the:** _Haruchai_ , a people living in the Westron Mountains; the defenders of the Lords\n\n**Bluff Stoutgirth:** a Giant; Anchormaster of Dire's Vessel\n\n**bone-sculpting:** ancient Ramen craft, marrowmeld\n\n**Borillar:** a Hirebrand and Hearthrall of Lord's Keep\n\n**Bornin:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land\n\n**Brabha:** a Ranyhyn; mount of Korik\n\n**Branl:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land; one of the Humbled\n\n**Brannil:** man of Stonemight Woodhelven\n\n**Brinn:** a leader of the _Haruchai_ ; protector of Thomas Covenant; later Guardian of the One Tree\n\n**Brow Gnarlfist:** a Giant, father of the First of the Search\n\n**_caamora_ :** Giantish ordeal of grief by fire\n\n**Cable Seadreamer:** a Giant, brother of Honninscrave; member of the Search; possessed of the Earth-Sight\n\n**Cabledarm:** a Giant; one of the Swordmainnir\n\n**Caer-Caveral:** Forestal of Andelain; formerly Hile Troy\n\n**Caerroil Wildwood:** Forestal of Garroting Deep\n\n**Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir:** a Forestal; formerly Manethrall Mahrtiir\n\n**_caesure_ :** a rent in the fabric of time; a Fall\n\n**Cail:** a _Haruchai_ ; protector of Linden Avery\n\n**Caitiffin:** a captain of the armed forces of _Bhrathairealm_\n\n**Callindrill:** a Lord, husband of Faer\n\n**Callowwail, the River:** stream arising from _Elemesnedene_\n\n**Canrik:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land\n\n**Cavewights:** evil creatures existing under Mount Thunder\n\n**Cav-Morin Fernhold:** former Forestal of Morinmoss\n\n**Ceer:** one of the _Haruchai_\n\n**Celebration of Spring, the:** the Dance of the Wraiths of Andelain on the dark of the moon in the middle of spring\n\n**Center Plains, the:** a region of the Land\n\n**Centerpith Barrens:** a region in the Center Plains\n\n**Cerrin:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Shetra\n\n**Chant:** one of the _Elohim_\n\n**Char:** a Cord of the Ramen, Sahah's brother\n\n**Chatelaine, the:** courtiers of the _gaddhi_\n\n**Chosen, the:** title given to Linden Avery\n\n**Chosen-son:** Giantish name for Jeremiah\n\n**Circle of Elders:** Stonedown leaders\n\n**Cirrus Kindwind:** a Giant; one of the Swordmainnir\n\n**_clachan_ , the:** demesne of the _Elohim_\n\n**Clang:** a Courser\n\n**Clangor:** a Courser\n\n**Clash:** a Courser\n\n**Clave, the:** group which wields the Sunbane and rules the Land\n\n**_clingor_ :** adhesive leather\n\n**Close, the:** the Council-chamber of Lord's Keep\n\n**Clyme:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land; one of the Humbled\n\n**_Coercri_ :** The Grieve; former home of the Giants in Seareach\n\n**Colossus of the Fall, the:** ancient stone figure guarding the Upper Land\n\n**Consecear Redoin:** a region north of the Soulsease River\n\n**Cord:** Ramen second rank\n\n**Cording:** Ramen ceremony of becoming a Cord\n\n**Corimini:** Eldest of the Loresraat\n\n**Corrupt, the:** _jheherrin_ name for themselves; also the soft ones\n\n**Corruption:** Bloodguard\/ _Haruchai_ name for Lord Foul\n\n**Council of Lords, the:** protectors of the Land\n\n**Courser:** a beast made by the Clave using the Sunbane\n\n**Cravenhaw:** a region between Garroting Deep and the Southron Waste\n\n**Creator, the:** maker of the Earth\n\n**Croft:** Graveler of Crystal Stonedown\n\n**Crowl:** a Bloodguard\n\n**_croyel_ , the:** mysterious creatures which grant power through bargains, living off their hosts\n\n**Crystal Stonedown:** home of Hollian\n\n**Currier:** a Ramen rank\n\n**Damelon Giantfriend:** son of Berek Halfhand, second High Lord of the Old Lords\n\n**Damelon's Door:** door of lore which when opened permits passage through the Audience Hall of Earthroot under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir\n\n**Dance of the Wraiths, the:** the Celebration of Spring\n\n**Dancers of the Sea, the:** _merewives_ ; suspected to be the offspring of the _Elohim_ Kastenessen and his mortal lover\n\n**Daphin:** one of the _Elohim_\n\n**Dast:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land\n\n**Dawngreeter:** highest sail on the foremast of a Giantship\n\n**Dead, the:** spectres of those who have died\n\n**Deaththane:** title given to High Lord Elena by the Ramen\n\n**Defiles Course, the:** river in the Lower Land\n\n**Demimage:** a sorcerer of Vidik Amar\n\n**Demondim, the:** creatures created by Viles; creators of ur-viles and Waynhim\n\n**Demondim-spawn:** another name for ur-viles and Waynhim; also another name for Vain\n\n**Desolation, the:** era of ruin in the Land after the Ritual of Desecration\n\n**Despiser, the:** Lord Foul\n\n**Despite:** evil; name given to the Despiser's nature and effects\n\n**_dharmakshetra_ :** \"to brave the enemy,\" a Waynhim\n\n**Dhorehold of the Dark:** Forestal of Grimmerdhore\n\n**_dhraga_ :** a Waynhim\n\n**_dhubha_ :** a Waynhim\n\n**_dhurng_ :** a Waynhim\n\n**_diamondraught_ : **Giantish liquor\n\n**Diassomer Mininderain:** in myth, a woman betrayed by Lord Foul and imprisoned in the Earth as punishment\n\n**Din:** a Courser\n\n**Dire's Vessel:** Giantship used by the Swordmainnir to convey Longwrath\n\n**Doar:** a Bloodguard\n\n**Dohn:** a Manethrall of the Ramen\n\n**Dolewind, the:** wind blowing to the Soulbiter\n\n**Doom's Retreat:** a gap in the Southron Range between the South Plains and Doriendor Corishev\n\n**Doriendor Corishev:** an ancient city; seat of the King against whom Berek Halfhand rebelled\n\n**_drhami_ :** a Waynhim\n\n**Drinishok:** Sword-Elder of the Loresraat\n\n**Drinny:** a Ranyhyn, foal of Hynaril; mount of Lord Mhoram\n\n**_dromond_ :** a Giantship\n\n**Drool Rockworm:** a Cavewight, leader of the Cavewights; finder of the Illearth Stone\n\n**_dukkha_ :** \"victim,\" Waynhim name\n\n**Dura Fairflank:** a mustang, Thomas Covenant's mount\n\n**Durance, the:** a barrier Appointed by the _Elohim_ ; a prison for both Kastenessen and the _skurj_\n\n**_durhisitar_ :** a Waynhim\n\n**During Stonedown:** village destroyed by the _Grim_ ; home of Hamako\n\n**_Duroc_ :** one of the Seven Words\n\n**Durris:** a _Haruchai_\n\n**EarthBlood:** concentrated fluid Earthpower, only known to exist under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir; source of the Power of Command\n\n**Earthfriend:** title first given to Berek Halfhand\n\n**Earthpower:** natural power of all life; the source of all organic power in the Land\n\n**Earthroot:** lake under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir\n\n**Earthrootstair:** stairway down to the lake of Earthroot under _Melenkurion_ Skyweir\n\n**Earth-Sight:** Giantish power to perceive distant dangers and needs\n\n**eftmound:** gathering place for the _Elohim_\n\n**eh-Brand:** one who can use wood to read the Sunbane\n\n**_Elemesnedene_ :** home of the _Elohim_\n\n**Elena:** daughter of Lena and Thomas Covenant; later High Lord\n\n**_Elohim_** **,** **the:** a mystic people encountered by the wandering Giants\n\n**_Elohimfest_ :** a gathering of the _Elohim_\n\n**Emacrimma's Maw:** a region in the Center Plains\n\n**Emereau Vrai:** Kastenessen's mortal lover, now victim to She Who Must Not Be Named\n\n**Enemy:** Lord Foul's term of reference for the Creator\n\n**Eoman:** a unit of the Warward of Lord's Keep, twenty warriors and a Warhaft\n\n**Eoward:** twenty Eoman plus a Haft\n\n**Epemin:** a soldier in Berek Halfhand's army, tenth Eoman, second Eoward\n\n**Esmer:** tormented son of Cail and the Dancers of the Sea\n\n**Etch Furledsail:** a Giant (woman); crew aboard Dire's Vessel\n\n**Exalt Widenedworld:** a Giant; youngest son of Soar Gladbirth and Sablehair Foamheart; later called Lostson and Longwrath\n\n**_fael Befylam_ :** serpent-form of the _jheherrin_\n\n**Faer:** wife of Lord Callindrill\n\n**Fall:** _Haruchai_ name for a _caesure_\n\n**Fangs:** the Teeth of the Render; Ramen name for the Demondim\n\n**Fangthane the Render:** Ramen name for Lord Foul\n\n**Far Horizoneyes:** a Giant (woman); crew aboard Dire's Vessel\n\n**Far Woodhelven:** a village of the Land\n\n**Father of Horses, the:** _Kelenbhrabanal_ , legendary sire of the Ranyhyn\n\n**Favored, the:** courtesans of the _gaddhi_\n\n**Feroce, the:** denizens of Sarangrave Flat, worshippers of the lurker, descended from the _jheherrin_\n\n**Filigree:** a Giant; another name for Sablehair Foamheart\n\n**Findail:** one of the _Elohim_ ; the Appointed\n\n**Fields of Richloam:** a region in the Center Plains\n\n**Fire-Lions:** living fire-flow of Mount Thunder\n\n**fire-stones:** graveling\n\n**First Betrayer:** Clave-name for Berek Halfhand\n\n**First Circinate:** first level of the Sandhold\n\n**First Haft:** third-in-command of the Warward\n\n**First Mark:** Bloodguard commander\n\n**First of the Search, the:** leader of the Giants who follow the Earth-Sight; Gossamer Glowlimn\n\n**First Ward of Kevin's Lore:** primary cache of knowledge left by High Lord Kevin\n\n**First Woodhelven:** banyan tree village between Revelstone and Andelain; first Woodhelven created by Sunder and Hollian\n\n**Fleshharrower:** a Giant-Raver, Jehannum, _moksha_\n\n**Foamkite:** _tyrscull_ belonging to Honninscrave and Seadreamer\n\n**Fole:** a _Haruchai_\n\n**Foodfendhall:** eating-hall and galley aboard a Giantship\n\n**Forbidding:** a wall of power\n\n**Forestal:** a protector of the remnants of the One Forest\n\n**Fostil:** a man of Mithil Stonedown; father of Liand\n\n**Foul's Creche:** the Despiser's home; Ridjeck Thome\n\n**Frostheart Grueburn:** a Giant; one of the Swordmainnir\n\n**Furl Falls:** waterfall at Revelstone\n\n**Furl's Fire:** warning fire at Revelstone\n\n**_gaddhi_ , the:** sovereign of _Bhrathairealm_\n\n**Gallows Howe:** a place of execution in Garroting Deep\n\n**Galt:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land; one of the Humbled\n\n**Garroting Deep:** a forest of the Land\n\n**Garth:** Warmark of the Warward of Lord's Keep\n\n**Gay:** a Winhome of the Ramen\n\n**_ghohritsar_ :** a Waynhim\n\n**_ghramin_ :** a Waynhim\n\n**Giantclave:** Giantish conference\n\n**Giantfriend:** title given first to Damelon, later to Thomas Covenant and then Linden Avery\n\n**Giants:** the Unhomed, ancient friends of the Lords; a seafaring people of the Earth\n\n**Giantship:** a stone sailing vessel made by Giants; _dromond_\n\n**Giantway:** path made by Giants\n\n**Giant Woods:** a forest of the Land\n\n**Gibbon:** the na-Mhoram; leader of the Clave\n\n**Gilden:** a maple-like tree with golden leaves\n\n**Gildenlode:** a power-wood formed from the Gilden trees\n\n**Gleam Stonedown:** a village decimated by _kresh_\n\n**Glimmermere:** a lake on the plateau above Revelstone\n\n**Gorak Krembal:** Hotash Slay, a defense around Foul's Creche\n\n**Gossamer Glowlimn:** a Giant; the First of the Search\n\n**Grace:** a Cord of the Ramen\n\n**Graveler:** one who uses stone to wield the Sunbane\n\n**graveling:** fire-stones, made to glow and emit heat by stone-lore\n\n**Gravelingas:** a master of _rhadhamaerl_ stone-lore\n\n**Gravin Threndor:** Mount Thunder\n\n**Great Desert, the:** a region of the Earth; home of the _Bhrathair_ and the Sandgorgons\n\n**Great One:** title given to Caerroil Wildwood by the Mahdoubt\n\n**Great Swamp, the:** Lifeswallower; a region of the Land\n\n**Grey Desert, the:** a region south of the Land\n\n**Grey River, the:** a river of the Land\n\n**Grey Slayer:** plains name for Lord Foul\n\n**Greywightswath:** a region north of the Soulsease River\n\n**Greshas Slant:** a region in the Center Plains\n\n**_griffin_ :** lion-like beast with wings\n\n**_Grim_ , the:** (also the na-Mhoram's _Grim_ ) a destructive storm sent by the Clave\n\n**Grimmand Honninscrave:** a Giant; Master of Starfare's Gem; brother of Seadreamer\n\n**Grimmerdhore:** a forest of the Land\n\n**Guard, the:** _hustin_ ; soldiers serving the _gaddhi_\n\n**Guardian of the One Tree, the:** mystic figure warding the approach to the One Tree; formerly _ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol_ ; now Brinn of the _Haruchai_\n\n**Haft:** commander of an Eoward\n\n**Halewhole Bluntfist:** a Giant; one of the Swordmainnir\n\n**Halfhand:** title given to Thomas Covenant and to Berek\n\n**Hall of Gifts, the:** large chamber in Revelstone devoted to the artworks of the Land\n\n**Hamako:** sole survivor of the destruction of During Stonedown\n\n**Hami:** a Manethrall of the Ramen\n\n**Hand:** a rank in Berek Halfhand's army; aide to Berek\n\n**Handir:** a _Haruchai_ leader; the Voice of the Masters\n\n**_Harad_ :** one of the Seven Words\n\n**Harbor Captain:** chief official of the port of _Bhrathairealm_\n\n**Harn:** one of the _Haruchai_ ; protector of Hollian\n\n**Harrow, the:** one of the Insequent\n\n**_Haruchai_ :** a warrior people from the Westron Mountains\n\n**Healer:** a physician\n\n**Heart of Thunder:** Kiril Threndor, a cave of power in Mount Thunder\n\n**Hearthcoal:** a Giant; cook of Starfare's Gem; wife of Seasauce\n\n**Hearthrall of Lord's Keep:** a steward responsible for light, warmth, and hospitality\n\n**Heartthew:** a title given to Berek Halfhand\n\n**heartwood chamber:** meeting-place of a Woodhelven, within a tree\n\n**Heer:** leader of a Woodhelven\n\n**Heft Galewrath:** a Giant; Storesmaster of Starfare's Gem\n\n**Herem:** a Raver, Kinslaughterer, _turiya_\n\n**Hergrom:** one of the _Haruchai_\n\n**High God:** title given to the lurker of the Sarangrave by the Feroce\n\n**High Lord:** leader of the Council of Lords\n\n**High Lord's Furl:** banner of the High Lord\n\n**High Wood:** _lomillialor_ ; offspring of the One Tree\n\n**Hile Troy:** a man formerly from Covenant's world; Warmark of High Lord Elena's Warward\n\n**Hiltmark:** second-in-command of the Warward\n\n**Hirebrand:** a master of _lillianrill_ wood-lore\n\n**Hoerkin:** a Warhaft\n\n**Hollian:** daughter of Amith; eh-Brand of Crystal Stonedown; companion of Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery\n\n**Home:** original homeland of the Giants\n\n**Hooryl:** a Ranyhyn; Clyme's later mount\n\n**Horizonscan:** lookout atop the midmast of a Giantship\n\n**Horrim Carabal:** name given to the lurker of the Sarangrave\n\n**Horse, the:** human soldiery of the _gaddhi_\n\n**horserite:** a gathering of Ranyhyn in which they drink mind-blending waters in order to share visions, prophecies, and purpose\n\n**Hotash Slay:** Gorak Krembal, a flow of lava protecting Foul's Creche\n\n**Hower:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Loerya\n\n**Hrama:** a Ranyhyn stallion; mount of Anele\n\n**Humbled, the:** three _Haruchai_ maimed to resemble Thomas Covenant in order to remind the Masters of their limitations\n\n**Hurl:** a Giant (man); crew aboard Dire's Vessel\n\n**Hurn:** a Cord of the Ramen\n\n**hurtloam:** a healing mud\n\n**Huryn:** a Ranyhyn; mount of Terrel\n\n**_husta\/hustin_ :** partly human soldiers bred by Kasreyn to be the _gaddhi_ 's Guard\n\n**Hyn:** a Ranyhyn mare; mount of Linden Avery\n\n**Hynaril:** a Ranyhyn; mount of Tamarantha and then Mhoram\n\n**Hynyn:** a Ranyhyn stallion; mount of Stave\n\n**Hyrim:** a Lord, son of Hoole\n\n**Illearth Stone, the:** powerful bane long buried under Mount Thunder\n\n**Illender:** title given to Thomas Covenant\n\n**Imoiran Tomal-mate:** a Stonedownor\n\n**Inbull:** a Warhaft in Berek Halfhand's army; commander of the tenth Eoman, second Eoward\n\n**Infelice:** reigning leader of the _Elohim_\n\n**Insequent, the:** a mysterious people living far to the west of the Land\n\n**Interdict, the:** reference to the power of the Colossus of the Fall to prevent Ravers from entering the Upper Land\n\n**Irin:** a warrior of the Third Eoman of the Warward\n\n**Ironhand, the:** title given to the leader of the Swordmainnir\n\n**Isle of the One Tree, the:** location of the One Tree\n\n**Jain:** a Manethrall of the Ramen\n\n**Jass:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land\n\n**Jehannum:** a Raver, Fleshharrower, _moksha_\n\n**Jerrick:** a Demimage of Vidik Amar, in part responsible for the creation of _quellvisks_\n\n**Jevin:** a healer in Berek Halfhand's army\n\n**_jheherrin_ :** soft ones, misshapen by-products of Lord Foul's making\n\n**Jous:** a man of Mithil Stonedown, son of Prassan, father of Nassic; inheritor of an Unfettered One's mission to remember the Halfhand\n\n**Kalina:** a woman of Mithil Stonedown; wife of Nassic, mother of Sunder\n\n**Kam:** a Manethrall of the Ramen\n\n**Karnis:** a Heer of First Woodhelven\n\n**Kasreyn of the Gyre:** a thaumaturge; the _gaddhi_ 's Kemper (advisor) in _Bhrathairealm_\n\n**Kastenessen:** one of the _Elohim_ ; former Appointed\n\n**Keenreef:** a Giant (woman); crew aboard Dire's Vessel\n\n**Keep of the na-Mhoram, the:** Revelstone\n\n**Keeper:** a Ramen rank, one of those unsuited to the rigors of being a Cord or a Manethrall\n\n**_Kelenbhrabanal_ :** Father of Horses in Ranyhyn legends\n\n**Kemper, the:** chief advisor of the _gaddhi_ ; Kasreyn\n\n**Kemper's Pitch:** highest level of the Sandhold\n\n**_Kenaustin Ardenol_ : **a figure of _Haruchai_ legend; former Guardian of the One Tree; true name of the Theomach\n\n**Kevin Landwaster:** son of Loric Vilesilencer; last High Lord of the Old Lords\n\n**Kevin's Dirt:** smog-like pall covering the Upper Land; it blocks health-sense, making itself invisible from below\n\n**Kevin's Lore:** knowledge of power left hidden by Kevin in the Seven Wards\n\n**Kevin's Watch:** mountain lookout near Mithil Stonedown\n\n**_Khabaal_ :** one of the Seven Words\n\n**Khelen:** a Ranyhyn stallion; mount of Jeremiah\n\n**Kinslaughterer:** a Giant-Raver, Herem, _turiya_\n\n**Kiril Threndor:** chamber of power deep under Mount Thunder; Heart of Thunder\n\n**Koral:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Amatin\n\n**Korik:** a Bloodguard\n\n**Krenwill:** a scout in Berek Halfhand's army\n\n**_kresh_ :** savage giant yellow wolves\n\n**_krill_ , the:** knife of power forged by High Lord Loric; awakened to power by Thomas Covenant\n\n**Kurash Plenethor:** region of the Land formally named Stricken Stone, now called Trothgard\n\n**Kurash Qwellinir:** the Shattered Hills, region of the Lower Land protecting Foul's Creche\n\n**Lake Pelluce:** a lake in Andelainscion\n\n**Lal:** a Cord of the Ramen\n\n**Landsdrop:** great cliff separating the Upper and Lower Lands\n\n**Land, the:** generally, area found on the map; a focal region of the Earth where Earthpower is uniquely accessible\n\n**Landsverge Stonedown:** a village of the Land\n\n**Landwaster:** title given to High Lord Kevin\n\n**Latebirth:** a Giant; one of the Swordmainnir\n\n**Law, the:** the natural order\n\n**Law of Death, the:** the natural order which separates the living from the dead\n\n**Law of Life, the:** the natural order which separates the dead from the living\n\n**Law-Breaker:** title given to both High Lord Elena and Caer-Caveral\n\n**Lax Blunderfoot:** a name chosen by Latebirth in self-castigation\n\n**Lena:** a Stonedownor, daughter of Atiaran, mother of Elena\n\n**_lianar_ :** wood of power used by an eh-Brand\n\n**Liand:** a man of Mithil Stonedown, son of Fostil; companion of Linden Avery\n\n**Lifeswallower:** the Great Swamp\n\n**_lillianrill_ :** wood-lore; masters of wood-lore\n\n**Lithe:** a Manethrall of the Ramen\n\n**Llaura:** a Heer of Soaring Woodhelven\n\n**Loerya:** a Lord, wife of Trevor\n\n**_lomillialor_ :** High Wood; a wood of power\n\n**Longwrath:** a Giant; Swordmainnir name for Exalt Widenedworld\n\n**Lord:** one who has mastered both the Sword and the Staff aspects of Kevin's Lore\n\n**Lord-Fatherer:** title given to Berek Halfhand\n\n**Lord Foul:** the enemy of the Land; the Despiser\n\n**\"** **Lord Mhoram's Victory** **\"** **:** a painting by Ahanna\n\n**Lord of Wickedness:** a-Jeroth\n\n**Lord's-fire:** staff-fire used by the Lords\n\n**Lord's Keep:** Revelstone\n\n**Lords, the:** the primary protectors of the Land\n\n**loremaster:** a leader of ur-viles\n\n**Loresraat:** Trothgard school at Revelwood where Kevin's Lore is studied\n\n**Lorewarden:** a teacher in the Loresraat\n\n**loreworks:** Demondim power-laboratory\n\n**Loric Vilesilencer:** a High Lord; son of Damelon Giantfriend\n\n**_lor-liarill_ :** Gildenlode\n\n**Lost, the:** Giantish name for the Unhomed\n\n**Lost Deep, the:** a loreworks; breeding pit\/laboratory under Mount Thunder where Demondim, Waynhim, and ur-viles were created\n\n**Lostson:** a Giant; later name for Exalt Widenedworld\n\n**Lower Land, the:** region of the Land east of Landsdrop\n\n**lucubrium:** laboratory of a thaumaturge\n\n**lurker of the Sarangrave, the:** monster inhabiting the Great Swamp\n\n**Magister, the:** former Forestal of Andelain\n\n**Mahdoubt, the:** a servant of Revelstone; one of the Insequent\n\n**Mahrtiir:** a Manethrall of the Ramen; companion of Linden Avery\n\n**_maidan_ :** open land around _Elemesnedene_\n\n**Maker, the:** _jheherrin_ name for Lord Foul\n\n**Maker-place:** _jheherrin_ name for Foul's Creche\n\n**Malliner:** Woodhelvennin Heer, son of Veinnin\n\n**Mane:** Ramen reference to a Ranyhyn\n\n**Maneing:** Ramen ceremony of becoming a Manethrall\n\n**Manethrall:** highest Ramen rank\n\n**Manhome:** main dwelling place of the Ramen in the Plains of Ra\n\n**Marid:** a man of Mithil Stonedown; Sunbane victim\n\n**Marny:** a Ranyhyn; mount of Tuvor\n\n**marrowmeld:** bone-sculpting; _anundivian yaj\u00f1a_\n\n**Master:** commander of a Giantship\n\n**Master, the:** Clave-name for Lord Foul\n\n**_master-rukh_ , the:** iron triangle at Revelstone which feeds and reads other _rukhs_\n\n**Masters of the Land, the:** _Haruchai_ who have claimed responsibility for protecting the Land from Corruption\n\n**Mehryl:** a Ranyhyn; mount of Hile Troy\n\n**_Melenkurion_ :** one of the Seven Words\n\n**_Melenkurion_ Skyweir: **a cleft peak in the Westron Mountains\n\n**Memla:** a Rider of the Clave; one of the na-Mhoram-in\n\n**_mere_ -son:** name or title given to Esmer\n\n**_merewives_ :** the Dancers of the Sea\n\n**_metheglin_ :** a beverage; mead\n\n**Mhoram:** a Lord, later high Lord; son of Variol\n\n**Mhornym:** a Ranyhyn stallion; mount of Clyme\n\n**_Mill_ :** one of the Seven Words\n\n**_Minas_ : **one of the Seven Words\n\n**_mirkfruit_ :** papaya-like fruit with narcoleptic pulp\n\n**Mishio Massima:** the Ardent's mount\n\n**Mistweave:** a Giant\n\n**Mithil River:** a river of the Land\n\n**Mithil Stonedown:** a village in the South Plains\n\n**Mithil's Plunge, the:** waterfall at the head of the Mithil valley\n\n**Moire Squareset:** a Giant; one of the Swordmainnir; killed in battle by the _skurj_\n\n**_moksha_ :** a Raver, Jehannum, Fleshharrower\n\n**Morin:** First Mark of the Bloodguard; commander in original _Haruchai_ army\n\n**Morinmoss:** a forest of the Land\n\n**Morninglight:** one of the _Elohim_\n\n**Morril:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Callindrill\n\n**Mount Thunder:** a peak at the center of Landsdrop\n\n**Muirwin Delenoth:** resting place of abhorrence; graveyard of _quellvisks_\n\n**Murrin:** a Stonedownor, mate of Odona\n\n**Myrha:** a Ranyhyn; mount of High Lord Elena\n\n**na-Mhoram, the:** leader of the Clave\n\n**na-Mhoram-cro:** lowest rank of the Clave\n\n**na-Mhoram-in:** highest rank of the Clave below the na-Mhoram\n\n**na-Mhoram-wist:** middle rank of the Clave\n\n**Naharahn:** a Ranyhyn mare; mount of Pahni\n\n**Narunal:** a Ranyhyn stallion; mount of Mahrtiir\n\n**Nassic:** father of Sunder, son of Jous; inheritor of an Unfettered One's mission to remember the Halfhand\n\n**Naybahn:** a Ranyhyn; mount of Branl\n\n**Nelbrin:** son of Sunder, \"heart's child\"\n\n**_Nicor_ , the:** great sea-monster; said to be offspring of the Worm of the World's End\n\n**Nom:** a Sandgorgon\n\n**North Plains, the:** a region of the Land\n\n**Northron Climbs, the:** a region of the Land\n\n**Oath of Peace, the:** oath by the people of the Land against needless violence\n\n**Odona:** a Stonedownor, mate of Murrin\n\n**Offin:** a former na-Mhoram\n\n**Old Lords, the:** Lords prior to the Ritual of Desecration\n\n**Omournil:** Woodhelvennin Heer, daughter of Mournil\n\n**One Forest, the:** ancient forest covering most of the Land\n\n**One Tree, the:** mystic tree from which the Staff of Law was made\n\n**Onyx Stonemage:** a Giant; one of the Swordmainnir\n\n**_orcrest_ : **a stone of power; Sunstone\n\n**Osondrea:** a Lord, daughter of Sondrea; later high Lord\n\n**Padrias:** Woodhelvennin Heer, son of Mill\n\n**Pahni:** a Cord of the Ramen, cousin of Sahah; companion of Linden Avery\n\n**Palla:** a healer in Berek Halfhand's army\n\n**Peak of the Fire-Lions, the:** Mount Thunder, Gravin Threndor\n\n**Pietten:** Woodhelvennin child damaged by Lord Foul's minions, son of Soranal\n\n**_pitchbrew_ :** a beverage combining _diamondraught_ and _vitrim_ , conceived by Pitchwife\n\n**Pitchwife:** a Giant; member of the Search; husband of the First of the Search\n\n**Plains of Ra, the:** a region of the Land\n\n**Porib:** a Bloodguard\n\n**Power of Command, the:** Seventh Ward of Kevin's Lore\n\n**Pren:** a Bloodguard\n\n**Prothall:** High Lord, son of Dwillian\n\n**Prover of Life:** title given to Thomas Covenant\n\n**Puhl:** a Cord of the Ramen\n\n**Pure One, the:** redemptive figure of _jheherrin_ legend\n\n**Quaan:** Warhaft of the Third Eoman of the Warward; later Hiltmark, then Warmark\n\n**_quellvisk_ :** a kind of monster, now apparently extinct\n\n**_Quern Ehstrel_ :** true name of the Mahdoubt\n\n**Quest for the Staff of Law, the:** quest to recover the Staff of Law from Drool Rockworm\n\n**_Questsimoon_ , the:** the Roveheartswind; a steady, favorable wind, perhaps seasonal\n\n**Quilla:** a Heer of First Woodhelven\n\n**Quirrel:** a Stonedownor, companion of Triock\n\n**Rallyn:** a Ranyhyn; Branl's later mount\n\n**Ramen:** a people who serve the Ranyhyn\n\n**Rant Absolain:** the _gaddhi_\n\n**Ranyhyn:** the great horses of the Plains of Ra\n\n**Ravers:** Lord Foul's three ancient servants\n\n**_Raw_ , the: **fjord into the demesne of the _Elohim_\n\n**Rawedge Rim, the:** mountains around _Elemesnedene_\n\n**Reader:** a member of the Clave who tends and uses the _master-rukh_\n\n**Rede, the:** knowledge of history and survival promulgated by the Clave\n\n**Revelstone:** Lord's Keep; mountain city formed by Giants\n\n**Revelwood:** seat of the Loresraat; tree city grown by Lords\n\n**_rhee_ :** a Ramen food, a thick mush\n\n**_rhadhamaerl_ :** stone-lore; masters of stone-lore\n\n**Rhohm:** a Ranyhyn stallion; mount of Liand\n\n**_rhysh_ :** a community of Waynhim; \"stead\"\n\n**_rhyshyshim_ :** a gathering of _rhysh_ ; a place in which such gathering occurs\n\n**Riddenstretch:** a region north of the Soulsease River\n\n**Rider:** a member of the Clave\n\n**Ridjeck Thome:** Foul's Creche, the Despiser's home\n\n**_rillinlure_ :** healing wood dust\n\n**Rime Coldspray:** a Giant; the Ironhand of the Swordmainnir\n\n**Ringthane:** Ramen name for Thomas Covenant, then Linden Avery\n\n**ring-wielder:** _Elohim_ term of reference for Thomas Covenant\n\n**Rire Grist:** a Caitiffin of the _gaddhi_ 's Horse\n\n**Rites of Unfettering:** the ceremony of becoming Unfettered\n\n**Ritual of Desecration, the:** act of despair by which High Lord Kevin destroyed the Old Lords and ruined most of the Land\n\n**Rivenrock:** deep cleft splitting _Melenkurion_ Skyweir and its plateau; there the Black River enters Garroting Deep\n\n**River Landrider, the:** a river of the Land, partial border of the Plains of Ra\n\n**Riversward:** a region north of the Soulsease River\n\n**Rockbrother:** Swordmainnir name for Stave\n\n**Rockbrother, Rocksister:** terms of affection between humans and Giants\n\n**rocklight:** light emitted by glowing stone\n\n**_roge Befylam_ :** Cavewight-form of the _jheherrin_\n\n**Rohnhyn:** a Ranyhyn; mount of Bhapa after Whrany's death\n\n**Roveheartswind, the:** the _Questsimoon_\n\n**Rue:** a Manethrall of the Ramen, formerly named Gay\n\n**Ruel:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Hile Troy\n\n**Ruinwash, the:** name of the River Landrider on the Lower Land\n\n**_rukh_ :** iron talisman by which a Rider wields the power of the Sunbane\n\n**Runnik:** a Bloodguard\n\n**Rustah:** a Cord of the Ramen\n\n**Sablehair Foamheart:** a Giant, also called Filigree; mate of Soar Gladbirth; mother of Exalt Widenedworld\n\n**sacred enclosure:** Vespers-hall at Revelstone; later the site of the Banefire\n\n**Sahah:** a Cord of the Ramen\n\n**Saltheart Foamfollower:** a Giant, friend of Thomas Covenant\n\n**Saltroamrest:** bunk hold for the crew in a Giantship\n\n**Salttooth:** jutting rock in the harbor of the Giants' Home\n\n**Salva Gildenbourne:** forest surrounding the Hills of Andelain; begun by Sunder and Hollian\n\n**_samadhi_ :** a Raver, Sheol, Satansfist\n\n**Samil:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land\n\n**Sandgorgons:** monsters of the Great Desert of _Bhrathairealm_\n\n**Sandgorgons Doom:** imprisoning storm created by Kasreyn to trap the Sandgorgons\n\n**Sandhold, the:** the _gaddhi_ 's castle in _Bhrathairealm_\n\n**Sandwall, the:** the great wall defending _Bhrathairain_\n\n**Santonin:** a Rider of the Clave, one of the na-Mhoram-in\n\n**Sarangrave Flat:** a region of the Lower Land encompassing the Great Swamp\n\n**Satansfist:** a Giant-Raver, Sheol, _samadhi_\n\n**Satansheart:** Giantish name for Lord Foul\n\n**Scend Wavegift:** a Giant; one of the Swordmainnir; killed by Longwrath\n\n**Search, the:** quest of the Giants for the wound in the Earth; later the quest for the Isle of the One Tree\n\n**Seareach:** region of the Land occupied by the Unhomed\n\n**Seasauce:** a Giant; husband of Hearthcoal; cook of Starfare's Gem\n\n**Seatheme:** dead wife of Sevinhand\n\n**Second Circinate:** second level of the Sandhold\n\n**Second Ward:** second unit of Kevin's hidden knowledge\n\n**setrock:** a type of stone used with pitch to repair stone\n\n**Seven Hells, the:** a-Jeroth's demesne: desert, rain, pestilence, fertility, war, savagery, and darkness\n\n**Seven Wards, the:** collection of knowledge hidden by High Lord Kevin\n\n**Seven Words, the:** words of power from Kevin's Lore\n\n**Sevinhand:** a Giant, Anchormaster of Starfare's Gem\n\n**Shattered Hills, the:** a region of the Land near Foul's Creche\n\n**She Who Must Not Be Named:** an ancient bane slumbering under Mount Thunder, now composed of many lost women\n\n**Sheol:** a Raver, Satansfist, _samadhi_\n\n**Shetra:** a Lord, wife of Verement\n\n**Shipsheartthew:** the wheel of a Giantship\n\n**_shola_ :** a small wooded glen where a stream runs between unwooded hills\n\n**Shull:** a Bloodguard\n\n**Sill:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Hyrim\n\n**Sivit:** a Rider of the Clave, one of the na-Mhoram-wist\n\n**_skest_ :** acid-creatures descended from the _jheherrin_\n\n**_skurj_ :** laval monsters that devour earth and vegetation; long ago, the _Elohim_ Kastenessen was Appointed (the Durance) to prevent them from wreaking terrible havoc\n\n**Slen:** a Stonedownor, mate of Terass\n\n**Slumberhead:** a Giant (man); crew aboard Dire's Vessel\n\n**Snared One, the:** ur-vile name for Lord Foul the Despiser\n\n**Soar Gladbirth:** a Giant; youngest son of Pitchwife and Gossamer Glowlimn\n\n**Soaring Woodhelven:** a tree-village\n\n**soft ones, the:** the _jheherrin_\n\n**Somo:** pinto taken by Liand from Mithil Stonedown\n\n**soothreader:** a seer\n\n**soothtell:** ritual of revelation practiced by the Clave\n\n**Soranal:** a Woodhelvennin Heer, son of Thiller\n\n**Soulbiter, the:** a dangerous ocean of Giantish legend\n\n**Soulbiter's Teeth:** reefs in the Soulbiter\n\n**Soulcrusher:** Giantish name for Lord Foul\n\n**South Plains, the:** a region of the Land\n\n**Sparlimb Keelsetter:** a Giant, father of triplets\n\n**Spikes, the:** guard-towers at the mouth of _Bhrathairain_ Harbor\n\n**Spoiled Plains, the:** a region of the Lower Land\n\n**Spume Frothbreeze:** a Giant (man); crew aboard Dire's Vessel\n\n**Spray Frothsurge:** a Giant; mother of the First of the Search\n\n**springwine:** a mild, refreshing liquor\n\n**Squallish Blustergale:** a Giant (man); crew aboard Dire's Vessel\n\n**Staff, the:** a branch of the study of Kevin's Lore\n\n**Staff of Law, the:** a tool of Earthpower; the first Staff was formed by Berek from the One Tree and later destroyed by Thomas Covenant; the second was formed by Linden Avery by using wild magic to merge Vain and Findail\n\n**Stallion of the First Herd, the:** _Kelenbhrabanal_\n\n**Starfare's Gem:** Giantship used by the Search\n\n**Starkin:** one of the _Elohim_\n\n**Stave:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land; companion of Linden Avery\n\n**Stell:** one of the _Haruchai_ , protector of Sunder\n\n**Stonedown:** a stone-village\n\n**Stonedownor:** one who lives in a stone-village\n\n**Stonemight, the:** a fragment of the Illearth Stone\n\n**Stonemight Woodhelven:** a village in the South Plains\n\n**Storesmaster:** third-in-command aboard a Giantship\n\n**Stormpast Galesend:** a Giant; one of the Swordmainnir\n\n**Stricken Stone:** region of the Land, later called Trothgard\n\n**Sunbane, the:** a power arising from the corruption of nature by Lord Foul\n\n**Sunbirth Sea, the:** ocean east of the Land\n\n**Sunder:** son of Nassic; Graveler of Mithil Stonedown; companion of Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery\n\n**Sun-Sage:** one who can affect the Sunbane\n\n**Sunstone:** _orcrest_\n\n**_sur-jheherrin_ :** descendants of the _jheherrin_ ; inhabitants of Sarangrave Flat\n\n**_suru-pa-maerl_ :** an art using stone\n\n**Swarte:** a Rider of the Clave\n\n**Swordmain\/Swordmainnir:** Giant(s) trained as warrior(s)\n\n**Sword, the:** a branch of the study of Kevin's Lore\n\n**Sword-Elder:** chief Lorewarden of the Sword at the Loresraat\n\n**Syr Embattled:** former Forestal of Giant Woods\n\n**Tamarantha:** a Lord, daughter of Enesta, wife of Variol\n\n**Teeth of the Render, the:** Ramen name for the Demondim; Fangs\n\n**Terass:** a Stonedownor, daughter of Annoria, wife of Slen\n\n**Terrel:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Mhoram; a commander of the original _Haruchai_ army\n\n**test of silence, the:** test of integrity used by the people of the Land\n\n**test of truth, the:** test of veracity by _lomillialor_ or _orcrest_\n\n**The Grieve:** _Coercri_ ; home of the lost Giants in Seareach\n\n**Thelma Twofist:** character in a Giantish tale\n\n**The Majesty:** throne room of the _gaddhi_ ; fourth level of the Sandhold\n\n**Theomach, the:** one of the Insequent\n\n**Thew** : a Cord of the Ramen\n\n**Third Ward:** third unit of Kevin's hidden knowledge\n\n**Thomin:** a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Verement\n\n**Three Corners of Truth, the:** basic formulation of beliefs taught and enforced by the Clave\n\n**thronehall, the:** the Despiser's seat in Foul's Creche\n\n**Tier of Riches, the:** showroom of the _gaddhi_ 's wealth; third level of the Sandhold\n\n**Timewarden:** _Elohim_ title for Thomas Covenant after his death\n\n**Tohrm:** a Gravelingas; Hearthrall of Lord's Keep\n\n**Tomal:** a Stonedownor craftmaster\n\n**Toril:** _Haruchai_ slain by the Clave\n\n**Treacher's Gorge:** ravine opening into Mount Thunder\n\n**treasure-berries:** _aliantha_ , nourishing fruit found throughout the Land in all seasons\n\n**Trell:** Gravelingas of Mithil Stonedown; husband of Atiaran, father of Lena\n\n**Trevor:** a Lord, husband of Loerya\n\n**Triock:** a Stonedownor, son of Thuler; loved Lena\n\n**Trothgard:** a region of the Land, formerly Stricken Stone\n\n**Tull:** a Bloodguard\n\n**_turiya_ : **a Raver, Herem, Kinslaughterer\n\n**Tuvor:** First Mark of the Bloodguard; a commander of the original _Haruchai_ army\n\n**_tyrscull_ :** a Giantish training vessel for apprentice sailors\n\n**Ulman:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land\n\n**Unbeliever, the:** title claimed by Thomas Covenant\n\n**Unfettered, the:** lore-students freed from conventional responsibilities to seek individual knowledge and service\n\n**Unfettered One, the:** founder of a line of men waiting to greet Thomas Covenant's return to the Land\n\n**Unhomed, the:** the lost Giants living in Seareach\n\n**un-Maker-made, the:** in _jheherrin_ legend, living beings not created by the Maker\n\n**upland:** plateau above Revelstone\n\n**Upper Land, the:** region of **** the Land west of Landsdrop\n\n**ur-Lord:** title given to Thomas Covenant\n\n**ur-viles:** Demondim-spawn, evil creatures\n\n**_ussusimiel_ : **nourishing melon grown by the people of the Land\n\n**Vailant:** former High Lord before Prothall\n\n**Vain:** Demondim-spawn; bred by ur-viles for a secret purpose\n\n**Vale:** a Bloodguard\n\n**Valley of Two Rivers, the:** site of Revelwood in Trothgard\n\n**Variol Tamarantha-mate:** a Lord, later High Lord; son of Pentil, father of Mhoram\n\n**Verement:** a Lord, husband of Shetra\n\n**Verge of Wandering, the:** valley in the Southron Range southeast of Mithil Stonedown; gathering place of the nomadic Ramen\n\n**Vernigil:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land guarding First Woodhelven\n\n**Vertorn:** a healer in Berek Halfhand's army\n\n**Vespers:** self-consecration rituals of the Lords\n\n**Vettalor:** Warmark of the army opposing Berek Halfhand\n\n**_viancome_ :** meeting place at Revelwood\n\n**Victuallin Tayne:** a region in the Center Plains\n\n**Vidik Amar:** a region of the Earth\n\n**Vigilall Scudweather:** a Giant (woman); Master of Dire's Vessel\n\n**Viles:** monstrous beings which created the Demondim\n\n**_vitrim_ :** nourishing fluid created by the Waynhim\n\n**Vizard, the:** one of the Insequent\n\n**Voice of the Masters, the:** a _Haruchai_ leader; spokesman for the Masters as a group\n\n**Vortin:** a _Haruchai_ ; a Master of the Land\n\n**_voure_ :** a plant-sap which wards off insects\n\n**Vow, the:** _Haruchai_ oath of service which formed the Bloodguard\n\n**_vraith_ :** a Waynhim\n\n**Ward:** a unit of Kevin's lore\n\n**Warhaft:** commander of an Eoman\n\n**Warlore:** Sword knowledge in Kevin's Lore\n\n**Warmark:** commander of the Warward\n\n**Warrenbridge:** entrance to the catacombs under Mount Thunder\n\n**Warward, the:** army of Lord's Keep\n\n**Wavedancer:** Giantship commanded by Brow Gnarlfist\n\n**Wavenhair Haleall:** a Giant, wife of Sparlimb Keelsetter, mother of triplets\n\n**Waymeet:** resting place for travelers maintained by Waynhim\n\n**Waynhim:** tenders of the Waymeets; rejected Demondim-spawn, opponents and relatives of ur-viles\n\n**Weird of the Waynhim, the:** Waynhim concept of doom, destiny, or duty\n\n**_were-menhir(s)_ :** Giantish name for the _skurj_\n\n**Whane:** a Cord of the Ramen\n\n**white gold:** a metal of power not found in the Land\n\n**white gold wielder:** title given to Thomas Covenant\n\n**White River, the:** a river of the land\n\n**Whrany:** a Ranyhyn stallion; mount of Bhapa\n\n**Wightburrow, the:** cairn under which Drool Rockworm is buried\n\n**Wightwarrens:** home of the Cavewights under Mount Thunder; catacombs\n\n**wild magic:** the power of white gold; considered the keystone of the Arch of Time\n\n**Wildwielder:** white gold wielder; title given to Linden Avery by Esmer and the _Elohim_\n\n**Windscour:** region in the Center Plains\n\n**Windshorn Stonedown:** a village in the South Plains\n\n**Winhome:** Ramen lowest rank\n\n**Wiver Setrock:** a Giant (man); crew aboard Dire's Vessel\n\n**Woodenwold:** region of trees surrounding the _maidan_ of _Elemesnedene_\n\n**Woodhelven:** wood-village\n\n**Woodhelvennin:** inhabitants of wood-village\n\n**Word of Warning:** a powerful, destructive forbidding\n\n**Worm of the World's End, the:** creature believed by the _Elohim_ to have formed the foundation of the Earth\n\n**Wraiths of Andelain, the:** creatures of living light that perform the Dance at the Celebration of Spring\n\n**W\u00fcrd of the Earth, the:** term used by the _Elohim_ to describe their own nature, destiny, or purpose; could be read as Word, Worm, or Weird\n\n**Yellinin:** a soldier in Berek Halfhand's army; third-in-command of the tenth Eoman, second Eoward\n\n**Yeurquin:** a Stonedownor, companion of Triock\n\n**Yolenid:** daughter of Loerya\n\n**Zaynor:** a _Haruchai_ from a time long before the _Haruchai_ first came to the Land\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n## Dedication\n\n_In memory of George Nicholson, who taught me so much_\n\n#  \n\n## Contents\n\n  1. Dedication\n  2. Part 1: Violet\n    1. Chapter 1\n    2. Chapter 2\n    3. Chapter 3\n    4. Chapter 4\n    5. Chapter 5\n    6. Chapter 6\n    7. Chapter 7\n    8. Chapter 8\n    9. Chapter 9\n    10. Chapter 10\n    11. Chapter 11\n    12. Chapter 12\n  3. Part 2: Celine\n    1. Chapter 1\n    2. Chapter 2\n    3. Chapter 3\n    4. Chapter 4\n    5. Chapter 5\n    6. Chapter 6\n    7. Chapter 7\n    8. Chapter 8\n    9. Chapter 9\n    10. Chapter 10\n    11. Chapter 11\n    12. Chapter 12\n    13. Chapter 13\n    14. Chapter 14\n    15. Chapter 15\n    16. Chapter 16\n    17. Chapter 17\n    18. Chapter 18\n    19. Chapter 19\n    20. Chapter 20\n    21. Chapter 21\n  4. Part 3: Goose\n    1. Chapter 1\n    2. Chapter 2\n    3. Chapter 3\n    4. Chapter 4\n    5. Chapter 5\n    6. Chapter 6\n    7. Chapter 7\n    8. Chapter 8\n    9. Chapter 9\n    10. Chapter 10\n    11. Chapter 11\n    12. Chapter 12\n    13. Chapter 13\n  5. Part 4\n    1. Chapter 1\n    2. Chapter 2\n    3. Chapter 3\n    4. Chapter 4\n  6. Excerpt from _Beheld_\n  7. Prologue\n  8. Chapter 1\n  9. Back Ads\n  10. About the Author\n  11. Books by Alex Flinn\n  12. Credits\n  13. Copyright\n  14. About the Publisher\n\n# Guide\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Contents\n  3. Chapter 1\n\n  1. vi\n  2. v\n  3. \n  4. \n  5. \n  6. \n  7. \n  8. \n  9. \n  10. \n  11. \n  12. \n  13. \n  14. \n  15. \n  16. \n  17. \n  18. \n  19. \n  20. \n  21. \n  22. \n  23. \n  24. \n  25. \n  26. \n  27. \n  28. \n  29. \n  30. \n  31. \n  32. \n  33. \n  34. \n  35. \n  36. \n  37. \n  38. \n  39. \n  40. \n  41. \n  42. \n  43. \n  44. \n  45. \n  46. \n  47. \n  48. \n  49. \n  50. \n  51. \n  52. \n  53. \n  54. \n  55. \n  56. \n  57. \n  58. \n  59. \n  60. \n  61. \n  62. \n  63. \n  64. \n  65. \n  66. \n  67. \n  68. \n  69. \n  70. \n  71. \n  72. \n  73. \n  74. \n  75. \n  76. \n  77. \n  78. \n  79. \n  80. \n  81. \n  82. \n  83. \n  84. \n  85. \n  86. \n  87. \n  88. \n  89. \n  90. \n  91. \n  92. \n  93. \n  94. \n  95. \n  96. \n  97. \n  98. \n  99. \n  100. \n  101. \n  102. \n  103. \n  104. \n  105. \n  106. \n  107. \n  108. \n  109. \n  110. \n  111. \n  112. \n  113. \n  114. \n  115. \n  116. \n  117. \n  118. \n  119. \n  120. \n  121. \n  122. \n  123. \n  124. \n  125. \n  126. \n  127. \n  128. \n  129. \n  130. \n  131. \n  132. \n  133. \n  134. \n  135. \n  136. \n  137. \n  138. \n  139. \n  140. \n  141. \n  142. \n  143. \n  144. \n  145. \n  146. \n  147. \n  148. \n  149. \n  150. \n  151. \n  152. \n  153. \n  154. \n  155. \n  156. \n  157. \n  158. \n  159. \n  160. \n  161. \n  162. \n  163. \n  164. \n  165. \n  166. \n  167. \n  168. \n  169. \n  170. \n  171. \n  172. \n  173. \n  174. \n  175. \n  176. \n  177. \n  178. \n  179. \n  180. \n  181. \n  182. \n  183. \n  184. \n  185. \n  186. \n  187. \n  188. \n  189. \n  190. \n  191. \n  192. \n  193. \n  194. \n  195. \n  196. \n  197. \n  198. \n  199. \n  200. \n  201. \n  202. \n  203. \n  204. \n  205. \n  206. \n  207. \n  208. \n  209. \n  210. \n  211. \n  212. \n  213. \n  214. \n  215. \n  216. \n  217. \n  218. \n  219. \n  220. \n  221. \n  222. \n  223. \n  224. \n  225. \n  226. \n  227. \n  228. \n  229. \n  230. \n  231. \n  232. \n  233. \n  234. \n  235. \n  236. \n  237. \n  238. \n  239. \n  240. \n  241. \n  242. \n  243. \n  244. \n  245. \n  246. \n  247. \n  248. \n  249. \n  250. \n  251. \n  252. \n  253. \n  254. \n  255. \n  256. \n  257. \n  258. \n  259. \n  260. \n  261. \n  262. \n  263. \n  264. \n  265. \n  266. \n  267. \n  268. \n  269. \n  270. \n  271. \n  272. \n  273. \n  274. \n  275. \n  276. \n  277. \n  278. \n  279. \n  280. \n  281. \n  282. \n  283. \n  284. \n  285. \n  286. \n  287. \n  288. \n  289. \n  290. \n  291. \n  292. \n  293. \n  294. \n  295. \n  296. \n  297. \n  298. \n  299. \n  300. \n  301. \n  302. \n  303. \n  304. \n  305. \n  306. \n  307. \n  308. \n  309. \n  310. \n  311. \n  312. \n  313. \n  314. \n  315. \n  316. \n  317. \n  318. \n  319. \n  320. \n  321. \n  322. \n  323. \n  324. \n  325. \n  326. \n  327. \n  328. \n  329. \n  330. \n  331. \n  332. \n  333. \n  334. \n  335. \n  336. \n  337. \n  338. \n  339. \n  340. \n  341. \n  342. \n  343. \n  344. \n  345. \n  346. \n  347. \n  348. \n  349. \n  350. \n  351. \n  352. \n  353. \n  354. \n  355. \n  356. \n  357. \n  358. \n  359. \n  360. \n  361. \n  362. \n  363. \n  364. \n  365. \n  366. \n  367. \n  368. \n  369. \n  370. \n  371. \n  372. iv\n\n# PART 1\n\n# _Violet_\n\n#\n\n#\n\n# _1982_\n\nI was a strange child. Strange looking, for certain, with buckteeth, red hair (and matching invisible eyelashes), a hooked nose, and barely the hint of a chin. My classmates at Coral Ridge Elementary teased me about these defects as if it was their God-given right. Maybe it was. After all, if I wanted to fit in, wouldn't I just act more normal?\n\nBut even if I could change my hair, my nose, my chin, I couldn't perform plastic surgery on my soul. Some secret part of me remained stubbornly different\u2014brought egg salad when everyone else knew it was gross or used vocabulary words like _whimsical_ , words no one else understood.\n\nAnd shortly after my tenth birthday, I learned I was different in another way.\n\nA special way.\n\nThat day, a rare, cold January day in Miami, I was walking alone on the playground. I had a jump rope. But when I'd asked the two girls who sat behind me, Jennifer Sadler and Gennifer Garcia, if they wanted to jump with me, they'd turned to each other with perplexed looks.\n\n\"Jump rope?\" Jennifer's blond ponytail swung from side to side as she shook her head. \"Who jumps rope anymore?\"\n\n\"We do in PE.\" It was the only sport at which I excelled.\n\nJennifer rolled her enormous blue eyes. \"Yeah, for a grade.\"\n\n\"We could do something else then,\" I said. \"Kickball?\" The Jennifers were part of a kickball game that included most of our class. I was never invited.\n\n\"Sorry, I think the teams are set.\" Gennifer Garcia wrinkled her perfect nose.\n\nAs I trudged away, trailing my red-and-white-striped rope, I heard Jennifer say loudly, \"You are too nice to that girl. It just makes her think she can talk to us.\"\n\nGennifer laughed, then said softer, but still loud enough for me to hear clearly, \"You can't just tell people they're freaks.\"\n\n\"Why not? It would help her to know.\"\n\nDid being beautiful make you cruel? Were they really being cruel if I was so defective? And, if I were suddenly pretty, would I be mean too? Not that that would ever happen.\n\nSo I sat alone, shivering on a swing, looking at the toes of my navy Keds against the lighter blue clouds, when I spied a cluster of kids gathered around something. Ordinarily, I avoided unsupervised groups of my peers, but this particular group included, at its outskirts, one Gregory Columbo, a sensitive boy with coal-black hair and the warmest brown eyes I'd ever seen. Though he wasn't exactly nice to me, he wasn't mean. He was quiet, more the type to read a book than to play baseball. Now, he wiped at his eyes with his gray sweatshirt sleeve. And something else made me gravitate toward the group, something I didn't quite understand.\n\nI jumped off the swing and went before I could chicken out.\n\n\"What's everyone looking at?\" I wanted to ask Greg why he was crying, but probably, he was pretending not to.\n\nGreg turned away, touching the side of his face with his fingers.\n\n\"Greg?\"\n\n\"Leave us alone, ugly.\" Jennifer smirked. \"It's just a stupid, dead crow.\"\n\nGreg turned and I caught sight of his face. His cheeks and eyes were mottled red, like blotchy, red glasses, and I had a distant memory of him and a woman\u2014his mother\u2014standing outside his house, filling a blue bird feeder. Greg's mother had died the year before.\n\nThe crowd was dispersing except for two boys, Nick and Nathan, who stood over the bird, poking it with a stick. I hated them. Hated. I could see the crow now, shiny and black as Greg's hair against the dappled greenish-brown grass, one black bead of an eye staring at me. I stooped beside it.\n\n\"Eww!\" Gennifer said. \"Are you going to touch it?\"\n\nI glanced back to see if Greg was still there. Nick hovered over me with his stick. I fixed him with a stare.\n\n\"Don't touch that. It's disrespectful of the dead.\" I remembered my mother saying something like that. Nick laughed and began to respond, but I said, \"Go away.\" I heard violence in my voice.\n\nHe backed away. \"It's dumb anyway.\" Nathan and the Jennifers followed him off.\n\nI reached down and touched the bird. It was not cold, not yet at least. But it lay as still as the airless day. Its licorice-black wings caught the light, reflecting green and purple. I felt the ground move with the thumping of my enemies' retreating sneakers. I shivered, then slid my hand underneath the bird. It felt like leaves. I turned my back to Greg. Then, I placed my other hand over it and picked it up. It was larger than both my hands, but it weighed less than air. I remembered someone, Greg maybe, saying in class that birds' bones were hollow so they could fly.\n\nWithout knowing why, really, I raised the bird to my face, opened my hands, and blew.\n\nThe bird blinked.\n\nNo, it hadn't. It was dead.\n\nI stroked its smooth feathers. Behind me, Greg stood silent, but I could hear his breath. I found a tiny wound under the bird's wing. When I touched it with my finger, it seemed to disappear.\n\nThe bird blinked again. This time, I was certain it had.\n\n\"Are you okay, then?\" I barely whispered.\n\nIt cocked its head toward me. Behind me, I heard a gasp. Greg. I did not, could not look at him. I whispered, \"Are you ready to go now?\"\n\nAgain, the bird closed then opened its black bead eye, and in my head, I thought I heard it say, \"Do you want me to?\"\n\n\"Whatever you like. Your family is probably worried, though.\"\n\n\"It was a boy,\" the bird said, \"the one with the stick. He threw a rock. It hurt. It _killed me._ \"\n\n\"It didn't kill you. You're alive.\"\n\nThe bird twitched its head. \"It killed me. I was dead.\"\n\nI couldn't understand this. \"Hmm, maybe you should get away from him.\"\n\n\"I guess so!\" said the bird. \"Can you help?\"\n\n\"How?\" I drew in a deep, shaky breath.\n\n\"Just . . . raise me up.\"\n\nI nodded, then stood, still holding the crow in both hands. I lifted it high above my head.\n\nIt rose, shifting first to one clawed foot, then the other. It spread its black wings toward the graying sky. They gleamed purple and green in the strained sunlight. It fluttered, then lifted into the air. I watched it until it was merely a small, black speck against the clouds. I turned toward school.\n\n\"Hey,\" a voice said behind me. \"That bird was dead.\"\n\nGreg. I looked up to where the bird had been. \"No, it wasn't. It flew away.\"\n\n\"But it was _dead._ \"\n\n\"No.\" It seemed, now, very important for me to impress this upon him. After all, I could barely believe what I'd done myself. It couldn't have happened, but it had. \"No. It was only scared. Nick hit it with a stick. It's okay now.\"\n\nGreg glanced at the ground. I did too and saw an irregular puddle of blood, mixing with the dusty dirt. \"Okay,\" he said finally.\n\n\"We're going to get in trouble,\" I said.\n\n\"I'll tell Ms. Gayton what happened, that you helped the bird.\" His eyes were just nice looking, the way his eyebrows came down in the center, all concerned.\n\nI shook my head. \"She won't believe you.\"\n\n\"She will. Teachers like me. They feel sorry for me because of\u2014\"\n\n\"Your mom.\" I was thinking they liked him because he was so cute, those big eyes.\n\nHe nodded. \"I can get away with anything.\"\n\n\"They hate me.\" It was true. Even though I aced every test, teachers had no smiles for me. They liked the prettier girls, the ones who didn't care about learning but only copied one another's homework.\n\n\"I'll tell her you were helping me then,\" he said.\n\nI thought about it. \"Okay.\"\n\nWe began to walk. As we did, my hand brushed Greg's. I wanted to grab it, but I didn't.\n\nHe said, \"That was pretty cool.\"\n\n\"I didn't do anything.\"\n\n\"You did.\"\n\n\"No.\" I said it too loudly, too emphatically, then regretted it. I sounded like I was lying. \"I'm sorry, but the bird was probably just shaken up or something. I mean, it flew away like nothing.\"\n\nI remembered the wound under its wing, the wound that had closed. _How_ had it?\n\nGreg shrugged. \"Okay.\" He started up the stairs to the school building, taking them two at a time, keeping ahead of me. He thought I was weird, though I'd tried so hard to prevent it, though I wanted him to like me so much. I'd have done anything to make him like me. Anything.\n\nI didn't speed my step. What would be the point? As I trudged along, I felt something, like a pair of eyes, peering at me through the trees. I looked back and saw a shadowy figure dressed in green like the leaves. Or maybe it was the leaves. I shivered, remembering what my mother had said about perverts who lurked on playgrounds, waiting for children alone.\n\n\"Hello?\" I said.\n\nNo answer except a riffle of wind across the grass and my own footsteps.\n\nI stopped, glanced back. No one there. A caw, maybe the same crow, echoed from the treetops. I felt each individual hair on my arms stand on end. My feet planted on the ground.\n\nFinally, I ran after Greg to the school building.\n\nNothing unusual happened for a year or so. Maybe I made nothing happen. But then, one day something did. Something that changed everything.\n\n#\n\n#\n\n# _1985_\n\nFrom that day on, Greg and I became friends. Sort of. We didn't really talk much at school, but if a teacher assigned a group project, we chose each other as partners. We'd work at my house or usually Greg's, making brochures to entice people to move to the Colony of Delaware, or a travel poster for Mars. I loved going to Greg's house. His father was always building something like a flower box or a huge tree house, and he let Greg and me help. Once, when we were in seventh grade, it was a birdhouse.\n\n\"Violet loves birds,\" Greg told his dad.\n\n\"Do you?\" His father's eyes were brown like Greg's, and he was tall, but not skinny. He had a belly, which seemed very dad-like. \"So you're a bird expert?\"\n\n\"Not an expert. But they're pretty.\"\n\n\"Right, she's not an expert,\" Greg said, laughing. \"The first time I spoke to Vi, she was holding a crow in the palm of her hand. Since then, I've seen them follow her.\"\n\nI stared at him, startled. I didn't know he'd noticed, but it was true. Birds seemed to gravitate toward me, animals too; even wild ones like possums and raccoons didn't scatter as they did when others approached. I kept that quiet, though. It didn't exactly make me seem normal.\n\n\"I think they even talk to her sometimes.\" Greg smiled. He had a dimple, just one, on the left side of his mouth.\n\n\"Right, Greg. Sure.\"\n\nGreg's dad laughed along. \"Well, if you could talk to the Carolina wrens, maybe ask them what's the proper opening size for their birdhouse. Or you could just look it up.\"\n\n\"Is that really important? My mom just bought the birdhouse she thought was pretty.\"\n\n\"Do you see many birds in it?\" Mr. Columbo asked.\n\n\"No,\" I admitted. \"Never.\"\n\n\"If you look it up for me, I'll build a birdhouse they'll use\u2014and I'll make another one for your house.\"\n\n\"I think I'd rather come over and look at yours.\" I wanted to be with Greg, always. The Columbos felt more like a real family than mine, even though it was just two of them. At home, it was just me and my mother, who spent more time on her nails than talking to me.\n\nStill, Greg and I went to the school library during lunch the next day. We looked up the information in a book, finding that the Carolina wren needed a hole between one and a quarter and one and a half inches. Mr. Columbo let me drill the hole myself and even, against my protests, made a second one for me. \"You can still come over, Violet.\" His eyes crinkled around the edges. \"You're welcome any time.\"\n\nAfter that, Greg invited me over without needing a magazine project as an excuse. We walked home together, at least as far as his house, every afternoon and checked out the birdhouse. One day, we saw a small brown bird moving in. \"Wow,\" I said, \"your dad's going to be so excited.\" There had been birds in my own birdhouse since the first day, but I didn't tell Greg that.\n\nGreg grabbed my hand and squeezed it. His own hand was cool, dry, and I felt a jolt of electricity run up my arm. \"We've never had a bird in our birdhouse before, no matter what he said. They came because of you.\"\n\n\"Right.\" I could barely speak from concentrating on the moment, the dizzying tingle of his hand in mine.\n\n\"You should stay, at least until Dad gets home.\"\n\nI nodded and walked into the house. I thought I could hear one of the birds say _Thank you_ , __ but when I looked over at Greg, he hadn't heard anything. We spent the whole afternoon sitting side by side at the window, watching the wren build her nest, until Mr. Columbo called us in for dinner. Greg smelled of pencil shavings and Irish Spring soap, and even though he let go of my hand, I could still feel it against mine, far, far into the night.\n\nAfter that, I went to Greg's house every day after school. We watched the wrens to see if there were eggs or babies, but we also sat on the sofa, eating brownies we made from a mix and watching _Family Ties_ and _The Cosby Show,_ shows about big, happy families like ours weren't. People at school called us geeks in love, and while I pretended to cringe, I secretly enjoyed that people thought it possible. Greg wasn't my boyfriend\u2014not yet\u2014but I wanted him to be.\n\nBut the summer before eighth grade, Greg went to sleepaway camp for two whole months. \"It's like this really outdoorsy camp my dad went to when he was my age,\" he told me. \"I hate it. I think it's supposed to make me a man.\"\n\n\"Sounds fun.\" I rolled my eyes, thinking he was perfect as he was. In fact, I was hoping he'd invite me to the Halloween dance at school in the fall. Halloween was my favorite holiday because it let me be someone else, someone better. Or maybe someone worse. I was hoping maybe, costumed as a witch or vampire, I would have the courage to lean in, to will him to kiss me. But that was a long time away. \"Can I write you?\"\n\n\"Sure. That'd be cool.\" He smiled his cute, one-dimpled smile. \"I know my dad won't write that much, not like a mom would.\"\n\n\"I'll write.\"\n\nOnce he left, the long, lonely summer stretched ahead of me, and I wanted to write every day. I didn't, though. Some dim part of me knew that would look crazy, like I had no life, which I didn't. I actually did things like an Everglades bird tour, just so I'd have something to write about. I worked on the letters every day but sent them once a week. Greg wrote back twice, then stopped. I told myself it was because he was busy, then because camp was almost over. I'd see him soon. But when he got back, he was always busy. In rushed phone calls, he said he had family in town one day, shopping for school another. So I didn't see him until the first day of eighth grade.\n\nI searched for Greg in the crowds outside. Usually, he wasn't hard to spot. He was tall and stayed on the outskirts. But I didn't see him.\n\nThen, I did. He wasn't on the outskirts, but in the middle of the crowd.\n\nGreg had always been tall, but now he was taller. Not skinny anymore, though. Suddenly his shoulders were broader, his face more manly. He was standing with some people, people like Nick and Nathan, Jennifer and Gennifer, people who'd always picked on me and ignored him. Popular people. Greg was laughing, his black hair shining in the sun like a crow's wings, his smile like the sun itself. I made myself walk past him, and even though he seemed to look right at me, he said nothing.\n\nAll week, I tried to catch Greg's eye, to find a way to talk to him, and all week, nothing. It wasn't like he was being actively mean. It was worse. It was like I was a stranger. He was just this boy, this suddenly popular, handsome boy at my school, and I was nobody he knew. It was like we'd never done all the things we'd done together, like he'd never been my friend, like I was some stupid girl with a crush on a stranger.\n\nThursday, I finally got up the courage to call him.\n\nHis father answered. \"Violet! Long time, no see. We have a new woodpecker.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's great!\" I smiled on purpose, hoping he could hear it in my voice. Maybe it would all be okay. \"Is Greg there?\"\n\nBut, when Greg got on the phone, I knew it wouldn't be okay. He sounded different, awkward, like someone wearing too-tight shoes but trying not to show it. \"So, um, what do you want, Violet?\"\n\nSuddenly I didn't know. I didn't know what I wanted. I wanted everything to be the same as it had been the year before. Or not the same. Better. There had been the promise of something more, and now, it was gone, and I wanted to change that. I wanted to change . . . time.\n\n\"Are you going to . . . ?\" _To what? Invite me over? Say hello in class? Do anything? Be normal?_ \"I haven't talked to you since you got back.\"\n\nA pause. In the living room, my mom was flipping through television channels. I heard the _Family Ties_ theme start. I bet we've been together for a million years; And I bet we'll be together for a million more.\n\nMom changed the channel, and _Entertainment Tonight_ came on instead.\n\n\"Yeah, about that,\" Greg said. \"The thing is, my friends don't like you.\"\n\n\"Your friends? What friends?\"\n\n\"Jennifer Sadler and them. They say . . . you're bossy and mean to them.\"\n\nI sucked my breath in. Unreal. Popular people always had some reason why you deserved for them to be mean to you. \"And you believe that? That I could boss Jennifer around, that I bully _her_? __ All you have to do is look at the two of us to know . . .\"\n\nI stopped. That was the problem. He had looked at us.\n\n\"I don't know what to believe. I just want to have friends. I don't want to be alone.\"\n\n\"You had a friend. You weren't alone.\"\n\n\"You know what I mean. I've always had a thing for Jennifer.\"\n\nI didn't know that. Why was he doing this to me? Why did Jennifer even want to be friends with Greg? But I knew. Because he was beautiful. And beautiful guys were catnip for Jennifer. A beautiful guy like Greg didn't belong with an ugly like me. The second she showed interest in him, he knew. I felt so stupid for thinking anyone would ever really like me, especially someone as great as Greg.\n\n\"I'm tired of people thinking I'm weird,\" he said.\n\n\"I thought you were weird, in a good way. I liked you the way you were.\"\n\n\"I don't want that anymore.\"\n\nI stood, clutching the phone. I didn't want to put it back in its cradle. The click it would make would change everything. I felt like, if I just held on, I could hold on to my life. But Greg said he had to do homework. I hung up before he could hear me crying.\n\nThe next day, in civics class, Mrs. Davis assigned a group project, an ad for a mock presidential candidate. I tried to make eye contact with Greg, my usual partner, but he turned toward Jennifer Sadler.\n\n\"Does anyone not have a group?\" Mrs. Davis asked.\n\nI raised my hand, barely flipping up the fingertips, glancing around to see if anyone else raised theirs. No one. So humiliating. Mrs. Davis asked if anyone only had two in their group.\n\n\"Yeah, us.\" Nick gestured to himself and Nathan.\n\n\"Okay, you can join them,\" Mrs. Davis told me.\n\n\"Great,\" Nathan muttered when I started over to them\u2014as if I was going to be the liability in their group when everyone knew I was the smartest person in class and they were just about the dumbest.\n\n\"I can just do the whole thing,\" I said. \"It's easier.\"\n\n\"Will you say we helped?\" Nathan asked.\n\nI looked over at Greg, who sat deep in conversation with StupidGennifer and StupiderJennifer.\n\n\"Depends. Will you refrain from being complete jerks for the duration of this project?\"\n\nBlank stares. I tried to figure out which word they hadn't understood.\n\nI revised. \"Will you be nice?\" All single syllables.\n\nThey both nodded.\n\n\"Fine then.\"\n\nI glanced at Greg, but he wasn't looking. Beside him, Jennifer mouthed, _Ugly._\n\nI realized what I had known, probably all along, what ugly girls since the beginning of time had been trying to deny: Beauty was all that mattered. I might tell myself that if people _really_ knew me, they'd look past my weak chin and non-eyelashes, would see into my soul and like me despite it all. But, watching Greg giggle with Jennifer and Gennifer, I knew that was not the case. Greg Columbo had looked into my soul\u2014but he still couldn't see past my nose. And, if he couldn't, for sure no one else could. I was disgusted at myself for liking him.\n\nBut I still did.\n\nFor the next week, Nick, Nathan, and I worked on our project. Or rather, I worked on our project while Nick and Nathan read comic books under their desks.\n\nTuesday, I asked my mother to take me to the drugstore for supplies. \"I need a poster board, Sharpies, stencils, and one of those scissors with the cool-looking edge.\"\n\n\"Isn't this a group project? Can't someone else buy this stuff?\" She squinted at herself in the mirror, looking for age spots. It would be hard to pull her away.\n\n\"They're sort of worthless. You know how it is.\"\n\n\"Where's Greg been lately? He was always a nice kid.\"\n\n\"He changed over the summer. Can we go to Eckerd's now? You can look at makeup while I find this stuff.\"\n\n\"Like I'd buy makeup from the drugstore.\" Still, she started toward her purse, since it must have been obvious I wouldn't change my mind. \"Changed how?\"\n\n\"What?\" This was more interest than she usually took in my life.\n\n\"How did Greg change?\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't know. Got too handsome to hang with me.\" I faked a laugh.\n\nMy mother, of course, was beautiful. Not beautiful the way every kid thinks her mother is beautiful, but actually beautiful. I'd barely known my father. He died when I was little, leaving Mom with enough money that she never had to work, never had to remarry \"another old, rich guy,\" as she said. Mom had no photos of him she'd admit to, but he must've been really ugly because, for sure, I didn't get my looks from her side. She was tall, with the build of a dancer, blond hair the color of starlight, and eyes the exact shade of the Mediterranean Sea in photos of Greece. Her brows arched high, making her appear wide-eyed and innocent. Her lips were dark and pouty, the type I imagined boys wanted to kiss. No wonder she didn't know about some people having to do all the work on projects. I bet guys were falling all over themselves trying to do her homework for her when she was in school.\n\nAnother mom would have said something about looks not being important or that I'd get pretty one day when I was older. That she said neither proved that she didn't believe those things. Instead, she said, \"Oh, I guess that happens. Come on. Let's go.\"\n\nAs we started toward the door, I looked back into her mirror. She spent so much time in front of it, I half expected it to talk to her.\n\nOn Friday, I brought in my\/our project. It was perfect, better than a professional graphic designer would have done. I set it up in the front of the room, noting the peeling tape on Greg's group's poster, the shaky handwriting on another. Mine\u2014I mean, ours\u2014was the best in the class. I took my seat, imagining that even my rivals were stunned by its beauty.\n\nA lot of teachers, when we did group projects, handed out an evaluation form so students could grade themselves and their peers. The idea, I guess, was that if one person did all the work, he could rat out his partners. Like that would ever happen.\n\nI sometimes gave bad grades, though. I had nothing to lose socially since everyone already hated me. Now, I picked up the worksheet and contemplated it. The first part was easy: evaluating myself. I'd been a joy to work with, of course. Cooperativeness: A; completed assignments: A; creativity: A.\n\nI moved to the second section, where I was supposed to grade my partners. Of course, they deserved an F in every category. They'd done nothing. No, they'd done something. They'd left me alone. About that, they'd been completely cooperative.\n\nI penciled in their names and wrote, _Cooperativeness: A_.\n\nI'd promised, after all. I didn't like to lie, but they'd met every deadline because I hadn't given them any. And, as far as creativity went, I guessed they'd creatively managed to avoid work. I penciled in As for that too.\n\nWhen Mrs. Davis collected the papers, I handed in mine with a clear conscience. Group projects were stupid. Teachers said they were supposed to teach us how it worked in the real world. I already knew. The real world sucked.\n\nI saw Nick and Nathan hand in their papers, sort of smiling at each other. Of course, they were thrilled to have gotten away with doing nothing and still getting multiple As.\n\nWalking home that day, I saw Greg walking with Jennifer. I'd seen him walk with her before, but I'd told myself it was for the project. Now, the project was over, and he was still with her. Were they going to his house to look at the wrens?\n\nI couldn't breathe.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nMonday, Mrs. Davis handed out grades for the projects.\n\nOf course, we'd gotten As for neatness, artistry, and accuracy. But when I got to the peer-graded portion, I saw that Nick and Nathan had each given me Fs for the three categories of cooperativeness, completed assignments, and creativity. At the bottom of the page, Mrs. Davis had written: _Overall project grade: C._\n\nI felt my heart actually hammering against my ribs. This was not possible. I'd done all the work, even lied to give them As. That's what they'd been snickering about in class.\n\nI went up to Mrs. Davis's desk.\n\n\"Stay in your seat, Violet. We're supposed to be working on our chapter outlines.\"\n\n\"I did that last night. I have to talk to you about this.\" I thrust the grade report at her and pointed to the Fs with a shaking hand.\n\nShe didn't take it. \"Well, if you don't do the work on a group project\u2014\"\n\n\"I did the work. I did all the work.\" My voice sounded shrill, even in a whisper, and I felt like my face might crack. Everyone was looking up from their papers.\n\nMrs. Davis glanced around. \"Violet, there's really nothing\u2014\"\n\n\"They did nothing!\" I burst out. \"I did it all.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"What grade did you give them?\"\n\n\"I gave them As,\" I admitted, \"but that was because . . .\" I took a breath.\n\n\"Because what?\"\n\nI looked at Mrs. Davis. She was almost six feet, big and broad-shouldered, with curly red hair. I bet she'd been picked on in school.\n\n\"Because I promised them I would if they left me alone.\"\n\n\"Left you alone?\"\n\n\"I hate group projects,\" I whispered, knowing every eye was on me. \"People are mean to me because of . . . my looks. Nick and Nathan didn't want me in their group. They bullied me into doing everything.\" I knew if I said I was bullied (which was true), she'd take it seriously. The school worried about bullying. Or, rather, they worried about fights. Never mind if people slowly died inside, year after year.\n\n\"They said I had to do the whole thing,\" I continued. \"If you look at the handwriting, you can see it's all mine. And the project. I brought it in and set it up.\"\n\nShe took the paper from my hand. \"Okay, I'll look into it. Sit down now.\"\n\nA minute later, I saw Mrs. Davis looking at the project. Then she called Nick and Nathan up. After class, she called me back to her desk.\n\n\"I changed your grade and theirs. When I confronted the young men with the evidence that yours was the only handwriting on the poster\u2014not to mention that they'd fooled around during all the class time in which you worked on it\u2014they admitted that you had done all the work.\"\n\n\"Wow, thanks.\" I was sort of amazed she couldn't have figured that out without my telling her. \"So what happened to Nathan and Nick?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\" She looked down. \"I'm not allowed to discuss another student's discipline with you.\"\n\nWhich was how I knew they'd really gotten reamed.\n\nSure enough, when I got to language arts class, I heard one of the Jennifers saying she'd seen Nick and Nathan going into I.S.S. I smiled.\n\nThat afternoon, I was walking home, smiling at the knowledge that my grades were again perfect. I walked alone, trying not to notice Greg taking off in the opposite direction with Jennifer, probably heading to her house. It was near Halloween, and the air had gone from summer-hot to chilly. A gust of wind swept up the empty street, and I shivered.\n\nThen, suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me.\n\nAt first, they were distant. I resisted looking back, though I wanted to see if it was maybe Greg. It wasn't Greg. It wouldn't matter if it was Greg. There was no Greg for me.\n\nThe pounding steps got closer. And harder. I could tell now there were two pairs of feet. Boys' feet. Another gust practically knocked me over, sending leaves and dirt into my face. Usually, no one else walked this way, toward the outskirts of town. I sped up. As soon as I passed Salem Court, I knew they'd part from me. They had to be going there. I matched my step to the rhythm of theirs. Yet they grew closer. My backpack was heavy, digging into my shoulders, slowing me down, and my sneakers cut into my heels.\n\nI, then they, passed Salem Court. They didn't turn. They were following me. That was the only explanation. No one was outside, no one to help me. There was one house, dark and lonely, with peeling, once-white paint. They said an old lady lived there, an old lady or a witch, but I'd never seen her. No kids, though.\n\nSomeone yelled, \"Hey, ugly!\"\n\nI turned to see who had shouted. Nick and Nathan. They broke out laughing. \"Look at that!\" Nathan yelled. \"She answers to ugly.\"\n\nThey were following me. And they were angry. I broke into a run. My sneakers were like blades, slicing into my heels, but I ran. I ran!\n\nAnd, behind me, I heard them running too. Something hit the side of my head, hard. A rock. It stung, and I dropped my backpack to run faster, dropped it even though I knew they'd take it, knew they'd steal my books and scatter my papers to the wind. I ran as fast as I could.\n\nAnother rock hit me. \"Stone the ugly witch!\" And they were on me, pushing me to the pitted pavement, slamming my head to the hard ground. Their fists rained on me, on my face, into my stomach. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't fight them. The world should have gone black, almost did go black with the blows to my face, but instead, I stared upward at the blue sky. A bird, a black crow or maybe a grackle, sat on one bare tree branch. _Help me,_ I thought.\n\nStrangely, I remembered that day in grade school, the day I'd first spoken to Greg. _Help me._ Then, I was floating, no longer inside my body, but above it. I was the bird, perched high in the tree branches, waiting. I opened my beak and gave a mighty caw, spreading my wings and showing my black feathers to the sun. With my beaded eyes, I looked down at the girl, the ugly girl on the pavement, being beaten by two big boys. She looked tiny, shriveled. I cried out again.\n\nSuddenly I wasn't alone anymore. And the sky was no longer blue. It was black with the wings of dozens, no hundreds of birds, blackbirds, grackles, crows, ravens, even larger birds, birds I'd never seen before, lunging and diving below, pecking at my attackers, at their faces, their eyes, not stopping even as the boys ceased beating me and began to beat at the birds. Their beaks pecked the boys' hands, their arms, drawing blood, and I watched from my tree branch, spreading my wings in joy.\n\nFinally, the boys stumbled up and ran, the birds pursuing them down the street. Only one remained, a single crow, glossy wings reflecting the light in purple and green.\n\nI watched from above. _I_ was a bird. Then, I was a girl again, a small girl. In my body, on the ground. I gathered myself up. I felt no pain. I stood and walked over to get my forgotten backpack. The crow stood, unmoving, as if it had something to say to me in some secret crow language. Still, I walked around it, gingerly, carefully. I picked up my backpack. The street was again deserted. Nick and Nathan were truly gone. I wondered if I looked like I'd been beaten. I ran my fingers through my hair. Even though I was ugly, I hated to be messy. Why make it worse than I already was? My mother had taught me better. Finishing that, I trudged toward home.\n\n\"Hello?\" A voice came out of nowhere.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nI started. It was a woman, standing as if she'd always been there. Yet, I hadn't seen her before. The streets had been quiet, empty.\n\n\"Hello?\" she repeated. \"Are you all right? Did they hurt you?\"\n\nSo she had seen? But how? There had been no one there. No one! The boys would never have thrown rocks at me with witnesses. They were dumb but smarter than that. Bullies always knew how to hide it.\n\nFinally, I spoke. \"I'm . . . I'm fine.\"\n\n\"I see that.\" She stepped closer. I noticed the crow was gone. It had been exactly where the woman now stood. \"You don't have a scratch on you. How is that . . . Violet?\"\n\nA chill wind rippled through the trees. \"How did you know my name?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"Lucky guess, I suppose. Was I right?\"\n\n\"You know you were.\"\n\nShe smiled. She had long, black hair and wore a dress of sheer, iridescent material, first black, then purple, now green, flowing around her. Her hair caught the strained sun and seemed to do the same. I couldn't determine her age. She was beautiful. \"You look like a Violet, I suppose.\"\n\n\"No, I don't.\" First off, no one was named Violet. If you wanted to guess the name of a girl at my school, you might choose right with Jennifer, Kathy, Lisa, or Michelle. But I was the only Violet. \"Violets are pretty, with their little faces turned to the sun, hopeful. I'm not pretty. I'm not hopeful either.\"\n\nShe walked closer. Her black hair blew around her face. \"You could be anything you want to be.\"\n\nI laughed. That sounded like something a mom would say. Anyone's mom but mine. \"I can only be what I am.\"\n\n\"Sometimes, what you are is more than enough. How did you get those birds to come?\"\n\n\"They just showed up.\"\n\n\"Pretty convenient, wouldn't you say? Ever hear of birds attacking anyone like that?\"\n\n\"In a movie once.\"\n\n\"You won't hear about this time either. The boys will consider telling their parents, but, eventually, will decide it makes them sound guilty. Or crazy.\"\n\nThere were no cars anywhere. We were alone. Her eyes were a strange bright green, like a Sprite bottle.\n\n\"How about you?\" she asked. \"Have you had any other experiences with birds?\"\n\n\"Who are you?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Kendra. I live here.\" She pointed at the house on the hill, the one I was sure was abandoned. \"I'd ask you in, but, of course, your mother would disapprove of your coming inside a stranger's house.\"\n\nNow her eyes seemed brown.\n\n\"Actually, I doubt she'd care.\" I knew the second I said it that it was the wrong thing to say. What if she was a kidnapper or something? But it just popped out. Besides, I'd never heard of a woman kidnapper.\n\n\"Ah, so she knows.\"\n\n\"Knows what?\"\n\n\"That you can take care of yourself. And, of course, she's right. You can. Self-sufficiency is one of the few benefits of being lonely.\"\n\n\"How did you know . . . ?\" I stopped. I was going to ask how she knew I was lonely, but of course, I knew: Anyone as ugly as I was would be lonely.\n\nI started to walk away, then turned back.\n\n\"Once, I saved a bird.\"\n\nI expected her to react with surprise or, at least, interest. Social interaction wasn't a huge thing with me, but I thought the normal thing to say was, \"You did?\" or \"How did you save it?\" Instead, she just nodded, as if unsurprised.\n\nMaybe I should have walked away. Yet I always felt I owed people an explanation, so I told her the story. \"I guess I didn't really save it,\" I concluded. \"It just sort of felt like\u2014\"\n\n\"No, you did save it,\" she said.\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"I was there. You were ten years old.\"\n\nThe hairs on my arms stood on end. How was that possible? I remembered the bird, the one I'd seen watching me. Then, the birds today, attacking Nathan and Nick. Were they related? Was it possible that the bird that day somehow remembered me, had told the other birds?\n\n___Crazy._\n\nBut the woman\u2014Kendra\u2014repeated, \"I was there.\" Then she waved her hand in the air and disappeared. Where had she gone? A crow cawed from somewhere. I looked down. It was right where Kendra had been standing. Then, in a heartbeat, the crow was gone, and Kendra was back.\n\n\"How did you do that?\" I felt breathless.\n\nI knew the answer, though. Magic.\n\n\"There are people in this world who have powers, Violet.\" The sun was already beginning to set, streaking the sky behind her in strange shades of purple and orange. \"I am one of those people. And so are you.\"\n\n\"That's crazy. If I have powers, why can't I . . . ?\" I stopped, unsure, for once, how to express the thought: Why did everyone hate me, if I was so powerful?\n\n\"Think of what you know of witches. Does anything you have heard or read lead you to believe they are universally beloved?\"\n\n_Witches._ I turned the word over and over in my head, not understanding at first, as if it was a foreign language.\n\nI thought about witches in books, the old woman in the gingerbread house, the green-faced crone in _Wizard of Oz._ But they were evil. The gingerbread witch had tried to bake Hansel and Gretel. The Witch of the West had captured Dorothy with an army of flying monkeys.\n\nKendra said, \"I was ten when I first started noticing my own powers. But nothing big happened until I was thirteen. How old are you now, Violet?\"\n\n_Thirteen._ But I didn't, couldn't say it. I stepped back. If this woman was a witch, would she try to kidnap me? Bake me? Hold me hostage? I wanted to turn and flee. Yet my feet felt suctioned to the ground.\n\nAnd I wanted to stay. I needed to hear what else she had to say. Was she saying that she was a witch? Or that I was?\n\nKendra chuckled, not a high witch cackle, but a low sound from the bottom of her throat. \"You think all witches are evil, yes?\"\n\nI didn't know what to say. If she was a witch, I didn't want to insult her\u2014especially if she _was_ evil. I noticed the street I'd just passed, Salem Court, named for a place where women were hanged as witches. In school, we'd learned they weren't really witches. Now, I wondered.\n\n\"I've only read about witches in books. Are they real?\" I said to the woman who'd changed from a human to a bird. \"Are they evil?\"\n\n\"Witches are all different, just like everyone else. Some are nice, some not. What we all are, however, is lonely.\"\n\n_Lonely._ The word washed over me like summer rain.\n\n\"But occasionally,\" Kendra continued, \"I meet a kindred spirit, and when I do, I keep my eye on that person.\"\n\n\"Keep your eye on me? Have you been spying on me?\"\n\nI expected her to deny that, but instead, she nodded. \"Since that day at the playground, I've watched you.\"\n\n\"As a bird?\"\n\n\"Or with this.\" From the air, she produced a shining object, a mirror, surrounded by silver curlicues. She held it out. I cringed at my ugly face.\n\nBut she said, \"This is a magical mirror. With it, you can see anything, anyone.\"\n\n\"How?\" I reached for the mirror.\n\n\"Just ask.\"\n\n\"Ask.\" I had a hard enough time talking to people. What would I say to a mirror? They'd always been my enemies.\n\n\"Think of someone, anyone in the world you want to see, and the mirror will show you.\"\n\nWithout hesitating, I said, \"Show me Greg.\"\n\nMy hideous face faded from view. The image changed to a room, a house I didn't know. Greg sat with Jennifer, books spread out before them, studying. Or, at least, Greg was trying to study. Jennifer was babbling on. I searched Greg's face for signs of annoyance. Greg took studying seriously, like I did. He'd once threatened not to study with me when all I'd done was ask if he wanted a glass of water!\n\nBut now, Greg smiled, then laughed\u2014laughed!\u2014at something Jennifer had said. He pointed at the math book just as Jennifer was trying to turn a page. Their hands touched. Greg turned away, blushing. He always blushed. I knew why he didn't mind Jennifer's chatter. Jennifer was beautiful, unlike me. Jennifer was everything I wasn't. The light gleamed off her blond, straight hair. I could feel my own frizz curling on my neck. Jennifer turned her fair, unblemished cheek toward Greg, and I could feel the hurt of the zits on my own cheek. Greg leaned toward her and then . . .\n\nHe kissed her! Greg actually kissed Jennifer!\n\nThe mirror fell from my hand and clattered to the ground. It shattered like ice against the black pavement. I jumped when a shard cut my ankle. \"Oh!\"\n\nI knelt down in the splintered glass, not caring if the bits and pieces embedded themselves in my hands and knees. \"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, but I hate mirrors. I didn't do this on purpose, though.\" I picked up one of the larger fragments. It caught the waning sun, reflecting it into my eyes. I saw my own face in it, red, blotchy, a tear dripping from my too-light blue eyes.\n\nAnd then, the fragment moved. I almost dropped it a second time, but I reached over with my other hand and caught it. The moving fragment sliced my palm. I wanted to cry out, but I didn't, couldn't speak, for at that moment, I saw what was happening.\n\nThe fragment, _all_ the fragments, moved in the air like shimmering leaves, catching the light. As they fluttered together, my slice of glass slid from my hands. It joined the others, forming a silver oval. Then it flew into Kendra's hand.\n\nI felt my mouth hanging open. I closed it. \"How . . . ?\" My finger had a heartbeat.\n\nKendra laid her hand upon mine. \"Think about it. I'm sure you can work it out.\"\n\nI flinched under her touch, but somehow, I couldn't remove my hand. When she finally pulled hers away, the cut had disappeared.\n\n\"What did you do?\"\n\n\"Shh. People use too many words nowadays, always talking on the phone, in person. There is a place in the world, I believe, for thought.\"\n\nI started to say something else, but I couldn't. It was almost as if someone was covering my mouth.\n\n\"Silent thought. One minute. Begin now.\"\n\nI didn't want to think. I wanted to run. And yet, I couldn't because, more than that, I wanted to know. The mirror. The cut. The birds. Kendra was telling the truth about being a witch. And if she was telling the truth about herself, was it true about me too?\n\nWhat did it mean?\n\nI stared at Kendra. Her eyes looked green again. Finally, she said, \"Are you willing to speak now?\"\n\nI tried to put it into words. \"If I'm a witch, can I make things . . . ?\" What was the word I wanted?\n\n\"Better? Maybe. Different? Yes.\"\n\n\"Happen. Can I make things happen?\"\n\n\"Depends what you're asking for. World peace? End to hunger? Because, no, you can't do those things. No one has enough power for that.\"\n\nBefore I could stop myself, I blurted, \"I want to be beautiful. Can that happen?\"\n\nIt sounded so bare, out in the open like that, out in the empty street. Yet, it was the only thing I wanted, had ever wanted. Well, that and Greg. I knew beauty was nothing. But it was also everything.\n\n\"Yes, yes, I can do that. Or, rather, you can.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\nShe stared into the distance. The street was silent, no cars, no people, only that wind that picked up the dead leaves and whirled them around, finally sending them skittering away like so many winged insects.\n\nEventually, she said, \"Not all at once. Changing things too quickly is how one gets discovered. But slow changes are fine. I've found that most people are stupid and unobservant.\"\n\n\"So how\u2014?\"\n\n\"Come here tomorrow.\" She pointed at the boarded-up house. Again, I remembered my mother\u2014or probably someone else's mother\u2014saying not to go with strangers. And yet I knew my mother wouldn't mind. If this woman could make me beautiful, she'd think it was a risk worth taking.\n\nI said, \"Can I see the mirror again?\"\n\nShe drew it back out from the folds of her gown. Her eyes were brown now. \"Don't break it.\"\n\n\"I won't.\"\n\nI grasped it and brought it up to my face. I studied myself, crooked nose, freckles, frizzy hair, everything.\n\n\"Can I . . . can you change _one_ thing now?\"\n\nShe smiled. \"Something small?\"\n\n\"Something big. My nose. Can you make it smaller or, at least, not have a bump on it?\"\n\nShe laughed. \"Funny how society stereotypes witches as having long noses. In fact, it's the first thing most witches would change.\"\n\nI noticed her nose. It was adorable, tiny, and turned up.\n\n\"Very well,\" she said. \"Close your eyes. It will only be a moment.\"\n\nI closed them. Around me, I heard the wind pick up, felt the dirt and rocks pelting my ankles. I wondered what she would do to my nose and, for the first time, I wondered what she _could_ do. Make me even uglier? How could I trust someone I'd never seen before?\n\nAnd yet, I knew I had nothing to lose. Still, I held my arms around myself, shivering in anticipation and maybe fear.\n\nA moment later, she said, \"Okay.\"\n\nI opened my eyes. She was holding the mirror toward me. I stared at it.\n\nIt was my face, still my face, ugly, pale, blotchy, chinless. I still had no eyelashes and horrible hair. No one would notice the difference.\n\nBut there was a difference. The bump on my nose was gone.\n\n\"Oh.\" I turned sideways to admire it. \"Oh, thank you. _Thank_ you.\"\n\n\"Now do you trust me enough to come back tomorrow?\"\n\nI nodded. I still held the mirror in my hand, not wanting to stop looking at it. Finally, I handed it back to Kendra.\n\nShe smiled. \"Power can be a wonderful thing, Violet, a wonderful, terrible thing.\"\n\nI was still thinking about the mirror, about me, my face. I wanted to ask her how it could be terrible. But, when I looked up, she was gone.\n\nI thought about power. A chill ripped through me.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nWhen I found Mom, she was plucking her eyebrows. \"Hello, Mommy.\"\n\nShe barely looked up. \"Hello.\"\n\nI just stood there. I wanted to see if she'd notice a difference. But she still didn't look. She plucked one hair, then searched for her next victim. Just when I thought she'd forgotten I was there, she said, \"Violet?\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nShe plucked another hair, still not looking up.\n\n\"You'd tell me if I had hairs on my chin, wouldn't you?\"\n\nI had to smile. My mother would never, in a million years, have a hair on her chin. A chin hair would be a flaw, and my mother was flawless. She didn't even have freckles. Not one.\n\nI must have taken too long to answer because she said, \"Oh, my GOD! I already have them, don't I? You've noticed, and you haven't told me. Violet, what is the point of even having a daughter if she doesn't tell you about your chin hairs?\"\n\nShe abandoned her eyebrows and started searching her chin, positioning it in front of the mirror and rolling her eyes down to try and look. Well, that just summed up our relationship. I wanted to let her suffer, but I also wanted her to look at me, instead of her chin, so I said, \"No, Mom, of course you don't have chin hairs . . . that I've noticed anyway.\"\n\nI had to add that last.\n\n\"Are you sure? Can you look? Because I was talking to Marge Holcomb today, and since she's so tall, I was looking right at her chin, and you'll never guess what I saw there.\"\n\n\"A chin hair?\"\n\n\"Haha. No. _Three_ chin hairs. Three! That was all I could look at. I felt terrible for her.\" She laughed, the sound of a breaking mirror. \"I would die if anyone looked at me and saw chin hairs.\" She laughed again.\n\n\"You're lucky you're not that tall.\"\n\n\"I am . . . not.\" Still, she searched her chin. \"That's not the point, Violet. The point is, I shouldn't have any. Do you know how hard it is to see your chin? I hate getting old.\"\n\nShe still hadn't looked at my face. Unbelievable. \"I don't think you have any. Want me to look?\"\n\n\"Would you?\" She broke into a smile, and like when I was a kid, it made me happy, so happy. My mother was smiling at me.\n\nWhen I was little, I used to watch her get dressed to go on dates. She had the most beautiful clothes, nothing like other mothers. Silk blouses in jewel colors and strapless gowns like Vanna White on _Wheel of Fortune._ After she left, when the babysitter thought I was in bed, I'd sneak into my mother's closet and try everything on, clothes, shoes, jewelry, makeup, always arranging it back very carefully as if it were a booby trap she'd set to catch me in the crime of pretending to be her.\n\nSometimes, when she was home, I'd ask to try the things she used, the powders and creams that widened her eyes, blackened her lashes, and made her so pretty. I thought if I could look like her, she would love me, and maybe she would have\u2014if I'd looked like her.\n\nBut I never did.\n\nOne thing she loved to do was watch pageants, Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Universe, Miss World. The girls in those pageants competed for scholarships, but their sparkly dresses and big hair probably cost more than they'd ever win. The contestants danced sexily onstage and then talked about ending world hunger. Some of the girls probably weren't even pretty before they applied all the hair spray, false eyelashes, and goo, and they did stupid talents like ventriloquism and hula dancing.\n\nAnd yet, every time they crowned a new queen, the camera panned the audience, found their families. I knew those moms loved their daughters, loved them enough to take out a second mortgage to buy a case of hair spray. Which was more than my mother loved me.\n\nSo I was cherishing this mother-daughter moment even if it did involve hunting for chin hairs. \"Move into the light where I can see you better. Maybe by the window.\"\n\n_Where you can see me._\n\n\"Oh, okay. Let me put on my contacts first. I always take them off when I pluck, to help me see close. But then I can't see anything. I can't even see your face.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" I handed her the case. I would have stuffed the lenses into her eyes myself had it meant it would happen faster. Could she tell?\n\nFinally, they were in. She blinked at me. \"Okay, then, where did you want me?\"\n\n___In my corner._ She still didn't seem to notice any difference. Was I so ugly that a little improvement didn't help? No, she probably hadn't adjusted to the contacts. \"Come here.\"\n\nThe sun was close to setting, and the western-exposed window filled the room with strained light. I stood close. \"Tilt your chin up.\" She'd be looking right at my nose in that position.\n\nShe obeyed. I held the tweezers, searching for hairs. None there. My perfect mother with a hair on her chinny-chin-chin? Impossible. But I pretended to search, waving the tweezers near her face, wondering if I should pretend to see something.\n\n\"Anything?\" Her voice sounded breathless.\n\n\"I'm . . . not . . . sure.\" _Look at me._\n\n\"Violet, you must be very certain. I have a date tomorrow, someone new, someone rich. I can't have . . . a hair.\"\n\nNo reaction to my new and improved nose. But, of course, she was too fixated on herself, her wonderful self, as she always was. Maybe if I found a hair, she'd look at me.\n\n\"Oh, here it is!\" I inched the tweezers up to one downy, blond, regular peach-fuzz hair. I grabbed it. \"Got it!\"\n\nA moan escaped her lips, and with that sound, I gave the skinny hair a mighty yank. My mother gasped.\n\n\"There!\" I held the empty tweezers in triumph.\n\n\"You're sure that's all?\" she asked.\n\n\"Positive.\" _Look at me. Look at me!_\n\nBut she turned away. I wanted to say something, anything else. Ask for help with my homework. Ask her to make me cookies? Hardly. Ask if she thought I was pretty. Ha. I knew the answer to that one without asking. I never would be.\n\nUnless . . .\n\n\"Okay, Mommy, I have lots of homework.\"\n\nI did have homework, but for once, I let it slide. I could do it at school. One B was hardly going to wreck my average.\n\nHad I just thought that? I'd gone ballistic about the group project, about anything less than an A.\n\nBut the difference was, then, I'd thought it mattered. Now, I knew it didn't. Middle school grades didn't matter. Grades didn't matter. Or how smart you were. Or what college you got into. Nothing mattered if you didn't have the one thing that did: beauty. I was going to get it, and I wasn't going to wait.\n\nI ran to my room and looked for a mirror. There was none over my vanity. I hadn't wanted one. Now, I did. I needed the truth of my ugliness, laid out before me, to see my work. I had no compacts, no powders or blushers, nothing with a mirror in it. Finally, I spotted the little jewelry box my grandfather had given me. It played music when opened, a plastic ballerina whirling round and round, the mirror behind her reflecting her every move. I broke the ballerina off and threw her aside, leaning on the spring that had connected her to the box. It kept spinning even after the dancer was removed. I tried to examine my face.\n\nI couldn't see much in the tiny mirror, just my nose and my nonexistent lashes. How I hated my lashes! I tried to think back on the conversation with the witch, the conversation and what had happened before it. The boys. They'd attacked me, and suddenly, magical help had come. I remembered the other time the magic had come. The broken bird. What did those two experiences have in common? In both cases, I'd really wanted something to happen. Was that it? Was it enough? No. If merely wanting something to happen was enough, I'd be beautiful already.\n\nAnd my mother would have a beard like Santa Claus!\n\nNo, it had to be more than wanting. There had to be some kick in the butt, something to jump-start the magic like cables on a car battery.\n\nThe anger. That would explain it. Maybe longing and need too. Ordinarily, I was what people in books called mild-mannered, accepting as an ugly girl needed to be. Pretty girls could have fits of pique, but girls who looked at me should be nice. Usually, I was.\n\nBut today, I hadn't been. How could I have? Nor that day with the bird. I loved birds, and I hated the kids who would harm one. Someone who hurt an innocent little bird would hurt me, or anyone.\n\n_Hate._\n\nI stared into the mirror as best I could, patted the spring that had now stopped wavering in the tiny gold frame. I hated my face, my eyelashes especially.\n\nThey weren't hard to hate, sparse and pathetic, almost invisible. I'd told myself that my ugliness made me stronger, a survivor. Now I knew I'd lied. Ugliness wasn't power. Beauty was. Those pageant girls knew it. So did the network execs who only hired beautiful airheads to do the news. They were making us stupid as a society. And Greg, my poor Greg, forgetting his best friends because of the beautiful, evil Jennifer. Beauty was power, and I hated it, hated Jennifer and Nick and Nathan, hated all of them, everyone. I wanted the power to hurt them.\n\nI felt a strange tingling in my face. I expected to see that my eyelashes had grown instantaneously, but they hadn't. They were still short, still whitish. I squeezed my eyes shut against their hideousness, and I felt the room begin to whirl. The music box started playing _Swan Lake,_ the story of a lovely swan. I remembered _The Ugly Duckling._ Me. I wanted to be the swan. The room spun around me, and when I opened my eyes, the colors kept swirling. I couldn't see my face. I felt like I couldn't breathe. I dropped the jewelry box. It clattered to the floor, still playing, spilling its contents. I felt myself falling too. Then, everything went black.\n\nI woke, sprawled on the mint-green Berber carpet. I pushed myself up.\n\nI started to stand when I noticed the music box lying open on its side, on the ground. It was just out of my reach, but I crawled toward it, expecting nothing when I looked in its mirror. Sitting up, I held the box close to my face, peered into the mirror.\n\nThe eyes that met mine were unrecognizable. Or rather, I did recognize them. They were my mother's eyes, deep blue, fringed with black. Whose eyes were these?\n\nI struggled up. The clock said 7:30. Light streamed through the window. Time for school. I ran to the bathroom and peered into the sparkling, silver mirror above the sink.\n\nIt was still me. At least, most of it was me. Weak chin\u2014check. Thin, fuzzy hair\u2014still awful. But the eyelashes were the Maybelline-commercial lashes I'd wished for. The eyes themselves weren't really that different. The lashes just made them look that way. But, it occurred to me, I could change them too.\n\nI could change them. I had the power to change anything.\n\nAnything.\n\nI could be the most beautiful woman in the world.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nWhat I learned the next day in school was this: No one looked at me. Maybe they looked when I was younger, long enough to realize I was beneath their notice. But then, they stopped. So they didn't notice my eyelashes or even my nose.\n\nKnowing this would've been a big time-saver, had I realized it earlier. I thought of all the hours I'd spent washing, brushing, and blow-drying my hair, covering zits in tinted Clearasil, or choosing outfits that wouldn't get made fun of. Had I known all along that I was invisible, I could have taken up a hobby. Or discovered a cure for cancer.\n\nEven Greg didn't notice the change in me. In fact, he didn't look at me at all. Why did I care so much? Why did I still want him?\n\nAt least _I_ was enthralled by my new look. I excused myself to look in the girls' room during each class, and I went in between too, seeing the same people, the druggies, cutters, and truants each time. The third time, I saw this girl, Molly, a brunette I'd known since kindergarten. She squinted at me through what I was pretty sure was a pot-induced haze and said, \"Don't I know you?\"\n\n\"Yeah, I'm Violet. We went to Coral Ridge together.\"\n\nHer eyes flickered with recognition. \"Ohhhh, I remember. You were the freaky chick who picked up the dead bird.\"\n\n\"It wasn't dead. People just thought\u2014\"\n\n\"Noooo, it was dead. You made it come back to life. Poof!\" She made a sort of _abracadabra_ gesture with her hands. \"But when I told people that, they said I was on drugs.\"\n\n\"You probably were. How could I do that. I'd have to be\u2014\"\n\n\"A witch. I told them you were, but they didn't believe me. They said just because someone has a bad nose doesn't mean they're a witch.\"\n\n_Out of the mouths of potheads . . ._\n\n\"Hmm, I see.\" I turned toward the mirror. Even though she was acting suspicious, I couldn't resist looking at myself.\n\n\"By the way,\" Molly said, \"you look really good. The first time you came in, I almost didn't recognize you. You get a nose job or something?\"\n\nI nodded, watching myself in the mirror. I realized that, up until now, I'd wondered if the whole thing was my imagination. \"Yeah. Yeah, I did. Thank you. Gotta get back to class.\"\n\n_It was real! It wasn't wishful thinking! It was real!_\n\nAfter school, I pushed through the crowds, past Nick and Nathan, who avoided me after yesterday. Once I was out of sight, I broke into a run. In minutes, I was walking up a driveway overgrown with roots and weeds breaking through the asphalt. The house's steps were covered in weeds too. Did Kendra really live here? I peered through the grimy window. Inside was dark, abandoned. Had it all been my imagination?\n\nI remembered Molly's comments, the boys avoiding me. No. I hadn't imagined it.\n\nI reached for the cobweb-crusted door, avoiding the dead leaves and insect skeletons. I knocked softly. The sound seemed to reverberate around the empty porch. No footsteps, so I was startled by the door opening.\n\nThe girl\u2014because that's what she was\u2014looked about my age with short hair that was actually purple. She wore a long, black gown that looked a hundred years old, and bizarre makeup with black sparkles highlighting dark eyes. She looked like a stunning vampire or something, a creature of the night. Was this even Kendra?\n\nBut she said, \"Come in, Violet.\"\n\n\"Is it . . . Kendra?\"\n\n\"Oh, I forgot.\" With a wave of her hand, she transformed into the older, dark-haired woman from yesterday, then back. \"Everyone likes a change sometimes. Yesterday, I took a form that would make you comfortable, a middle-aged woman. But really, I can be anything I want.\"\n\nI stepped inside. It was like the Palace of Versailles, marble floor and glowing chandeliers, all brand-new. She led me to a little sofa covered in tapestry fabric. How had she done it all? Witchcraft, of course. Could I do it too?\n\nMy heart whispered that I could.\n\n\"I see you've been experimenting.\" She focused on my eyes.\n\n\"What?\" I tried to look confused. \"No, I haven't.\"\n\nShe stared at me. \"Of course not. I must be mistaken. Your eyes have always looked like the second coming of Elizabeth Taylor.\"\n\n\"Who's that?\"\n\n\"Sorry, I date myself. She was an actress, lovely, violet-colored eyes, long, lustrous lashes. Some say she was the most beautiful woman on earth. Or the fairest one of all.\"\n\n\"The fairest . . . huh?\"\n\n\"Sorry. It's something we used to say when I was a girl. No one says that anymore.\"\n\n_The fairest one of all._ Man, would that be something. I'd have been happy just not being ugly, but the _fairest._\n\n\"Okay,\" I admitted. \"I guess I experimented with my lashes a little. I figured no one would notice, and no one did.\"\n\n\"No one?\"\n\n\"This one druggie girl. But my own mother didn't.\"\n\nKendra nodded. \"How did you do it?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"Don't you know?\" She'd probably been watching me in her mirror.\n\n\"I want you to tell me.\"\n\n\"Okay. I channeled my feelings, I guess.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Once, when I was in fourth grade, two boys got into a fight in PE. Instead of getting mad at them, the coach told them to channel that anger into the softball game we were playing. Choke up on the bat, and hit real hard. And it actually helped. At least, one of them got a home run on his next at bat.\"\n\n\"And this has what to do with you?\"\n\n\"Just, that's what I did\u2014channeled all the anger, the rage over the way people treat me, at girls like Jennifer and Gennifer, who wouldn't even let me play kickball with them in grade school, at Greg, for not noticing how awful they are, or not caring, anyway, for ditching me. I put all that in my head and concentrated on . . . my eyelashes.\"\n\nShe laughed.\n\n\"It seems trivial, I guess.\" I knew it wasn't.\n\n\"No, eyelashes are very important.\" She wasn't kidding.\n\n\"Is that how it always works? Does magic come from rage and hatred? It did with Nick and Nathan too.\"\n\nBut not with the bird. How had that happened?\n\n\"Maybe hatred and rage, maybe fear, maybe even love, though I've never tried that one myself. It comes from a strong emotion that overwhelms you like an ocean's waves. For me, it began with desperation. When I was your age, a terrible plague swept through my town. My father died, mother too. Then, one by one, each brother and sister was taken from me until, finally, I had only one left, my youngest brother, Charlie. And Charlie lay dying in his bed.\"\n\n\"That must have been terrible. No one could help?\" I didn't have siblings, only my mother. But the thought of losing her was too terrible to bear.\n\nKendra had a faraway look in her eyes. \"No, no one could help. I was thirteen and alone. Half the town lay sick and dying. The rest mourned as I did. Every day, Mr. Howe, the gravedigger, brought his wheelbarrow down our street, asking if we had any dead to bring out, and one by one, my family left me.\"\n\nI shuddered. \"What did you do?\"\n\n\"I went to a woman, a healer in town. Her name was Lucinda, and she had been my friend, had told me that someday, I might be a healer like her. But she was gone too.\"\n\n\"Was she dead?\"\n\nKendra shook her head. \"She'd just disappeared. At that moment, I felt more emotion than ever before, emotions crowding inside me, crawling over one another, clamoring to get out like Pandora's box, anger, grief, desperation, loneliness, and they poured out of me and onto Charlie.\"\n\nI remembered the night before, the room spinning, my vision going purple.\n\n\"So the emotions were what triggered your magic?\"\n\n\"I didn't know at the time, but yes. When I woke the next day, Charlie was awake, alive. He was cured of his sickness as if nothing had been wrong. This had happened to no one else. Everyone who had sickened had died. There was only one reason this could have happened: me. I had cured him.\"\n\n\"Wow.\" It was incredible to think that such powers existed, that I could have them too. \"Wait. When was this?\"\n\nKendra hugged herself, her slim hands crushing down the black fabric of her dress. \"The year the plague struck England. 1666.\"\n\n\" _Sixteen_ sixty-six?\" It was impossible. \"So you're . . .\"\n\n\"Immortal, yes. All witches are.\" With a wave of her hand, she transformed again, this time into a young girl from another era, blond braids streaming down her back. She wore a long, blue dress with full sleeves and a red apron. \"It is a blessing, but a curse as well. One gets lonely. There are so few of us.\"\n\nFrom another room, I heard a clock ticking. \"So nothing can kill you . . . us?\"\n\n\"Nothing but the flame. I have managed to avoid it these three-hundred-odd years, sometimes just barely.\" She waved her hand and was herself again, at least, the self I'd seen before. \"Come now, let's work on making some magic.\"\n\nI wanted to. I especially hoped to be able to work magic without passing out. Kendra made it look so easy.\n\n\"So, my friend, what should we try next? Something small.\"\n\n\"Does it have to be small? People at school wouldn't even notice if I showed up six inches taller. I'm invisible to them.\"\n\n\"You'd be surprised what people notice.\"\n\nI thought of Molly from the bathroom. I nodded.\n\n\"And once people notice, they look for ways to use your magic against you. That's how people like my friend Lucinda disappear.\"\n\n\"But you said she was immortal, unless . . .\" I shuddered, picturing someone being burned at the stake, the wood piled high around her, flames lapping at her feet. Would the fact that she couldn't die except by burning mean she couldn't asphyxiate, that her heart couldn't burst, but rather, she would have to be burned alive, watching the skin peel off as painful first- and second-degree burns gave way to the blessed relief of death?\n\n\"No,\" Kendra said, \"she was not burned. She merely disappeared. Witches do. Now, let's find something suitably small. Your complexion, perhaps?\"\n\nI had a few blemishes, nothing terrible but, of course, I was self-conscious about them. I nodded.\n\n\"Hate drains the energy,\" she said, stroking my skin gently, like my mother never had. \"It's not a safe emotion. That's why you passed out last night. Is there another strong emotion you can tap into?\"\n\nMy first thought was love, my love for Greg. But that emotion was all tied up with other emotions, my hatred for Jennifer, my anger at Greg himself for ditching me when he suddenly became hot. I tried to think of happier memories, but they all failed me. I thought how I felt every day, how I felt alternately invisible, ignored, ridiculed. How I felt alone, even in my own house, with my own mother.\n\nI remembered what Kendra had said about witches being lonely.\n\n\"Would loneliness work?\"\n\nKendra smiled, barely turning up her lips. \"Yes, dear, I know it will. It is an emotion I use quite a bit myself.\" She reached toward me. Her hand was small and white, as if it had never seen sun. \"Close your eyes.\"\n\nShe passed her fingers down my forehead and across my face. I closed my eyes gladly. The bright light against white walls was suddenly tiring.\n\n\"Now remember . . .\" Her voice was soft, soothing. \"Remember the loneliest you've ever felt.\"\n\nSo many memories to choose from. The time my school had Lunch with Your Child Day, and my mom was the only one who didn't come. She hadn't had time, she said, but she sure had time for dumb things like hair appointments. No, it was because I wasn't presentable, wasn't pretty. She was ashamed to be seen with me.\n\nI'd thrown my sandwich in the garbage, feeling like the ugliest person in a world full of beauty.\n\nBut perhaps this memory edged too close to hate, to anger. I remembered other days, mundane things, walking home from school alone, remembered not having a partner on field trips and having to sit by someone else's mother who was chaperoning, party invitations handed out to everyone but me, no one talking to me except to ask me to please switch seats so their friend could sit there. I remembered . . .\n\n\"It worked.\" Kendra's voice interrupted my thoughts.\n\n\"What did?\" I realized I was weeping, hot, salty tears seeping out from under my eyelids.\n\n\"Look.\"\n\nI did, mopping at them as I looked. The mirror, Kendra's lovely mirror, was before me. I gazed into it. My skin was clear, unblemished, smooth, pink, like Mom's. And still, the tears kept coming, coming out of me.\n\nKendra's arms tightened around me. \"There, my darling. Someday, you will be able to do this without crying.\"\n\n\"Will I?\"\n\nShe stroked my back. \"I promise.\"\n\n\"Can everyone do it then? I mean, does everyone have the power to channel their emotions?\"\n\nI hoped not.\n\n\"Oh, no. Not everyone. It is a rare thing indeed. No, my darling. You are special.\"\n\n_Special._ No one had ever called me that before, not even teachers at school.\n\n\"Come, my darling. You have worked hard. Let me get you some gingerbread.\"\n\n\"Gingerbread?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"I am sentimental. The witch who taught me, she made gingerbread.\"\n\nI remembered the story of _Hansel and Gretel_ , the children made into gingerbread. What if Kendra turned out to be like that witch, a cannibal bent on murder? Would I have the strength to run away from the one person who praised me and thought I was special? I stroked the smooth skin of my cheek, feeling Kendra's arm around me. I wasn't sure. I wanted Kendra to teach me. Desperately.\n\nBut the gingerbread she brought me wasn't shaped like children. In fact, it wasn't even a cookie, but a cake in a square pan. Kendra cut a still-steaming chunk for each of us and served it with glasses of cold milk. The hot gingerbread warmed my mouth and soon my tears were forgotten.\n\n\"What happened to the witch who taught you?\" I asked.\n\nKendra brushed some crumbs that had fallen onto the lace tablecloth. They vaporized instantly. \"Alas, she was burned.\" She looked down.\n\nI waited for her to elaborate, to explain, but she didn't. There was only the sound of our forks on china. \"I'm sorry,\" I said.\n\nShe shook her head and still didn't speak.\n\nFinally, she said, \"You should go home. Your mother will miss you.\"\n\nI doubted that, but I said, \"Can I come back tomorrow?\"\n\n\"Best to wait a little. Thursday, perhaps, so as not to excite suspicion. I will see you then, my dear.\"\n\nAnd suddenly, she wasn't there. The air felt chilly as, one by one, the objects in the room disappeared too, and I was all alone in the old, abandoned house.\n\nI touched my cheek.\n\nI wondered what else I could do.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nI stepped outside. The door slammed shut. The sound echoed down the silent street. I trudged through the weedy yard. The sun had been shining when I'd entered Kendra's yard. Now the clouds blocked any sign of it.\n\nOther than the brief, magical time when I'd had Greg, I had always been lonely. Yet the realization that Kendra was the only person _voluntarily_ to speak to me in months chilled me. What was wrong with me? It couldn't just be that I was ugly. Yet it had to be. What else could it be? It had to. If it wasn't about my appearance, then changing it wouldn't change anything. And I wanted to change everything.\n\nEverything.\n\nDown the block, I saw a lone, white cat playing by the roadside. I remembered hearing that most white cats were blind. Or was it deaf? The cat was scrawny, maybe a stray, and, suddenly, I wanted to pick it up, take it home with me. I'd never asked for a pet. Could my mother really say no? I walked faster, suddenly wanting the cat, hoping it didn't have a collar.\n\nSuddenly I heard a rumbling behind me. A car! I jumped, then ran under a tree, feeling the whoosh of air as the car sped by.\n\nMy heart was pounding. I screwed my eyes closed. Then, I heard a dull thud. My eyelids flew open. The cat! The cat, crushed under the wheels of some Mustang.\n\nI waited for the car to stop, but it roared on as if the driver hadn't noticed. Or just didn't care.\n\nThen, I was screaming, \"Stop! No!\" But the words were lost in the motor's roar, and the pounding of my footsteps on black pavement.\n\nThere was surprisingly little blood, only a bit coming from the kitty's mouth. Black tire marks marred its white coat. I held my hand to its chest, feeling for a heartbeat. There was one, but only faint. I knew it wouldn't last long.\n\nI gathered the cat in my arms, hating the driver. How could people be so uncaring? He didn't even stop.\n\nSomething, a jagged, broken bone, penetrated the cat's coat. The loneliness and sadness rose up in my throat like bile, then came spilling out of my mouth in words like vomit, words I didn't understand. I just sat there in the road, rocking the cat back and forth, saying I didn't know what, and suddenly, the pointy bone retreated inside its body. The cat's heartbeat quickened, and then its whole being began to vibrate.\n\nIt was purring! Purring and rubbing up against me! I knew I had fixed it, my magic and I had. If my magic only did one worthwhile thing, saving the cat was enough. More than enough.\n\nI picked up the cat and carried it home. To my mother's questioning look, I said, \"I found a cat. I'm going to keep it.\"\n\n\"Were you going to ask me?\"\n\n\"No. I'll take care of it.\"\n\nI stared at her, and maybe there was something in my eyes\u2014or my new eyelashes\u2014that made her say, \"Okay. We'll have to get cat food tomorrow, but I have some old tuna tonight.\"\n\nI fed the cat\u2014whom I named Grimalkin after a witch's cat in a book\u2014and took her to my room. She curled up on my bed and purred while I did my homework. She loved me already.\n\n\"The cat will have to stay outside while you're at school,\" my mother said the next morning. \"We don't have any litter. It will pee all over the place.\"\n\n\" _She_ will run away if I leave her outside.\" The cat had slept on my bed all night, between my legs, her purring lulling me to sleep. I'd awakened more rested than I'd ever been and had spent most of the morning admiring the cat's blue eyes and white whiskers. I had to keep her.\n\n\"If you feed it, it will stay.\"\n\n\"We don't have any cat food. Can't I just leave her in the bathroom?\"\n\n\"Violet, do you know what cat pee smells like?\"\n\nI didn't answer, assuming the question was rhetorical. In fact, I did know, and I hoped my mother wouldn't notice the smell on a pair of jeans that had been crumpled on my desk chair. I'd stuck them into the washing machine and planned to wash them after school.\n\n\"The cat can come in once we get litter, but for now, it will have to stay outside.\"\n\nI drew the cat into my arms. Most cats\u2014I knew from painful experience\u2014didn't like being picked up, but this one began to purr and rub her head against mine. \"I can't just throw Grimalkin outside!\"\n\n\"Uck, why give it such an ugly name? Call it something pretty like Tiffany or Courtney.\" My mother turned back toward her room. \"It has to go out.\"\n\nI went back to my own room. I considered skipping school, but there was a test in social studies, and I knew Mom would never write a note for me. Too much trouble. I shut the door, thinking perhaps I could hide Grimalkin inside. But she started to meow.\n\nFinally, I waited until Mom was engaged in the delicate contour drawing that was her morning beauty ritual, then I took the cat outside.\n\n\"Stay there.\" I placed her on the step.\n\nThe cat looked at me as if she understood. She blinked once, then again in the morning sun.\n\n\"Stay there,\" I repeated.\n\nShe lay down on the step, curling herself into a ball.\n\n\"Perfect,\" I said, even though I knew the cat would probably be gone when I got home, and the loneliness was like a paper cut on my heart. Why couldn't Mom just get some litter? Be a human for once? But I knew she wouldn't, so I started toward school.\n\nThe cat stood and followed me.\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"Stay.\"\n\nBut the cat kept following me, like Mary's lamb.\n\nI remembered what I'd learned about channeling my emotions. The cat could not leave. She couldn't. It was completely unreasonable for me to get all involved with a cat, but I had. My loneliness made me unreasonable.\n\nI picked the cat up and held her close, willing her to stay there, wanting her to. I was facing east, and the sun was already high and at the perfect angle to get in my eyes. I shut them, still feeling the warmth on my eyelids, on my cheeks, the purry warmness of the cat, who was not struggling in my arms. She nuzzled me, and I knew I couldn't go to school and leave her. I held the warm, fluffy, vibrating ball, rocking her like an infant. Behind my eyelids, I could see the sky changing colors, blue to red to purple and a burst of bright pink like fireworks. Stay. _Stay._\n\nThen, suddenly, I felt the cat's back feet digging into my stomach. She wanted to leave. You can't hold a cat who wants to go, and this cat did. I dropped her and opened my eyes.\n\nThe sun had gone behind a cloud, a cloud that hadn't been there before. I'd stood there longer than I'd realized.\n\nI looked at the cat. She was chasing a squirrel. It went up a tree that overhung our neighbor's property. Grimalkin followed it. I knew she would be lost. The squirrel would go further and further, and she'd go with it.\n\n\"Stay,\" I said.\n\nShe did not, of course, look back at me. She followed the squirrel across the branch, toward the neighbor's yard.\n\nBut when the squirrel entered the neighbor's yard, Grimalkin didn't follow. Instead, she stopped, as if realizing she could go no further. She looked insulted, as cats do. Then she turned and ran down the tree trunk and stood at my feet. She began to lick her right front paw.\n\nI glanced at my watch. Five minutes until school started. I had to leave, and I had to run. I gathered my books and lunch box, dropped in my trance. I patted Grimalkin's head, then started toward school.\n\nWhen I looked back, the cat was still sitting under the tree, unmoving.\n\nWhen I returned that afternoon, she was still there, waiting for me.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nI visited Kendra after school the following day and the day after that and every day for the next two weeks. She taught me things, magic things. While she cautioned me not to alter my appearance too drastically, I did alter it some, straightening my teeth so much that my orthodontist declared, with a shocked expression, that I no longer needed braces. I also gave my hair a wavy, just-out-of-the-salon perfection. Finally, people noticed. At least, my mother complimented me on finally taking an interest in my appearance. Mom was great at making a compliment sound like an insult.\n\nBut Greg didn't notice.\n\nOr, more likely, he didn't care.\n\nKendra taught me some party tricks, moving stuff with my mind like witches did on television shows like _Bewitched._ She didn't say anything about casting spells on other people, and I didn't ask. I knew she'd disapprove since she'd told me several times that my magic could backfire.\n\n\"Backfire how?\" We were at her house, which was now decorated in some sort of British colonial, dark furniture and stuff with elephants on it.\n\nKendra adjusted her linen blouse. \"Oh, sometimes the unexpected will happen, or you'll realize the magic you thought you wanted, you didn't want at all.\"\n\n\"All I want is to be pretty. And have friends.\"\n\n\"All?\" Kendra asked.\n\nWell, no. Not all. I wanted Greg to love me. And I wanted Jennifer to contract a bad case of leprosy, to help that along. But I didn't say that. Across the room, a brown spider crawled up a dining room table leg that looked like a lion's paw. I liked spiders. I never killed them. Unlike most people, I knew they weren't harmful, not usually. In fact, they killed mosquitoes and flies, bugs that spread disease.\n\nThe spider lifted first one leg, then another. Was it a brown recluse? Those could be harmful, resulting in skin death and terrible scarring. But even they didn't usually bite. People who got bitten by spiders brought it upon themselves. They weren't careful.\n\n\"Can you give me an example of backfiring?\" I wondered if I could get the spider to come toward me. Kendra had taught me many tricks, but since the day of the cat, I hadn't used my magic on another living creature. I wanted to. It would be cool to be able to manipulate others, like maybe make Jennifer scratch herself like a gorilla. But, of course, I'd have to be able to do it so no one knew it was me.\n\n\"So hard to think of just one example,\" Kendra said. \"I have been alive hundreds of years, and I seldom get the opportunity to tell my stories.\"\n\nI laughed. That was obvious. For each bit of magic I learned, there was at least an hour of talk. But Kendra's stories were fascinating. She looked my age, so she was like a friend. Yet she'd lived hundreds of years. Someday, I'd be as experienced and smart as she was. \"I'm sure it will be a great story.\"\n\nKendra leaned on an umbrella stand shaped like an elephant's foot and stared out the window into the waning light. \"I once knew a tsar who had twelve beautiful daughters.\"\n\n\"A tsar? So you lived in Russia?\"\n\n\"I've lived everywhere. But yes, this particular tsar was in Russia, and he had twelve daughters, each with so many suitors that the tsar could not decide\u2014which was a high-class problem to have. He planned to have a month of balls and events and invited them all to a huge house party\u2014or, rather, castle party. I was employed as a maid, so I knew of all the preparations.\"\n\n\"A maid? Why would someone with your powers want to be a maid?\"\n\n\"A maid is an easy job for someone with my powers. A blink of my eye, I can clean the silver, fluff a hundred comforters, and try on all the jewels in the house. But a maid is where the action is. As a maid, I traveled on the finest ships, including the great _Titanic_ , lived in palaces the world over. And people say things when the maid is in the room, secret things.\"\n\n\"So why aren't you a maid now?\"\n\n\"Alas, there are few palaces and even fewer kings. The world has become more democratic, but also more boring. What happened in the tsar's palace could not happen today.\"\n\n\"What happened?\" Across the room, the spider still crawled.\n\nKendra continued. \"Many great preparations were made. Every stick of furniture was dusted to gleaming. Every sheet was washed in lavender to stimulate restful sleep. I was a lady's maid to Manya, one of the middle daughters. It was my job to make certain her clothes were in order and to do her hair. She had lovely titian hair.\"\n\n\"What is titian?\"\n\n\"Oh, I am sorry. I forgot that people of your generation know so little. Titian is a dark red shade favored by an artist also named Titian who painted many red-haired women.\"\n\nI nodded. Titian sounded so much prettier than my own carroty red hair. Perhaps I would change my hair to titian sometime.\n\n\"Anyway, Manya had red hair, so she liked dresses in blue and green with satin slippers to match. Since the party would last a month, I made certain she had thirty gowns (it would not do for a princess to repeat) and six pairs of dancing slippers, three each in green and blue. I took great pride in the hairstyles that I\u2014or, rather, my magic\u2014could accomplish. But one morning, the princess had a terrible illness.\"\n\n\"What was wrong with her?\"\n\n\"I had no idea. It seemed like a sleeping sickness I'd seen on my travels, but there was no fever or cough. The princess simply couldn't stay awake. And worse, when I left her chamber to get help, I found that all her sisters were similarly stricken. They did not want to leave their beds, and when the governesses forced them to, they dragged around the floor as if half dead.\"\n\nI wondered how all the princesses would have been so close in age. Were they sextuplets? Octuplets? But I figured Kendra wouldn't appreciate the interruption.\n\nShe continued. \"We all ministered to the princesses, but none got any better. On the third day, though, I noticed a startling change. A pair of Manya's dancing slippers was missing.\"\n\n\"How strange.\" A missing pair of slippers wasn't my idea of high intrigue. My eyes wandered again to the spider. It had moved to the underside of the table and was starting to make a web. As Kendra talked on, I concentrated on the spider, the bit of thread emanating from its spinnerets. I wanted it to come over. Could I make it do so by just wanting it? To do magic without Kendra noticing was my goal.\n\n\"I looked everywhere for the lost shoes,\" Kendra said. \"The princess had gone nowhere, so nothing should have moved. Finally, I asked one of the other ladies' maids if she had seen them. To my surprise, she reported that a pair of her princess's shoes was missing also!\"\n\nShe paused when she said this, as if expecting some reaction. I had none, so I said, \"Hmm.\" I was still staring at the spider, willing it to come toward me, concentrating all my love and hate, joy and longing into that one task.\n\n\"After polling the other maids,\" Kendra continued, \"we found that, indeed, each young lady was missing shoes. A search ensued, and finally, we found a pile of slippers down the rubbish chute. Each pair had been danced into rags!\"\n\nI saw the spider's thread disengage itself from the table to which the spider had attached it. I tried to contain my excitement, to concentrate.\n\n\"It was so strange,\" Kendra said, \"because Manya and all her sisters had done nothing but sleep. And, a few days later, another pair of shoes disappeared from each closet.\"\n\nThe spider raised a tentative leg and started the long journey down the table.\n\n\"The tsar was so concerned about his daughters' illness that he offered a reward: Any man who found the cause of his daughters' malaise could choose a princess to marry. Many young men came to take the test, but none could solve the mystery. Those who failed were brutally dispatched. Meanwhile, another twelve pairs of slippers were danced to rags.\"\n\nThe spider reached the ground and began to traverse the gleaming marble floor.\n\n\"One day,\" Kendra said, \"I was out in the garden gathering flowers when a young man approached me. 'You are the maid to one of the princesses, I believe?' he said.\n\n\"I nodded, for I recognized him as a boy I saw sometimes in town, a boy who worked in the blacksmith's shop. He said, 'Then, perhaps, you can help me. It's about the princesses. The challenge the tsar has made. I want to try.'\n\n\"'You shouldn't,' I told him. 'It's a good way to lose your life.'\n\n\"But he told me he was very much in love with Princess Svetlana. He knew this could be his only chance to marry her. I asked him how he could be in love with her. He would barely have seen her. Svetlana was the oldest daughter and thought to be the most beautiful.\n\n\"But he told me I was wrong. Svetlana was an avid horsewoman. When her horse needed new shoes, she came with the groom. In fact, she came when any of her sisters' horses needed shoes also. 'She is so kind,' said the blacksmith's boy, 'so modest, not a haughty princess at all. She even has smiles for the lowly groom whom she accompanies. She treats him as well as a lord. Perhaps if I could win her, she could love a poor peasant too. This is my only chance.'\"\n\nThe spider lifted first one leg, then the other, walking toward me, getting closer as Kendra continued with her story.\n\n\"I told him I didn't understand how he expected me to help. After all, if I knew what was making the princesses sick, I would already have solved the mystery. But he said, 'I think you have other skills that would help me.'\n\n\"I knew,\" Kendra said, \"what skills he must mean, my witch skills. But how had he found out? I had done everything in my power to hide my abilities, for if I was discovered, I would be at best run out of town, at worst, tried as a witch. 'I do not know what you mean,' I said.\n\n\"But he told me his aunt was a witch. He knew how they functioned. He had seen how things changed when I was about, the way the crows followed me and the horses reacted around me. And he said, 'I saw how Ivan Vangeloff's horse went lame when Ivan angered you.'\n\n\"There he had me. Ivan had been my beau, my ex-beau, a shopkeeper's son. When he had glimpsed pretty Katrina in the town square, he called upon me no more. I had seen his horse in the blacksmith's shop, and, forgetting myself, I had bewitched it. Now I was paying the price. I would have to help the boy.\"\n\nThe spider came closer and closer. If I could perform spells upon animals unnoticed, I could probably do the same on people. A very interesting possibility. _Come to me_ , I told the spider with my thoughts. _I have no wish to harm you. Not you_.\n\n\"So it was settled,\" Kendra said. \"I would use my magic to give the blacksmith's boy\u2014his name was Alexei\u2014the power of invisibility.\"\n\nI gasped. \"You can do that?\" It was all I could do to hold my gaze on the spider, for this seemed the most wonderful power of all. To go anywhere, spy on people, even.\n\n\"Of course,\" Kendra said. \"It is just another way of changing shape. If one can shift one's own shape, it is nothing to change the shape of another, even to nothing.\"\n\n\"Wow.\" I sighed in amazement. The spider walked still closer, and I wondered if I could change its shape. If I made its legs longer, altered the color a bit, would it be a harmless daddy longlegs instead of a poisonous brown recluse? Could I transform its nature by shifting its appearance?\n\nAnd, if so, could I change who I was, become an outgoing, happy girl, a winner instead of a loser? I'd have to ask Kendra sometime, maybe later, after I'd listened to her boring story about how having magic powers was somehow a _bad_ thing.\n\n\"That night,\" she continued, \"Alexei arrived, announcing that he would solve the mystery of what was happening to the princesses. The staff snickered, for the boy was small and pathetic. He was put up in a guest room, but as soon as the castle had gone to bed, I snuck him into Manya's room. Then, I made him invisible. The next morning, when the castle woke\u2014except for the princesses\u2014Alexei declared that he had the answer.\"\n\nKendra paused, and I knew I was supposed to say something.\n\n\"What did he tell you?\" The spider was close enough now that I could make out details. Its legs were short and wide, bent like a crab's. I remembered a daddy longlegs I'd seen. Its legs were slender, arched like the supports on a bridge. I didn't know how to change one to the other, but I'd try.\n\n\"The blacksmith's boy said he had followed the princesses through a secret trapdoor hidden beneath one of their beds. He did not say how he'd been able to do so without being seen, and of course, no one knew.\n\n\"Under that door, he said, was a staircase, and down that staircase was a canal. The princesses, dressed in their best gowns and dancing slippers, traipsed down the staircase and entered the gondola. The gondolier took the princesses (and, unbeknownst to him, the blacksmith's boy too) down the canal to a secret dock, where they were met by twelve young commoners who escorted them to a secret ballroom where they danced the night away. At dawn, the princesses boarded the gondola again and went back to their rooms to spend the day in sleep.\n\n\"'Impossible,' said the tsar. 'Why would my daughters sneak out at night to dance with commoners?'\n\n\"But that night, we stayed up to watch the princesses. On my watch, one of the princesses got up, as if looking for something. But when she saw me watching, she fell back into fitful sleep.\"\n\nKendra's words got lost as I concentrated on the spider, then on the magic words I had learned and the ways I could use them. My vision blurred, but I struggled to remain focused. Just as I was about to give up, one of the spider's legs began to stretch, then another. The spider wobbled on its path, but finally, all eight legs matched. It skittered toward me, its body elongating as it went, the violin marking leaving its back. Success!\n\n\"The next morning,\" Kendra said, \"we reported what we had seen. The tsar had the room checked and found the hidden door. The canal. 'It seems you are right, young man,' he said. The young man chose to marry the princess, Svetlana.\"\n\nI tore my eyes away from the spider. \"What's wrong with that? You said your magic backfired, but that's a happy story. A poor blacksmith's boy marrying a princess\u2014it's like Cinderella.\"\n\n\"Ah, but Cinderella's prince wanted to marry her. That's why he searched the kingdom. Svetlana did not wish to marry the blacksmith's boy, and when she heard her father's declaration, she ran sobbing from the room. Indeed, all her sisters did. They wept all day, but, that night, the first of the royal guests were to arrive, and their father commanded the princesses to dry their eyes and come down to greet them. When I was fixing Manya's hair, I asked what was wrong.\"\n\n\"'Don't you see?' she asked. 'We don't want to marry the blacksmith's boy or anyone of Father's choosing. We do not wish to be auctioned like cattle. Svetlana was\u2014is\u2014in love with the groom. That is why she went with him to the blacksmith's shop. In fact, we all have secret loves, commoners we visit at night. But now that we are discovered, we will be married to princes. We shall go far away and never see our darlings again.' She sighed. 'If only I could dance with Viktor just one more time.' And, again, she began to weep.\"\n\nThe spider was within inches of me now. I reached out, and it crawled onto my hand. I stared at it, marveling at its coffee-bean-shaped body, its sunburst of legs. I had done that, changed one thing to another. I turned away so that Kendra would not see my smile.\n\n\"And so it came to pass,\" she said. \"Svetlana married the blacksmith's boy, and each of her sisters also married a man she did not love. The end.\"\n\nMesmerized, I reached out to touch the spider.\n\n\"Ouch!\" It bit me on the knuckle.\n\n\"What is it?\" Kendra asked.\n\n\"This spider. It bit me.\" Already, I could feel the venom seeping into my system. \"Help me, please.\"\n\nKendra looked at it. \"Oh, don't be silly. It's a daddy longlegs. Humans aren't affected by their bites.\"\n\n\"But it's not a daddy longlegs. It's a brown recluse. I . . . changed it. Unless you're saying it's turned into a real daddy longlegs. Then it won't hurt me.\"\n\nKendra reached out toward the spider, and then, with a tiny tap, changed it back to its true shape. She placed it on the ground and shooed it away. Then she glanced at my hand.\n\nA small, white blister began to form, but with the touch of her finger, that too was gone. \"No. It is still a brown recluse. You can change a thing's appearance, but not its nature. Perhaps that, along with my story, is enough learning for today.\" She nodded at me. \"Run along.\"\n\nAnd I did what she said. What I had learned was valuable indeed: Any harm I did to myself, I could undo.\n\nAs I walked toward the door, I made certain to stomp upon the spider until it was just a brown blot on the floor.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nThat night, I decided Kendra was crazy. Oh, sure, she'd recognized what I was, taught me magic, and made me the powerful witch I was becoming. But that didn't mean she wasn't also crazy. Or senile. How could she say magic wasn't a positive thing? Even in the story she'd told, magic had ended the carnage.\n\nOf course, Kendra was still my best, my only friend. I needed her. And I needed her to teach me too.\n\nI thought about what I'd done with the spider. I'd been able to change its shape, if not its nature. I could do that to people. Changing their looks would be enough. That way, I could keep Gennifer and Jennifer the same shallow girls they were\u2014trapped in fat, bacne-ridden bodies.\n\n_If you can't change their nature,_ something mean inside me whispered, _you can't make someone fall in love with you. Greg never will; you will find out the hard way._\n\n_Stupid._ I told myself I didn't need to change anything. Greg had loved me for myself all along, all the time we were friends. He just got sidetracked. He was shallow. Boys were. He wanted a prettier girlfriend. Since I was going to be the most beautiful girl in the world, he'd have to love me. I'd just have to get beautiful Jennifer out of the picture, to be sure.\n\nI knew I'd have to change her appearance as I did my own, slowly, gradually, so it wouldn't be obvious, even to her.\n\nAs I drifted off to sleep, I made my plan. I would put it into action in language arts, the one class I had with Jennifer and not Greg.\n\nThe next morning, I stood by my locker, brushing my hair. I'd recently installed a stick-on mirror, so I could admire myself between classes. My classmates still didn't notice the difference in me, but I did. I straightened up. Greg was passing by, alone for once. I met his eyes with confidence, then looked away on my own terms.\n\nMaybe that's what I needed, to be on my own terms. Probably Greg would eventually get tired of Jennifer on his own without any help from me. She was really stupid. It was silly of me to want to hurt her. After all, if Greg didn't like me for me, what good was he? Maybe I should\u2014\n\n\"Hey, watch it, ugly!\" Someone slammed into me.\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\n\"Your face is sorry.\" It was Jennifer, Jennifer with brand-new highlighting and a face full of makeup. \"You just exist to get in my way, don't you?\" She shoved past me toward Greg, who'd stopped to wait for her.\n\n_Okay. Game on._\n\nIn class, we were reading _Animal Farm_ aloud, painful because Mr. Cameron had students take turns reading and, apparently, some still couldn't. I read ahead, pages ahead, but then he'd stop to discuss it, and I wouldn't remember where we were. So, instead, I just zoned out as Colby Buckner read, \"Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is ab . . . ol . . . ished forever.\" I thought about pigs. The pigs in the story were supposed to be like the people in power. People were like pigs. If only the people who were like pigs could _look_ like pigs.\n\nI contemplated Jennifer, who sat two rows to the side of me. She wasn't even pretending to read. Her eyes fluttered closed, then open. Her forehead drooped forward. Her nose was adorable, slim, and turned up. What if it turned up a little bit more . . . ?\n\nShe saw me looking at her and mouthed, _Pig_.\n\nI thought of everything Jennifer had ever done to me, the insults, taking Greg, the snickering, taking Greg. Then I thought of everything anyone had ever done to me. All my life, I'd been an outcast, a pariah, and why? Because I wasn't pretty enough? Because I was too smart to matter but not smart enough to play stupid? I closed my eyes, but I could see Jennifer's face, Jennifer's perfect, blue-eyed, laughing face, her enviable nose. Then, in my mind, it morphed into a pig nose. She squealed in horror, just like a pig, and held her lively, nail-polished fingers up to hide it. She squealed again, then started to cry. I smirked in satisfaction.\n\nIn the room, Colby was still reading. I put my head down, looking at Jennifer so she couldn't see me.\n\nShe was still whispering to Gennifer. Her nose was still perfect.\n\nWhy hadn't it worked? Guess I hadn't done it right. Maybe it was harder to work magic on others. But hadn't Kendra cured her brother the first time out? Hadn't I gotten the birds to fight off Nick and Nathan? I leaned my hand on my face and looked up.\n\nHuh. My face felt different. My nose felt . . . piggy.\n\nWhat? How could that be? I'd seen it so clearly in my mind, Jennifer's face changing, not mine. Not mine!\n\nEven as I held my hand up, I felt my nose hardening, my nostrils spreading even more. My head was heavy, and I remembered reading that a pig's snout weighed about a pound. I cradled my head in my hands like I had a headache, leaning to cover myself with my hair.\n\n\"Violet, will you read next?\" Mr. Cameron asked.\n\nI began to cough, still holding my hands over my face. I managed to gasp out, \"Bathroom!\" Around me, everyone was laughing. Without waiting for Mr. Cameron's response, I bolted to the girls' room, still coughing. I looked in the mirror and saw . . . my snout.\n\nIt was pinkish-white with black spots and stood at least three inches from my face!\n\nWhat . . . the . . . ?\n\nI ducked into a stall, shaking, and tried to bring up the magic. My thoughts were racing. How would I get out of here? What would Mr. Cameron say? Could I put my face back? I realized that, while anger had been an awesome motivator, fear was a terrible one.\n\n_Breathe. Breathe. Stop thinking about how you can't leave the building like this. Forget how you left your backpack in Cameron's class. Breathe._\n\n_Breathe!_\n\nI remembered the spider. How I'd changed its shape, slowly. If I could do that, I could do anything. Anything. Anything except give Jennifer a pig nose. I'd ask Kendra about that. Clearly, I still had a lot to learn about magic. Thank God for Kendra.\n\nFinally, I felt my heart rate slow. And my breathing. It was hard to breathe through the snout. I sat on the toilet, breathing. Breathing. Breathing. Imagining my nose\u2014not my nose, but Michelle Pfeiffer's nose, Diane Lane's nose, or model Brooke Shields's adorable, famous nose. Yes, that was it. Perfectly upturned with not too much nostril. I'd once read that it was nearly impossible to achieve this surgically. But magic surgery had to be better. The breathing, the heavy pig snout, the concentration made me feel weak, almost light-headed, and the metal stall walls began to blur around me. I held my hands up to my face and felt the snout shrink beneath them. Relief! I straightened my neck, held my head up, opened the door.\n\nEven though I knew I was late, I couldn't resist a glance in the mirror.\n\nIt was perfect, almost too perfect. No, there was no such thing as too perfect. I would be perfect, all of me!\n\nAfter school, I ran to Kendra's house.\n\n\"I tried to use magic, and it backfired on me.\"\n\n\"Backfired?\" Kendra looked bemused\u2014and maybe a little amused too, arranging herself on a red bench that looked like it belonged in the Museum of Modern Art. \"How could it backfire?\"\n\n\"Um, I don't know, turned my nose into a pig's snout. That's all.\"\n\nKendra chuckled. She was wearing a black lace ball gown that had barely made it through the door. \"So you were trying to change your nose into this stunning creation\u2014Diane Lane's nose, I believe\u2014and it turned into a snout instead? Is that exactly what happened?\"\n\n\"Not exactly.\"\n\n\"I didn't think so. Perhaps you were trying to give someone else a pig's snout?\"\n\n\"How did you know?\" Kendra seemed to know a lot of things\u2014even knowing I'd copied Diane Lane's nose. Could she read my mind? Or was she spying on me with that mirror?\n\n\"It's about discretion.\" She pulled me by the arm to sit beside her.\n\n\"Discretion?\"\n\n\"'Like a gold ring in a pig's snout, is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion.' That's from the Bible.\"\n\n\"You didn't strike me as the religious type,\" I said.\n\n\"I have nothing against religion. Since I'm never going to die, I don't have to worry about impressing God for the afterlife, but that doesn't mean I don't want to use my powers for good. Also, if you go around turning your enemies' noses into pigs' snouts, you'll get caught. That's why it's impossible to do.\"\n\n\"To do what?\"\n\nShe waved her hand and produced two plates. \"Gingerbread?\"\n\n\"No, thank you. What's impossible?\"\n\nWith another wave of her hand, the plates were gone. \"Rules of magic. It is impossible to change someone without their knowing.\"\n\n\"You changed me the first day. You changed my nose.\" _Not as well as I changed it._\n\n\"Ah, but you knew about it at the time. It was your choice. Once, I turned a proud, cruel boy into a beast, but he knew about it. To work magic on someone else, you must reveal yourself. It keeps others from being blamed. But had you changed your classmate's nose, she wouldn't have known how it happened. That's not allowed by the rules of witchcraft.\"\n\n\"So I can't even give her . . . zits? Diarrhea? A bad SAT score when she's a junior?\"\n\nKendra shook her head. \"Not without also giving those to yourself. It keeps you from abusing your power\u2014and from making everyone suspect you. But you can do wonderful things for yourself, travel the world, give yourself incredible talents, never pay for cute new clothes.\" With a wave of her hand, she changed her dress to fuchsia. \"You should hear me sing opera\u2014I'm like a mermaid.\"\n\n\"All I want is for Greg to love me again. I don't care about that other stuff.\" I sort of wanted the gingerbread back. It was comfort food.\n\n\"Then you will have to win him back with your own looks and abilities\u2014not by harming Jennifer. But it will be a difficult task.\"\n\n\"Why's that?\"\n\n\"Because, my dear, he never really loved you in the first place. He was friends with you because he was lonely. With Jennifer, he has a whole circle of friends.\"\n\nI remembered Greg and me, walking to his house after school, doing crazy science experiments like putting Mentos in Diet Coke so it would explode, checking our birdhouses daily. I'd had my first wren of the year last week, and I'd so wanted to tell Greg. But I knew he wouldn't care anymore. I guessed he'd never cared. I nodded, knowing Kendra was right.\n\n\"It's so unfair. Why do they hate me, Kendra? I always thought it was because I was ugly. But now, I'm not that ugly, and they still hate me. What's wrong with me?\"\n\nKendra frowned. \"I think you chose to like the wrong girl's boyfriend.\"\n\n\"But that's not fair. I saw him first.\"\n\n\"Since when are bullies fair?\" Kendra asked. \"Do you think they issue some sort of Bully Code of Conduct\u2014only pick on people who deserve it?\"\n\nIn truth, I guess I felt I had deserved it. Why would they pick on me if I didn't? I'd deserved it because I was an ugly freak. But now I knew they'd picked on me because they could, and maybe because I cared. Some part of me had once longed to be friends with Jennifer, to sit at her lunch table and go shopping at Dadeland after school. I couldn't explain _why_ I wanted that. She was horrible. But part of me wanted to deserve them, the beautiful girls.\n\n\"I don't know why no one likes me. I thought it was my looks, but now, I don't know.\"\n\n\"I like you.\" Kendra put her arms around me. The dress was taffeta, a stiff fabric that felt like hundreds of Pringles chips when I hugged her. But I sunk into her embrace. She was the absolute coolest friend in the world.\n\n\"There, there,\" she said, \"I love you. And, someday, others will too. You're going to be an incredible woman. You'll see.\"\n\n\"I don't want to be an incredible woman,\" I sobbed. I knew I was no better than anyone else. I'd only been happy to be smart because I was ugly. Really, I wanted to be beautiful and be loved. \"I only want Greg!\"\n\n#\n\n#\n\n# _1989_\n\nOver the next few years, I changed everything about myself. Everything I could, at least. My hair. The color of my eyes. My height. By seventeen, I was beautiful, tall with the body of a _Sports Illustrated_ swimsuit model, strawberry blond hair that never got messy, and eyes the color of lavender dish soap\u2014or, well, violets. I hadn't had a zit in four years, and even little details like the amount of space between my eye and my eyebrow (ideally the size of another eye) or my philtrum (the area between lips and nose\u2014ideally about fifteen millimeters) didn't escape my notice. I was Pygmalion to my own Galatea, every part sculpted perfectly.\n\nNo one cared.\n\nOr noticed.\n\nI also developed talents, as Kendra had suggested. I could sing like Whitney Houston, dance like Paula Abdul. I used these abilities in school musicals and on the Cougarettes dance team. I was so talented they couldn't reject me even if they hated me.\n\nWhich they did.\n\nIt wasn't as overt now. I wasn't ridiculed, not usually. But even though strange men, and even women, approached me on the street to beg me to visit their modeling agency and new boys at school asked me on dates, I had no one to love me, no one I wanted. And, at the end of Cougarettes practice, when the popular girls got into their cars to go to the mall together, have dinner together, do homework together, I was the only one stuffing my pom-poms into my backpack alone. And watching Jennifer leave with Greg.\n\nYes, after all this time, they were still together. It was the one high school relationship that lasted longer than a rock star's marriage. They were voted Cutest Couple in middle school, and they'd be in this year's yearbook too. Greg was the star wide receiver, recruited by colleges. Jennifer was on dance team, at his side after every game. They belonged together.\n\nAnd, of course, Jennifer got everyone else to hate me, just like she always had. Maybe now that I was beautiful, she saw me as a threat. Greg didn't care what a bitch she was. He didn't even know I was alive.\n\nAnd yet, I still wanted to change Greg's mind, engineering ways to run into him without her. I tried different routes to my classes at school until I found ways to cross his path, just so I could say hello or look at him. I should have moved on, but moving on wasn't a thing with me.\n\nOnce, I passed him walking home from school. Greg had no car, but Jennifer had one, so she drove him most days, after her dance team practice and his football. But Wednesdays, she had Student Council (yes, I'd memorized their schedules), so Greg walked.\n\nI had a car, a little blue Mazda Miata convertible I'd gotten for my sixteenth birthday. My mother was generous now that she was proud of me. Every Wednesday, I drove slowly from school, stalking Greg, fantasizing about offering him a ride. But, usually, someone else gave him one. After all, he was popular.\n\nBut that day, it happened.\n\nAs a bonus, it was raining, a sun shower that promised to get harder. Leaving the school parking lot, I saw Greg jogging toward home.\n\nI pulled alongside him, onto the grass. \"Want a ride?\"\n\nHe wore black athletic shorts and a green tank top that showed every wet muscle. I longed to run my hands over him, to touch the hardness of his perfect body, the softness of that crow-black hair I'd loved since I was ten.\n\nAt first, he didn't seem to recognize me. He approached the car, squinting in the sparkly sun-rain. I smiled, showing my kissably puffed lips and that philtrum. I shook my hair a little. \"Hey.\"\n\nHe backed away. \"Oh . . . Violet. It's you. I probably shouldn't.\"\n\nI feigned confusion. \"Why not? It's awfully wet out.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I know.\" He was getting soaked.\n\n\"It's dry in here.\"\n\nHe was thinking about it. His hand approached the door handle. I wished I could control his mind.\n\n\"Why don't you sit in the car while you're working out the deep, philosophical problem of whether to accept a one-mile ride from an old friend.\"\n\nHe pulled his hand back a little. Way to go, Violet. But he looked at me, stared at me, actually, like he was seeing me for the first time. I parted my lips, knowing I finally had a tool, a tool more powerful than magic I could use on him. I stared back at him, lowering my eyelids. \"We used to be such good friends, Greg.\" Showing my straight, white teeth. I was harmless. Beauty was always trustworthy. \"Don't you remember?\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah.\" A gush of air. He opened the door, letting the rain in, and himself. \"I remember. You're right. It's stupid.\"\n\nI tried not to grin. \"You're getting the seat wet. Let me . . .\"\n\nI pulled a towel from my dance bag and began wiping at the seat, just the seat at first. \"Let me get the other side too.\" I leaned across him, trying to touch him but make it look accidental. Like me, he'd become more beautiful each day. His arms were sculpted bronze ropes, and after I dried the visible expanse of seat, I began using the towel to stroke each muscle. \"Sorry. My mom will kill me if anything happens to the leather.\"\n\n\"It's a great car.\" His voice sounded strained, as if he was struggling to keep it even. \"You're really lucky.\"\n\n\"Yeah, my mom and I have been getting along better. Let me get behind you.\" I got real close to his ear.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Your back.\" I caressed it, moving him forward. \"Let me dry it.\"\n\n\"Sorry.\" He obliged, and I dried behind him. We were close, closer than I'd been in so long. I felt a little breathless, but I tried not to let him know that my pulse was racing. I could have kissed him if I'd wanted. But I knew I shouldn't. Get him to trust me first. I dried the seat and his back, leaning close enough that my long hair brushed his chest as I did. I didn't dare touch his chest, his legs, on purpose. I wasn't that confident. But I dried his shoulders, his neck. He didn't try to take the towel from me. Was it because he trusted me or because, as I hoped, he didn't mind my touching him. My arm brushed his, and I felt his muscles stiffen.\n\n\"Guess that's good enough.\" I handed him the towel. \"Let's go.\"\n\nI pulled out. The car was tiny, and it had a manual transmission, which meant every time I used the stick, my hand was practically in Greg's lap. His legs were long, so there was barely room to move.\n\n\"That was a great kickoff return touchdown you made the other day against Bradford,\" I said.\n\n\"Oh, you saw that?\" But he looked pleased.\n\n\"Well, of course. I was there on the dance team. Remember?\"\n\n\"Yeah. It doesn't always seem like those girls are watching the game.\"\n\nHe meant Jennifer. I grinned. \"I watch you all the time, Greg. Of course I do. You're, like, the whole team.\" We approached a stop sign, and I downshifted, my hand brushing his leg as I did. \"It's beautiful to watch you play, the way you got around those guys. It was . . . poetry.\"\n\n\"Wow. Thanks. That's really flattering.\"\n\n\"Doesn't Jennifer watch you?\" Was I pushing my luck?\n\nBut he said, \"Yeah. I mean, of course she does. She's my girlfriend. She just doesn't always seem to understand it. I guess football's complicated.\"\n\nWhich was why thousands of drunks could understand it. \"Well, it's nice that she tries.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" He actually looked a little unsure.\n\n_What do you even like about her?_ But I didn't ask. \"Well, I thought you were wonderful, a hero. And I heard there was a scout at the game.\"\n\nHe looked down, embarrassed. \"Well, yeah, it's not really big colleges. Division Two.\"\n\n\"Are you kidding? Do you know how many guys would kill to be scouted by anyone? Your dad must be so proud.\" I patted his arm, loving the warmth of him under my hand.\n\nHe grinned. \"Yeah. Yeah, he is.\"\n\nWe approached his house now. The ride was ending soon. I searched for something else to say. \"How is your dad? Remember when I used to go to your house after school?\"\n\n\"Yeah. We were just kids then.\"\n\n\"I know. But we had so much fun, didn't we? Like when we built the birdhouses?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"And then, the wrens came.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"I remember.\"\n\nI wanted to ask him if he ever did anything like that with Jennifer, but I realized I might not want to know the answer.\n\nHe squirmed in his seat. \"Look, Violet, I . . .\"\n\n\"You once told me we couldn't be friends because I was too weird.\"\n\n\"I didn't say that.\"\n\n\"You did. I remember it like the answers to last week's vocabulary quiz. And, since then, I have worked really hard not to be weird, to be worthy of you. I mean, worthy of your friendship.\"\n\n\"Violet, I didn't ask you to do that.\"\n\n\"I know you didn't. I wanted to. I wanted to . . . be friends again. I missed you . . . that so much.\" We were dangerously close to his house. I was driving slowly. I couldn't drive any slower, but I couldn't let him out of the car without some kind of affirmation that we'd at least talk again.\n\n\"Friends?\" He looked doubtful.\n\n\"Sure. Friends. Friends like we used to be.\" I wanted so much more, but there was time.\n\n\"I guess we can be friends,\" he said finally.\n\n\"That's so great!\" I had to stop myself from doing a little seat dance. \"So maybe I could drive you home every Wednesday.\"\n\nHe looked like he'd sat on a half-eaten Slurpee. He drew away.\n\n\"I don't think Jennifer would like that.\"\n\n_And, of course, you're not allowed to have independent thought. Does she really need to know?_\n\n\"Well, then, maybe I could call you after school sometimes.\"\n\n\"I guess. Maybe. Well, maybe I should call you.\" We were right by his house, and he had his hand on the door handle like he might want to jump and run. \"Look, I should go. Could you just\u2014?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" I pulled into his driveway, and he got out. I'd blown it.\n\n\"Thanks, Violet. We'll talk soon.\"\n\nThen he got out and sprinted into the house.\n\nI sat there a long time, staring at the closing door, then the seat which still, despite my towel drying, retained the damp imprint of his body. I curled over and lay against it until the seat got cold, and I couldn't feel him anymore.\n\nI knew he'd never call me.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nI got to see Jennifer three afternoons a week at Cougarettes practice. We wore cougar ears and drawn-on whiskers (okay, it may have been slightly\u2014just slightly\u2014dumb). We danced at football games and in competition. The juniors and seniors took turns choreographing, and this year was my first turn. I loved dance and didn't just rely on magic for my talents. It wouldn't be as satisfying. I spent hours working on my extensions and practicing jet\u00e9s in the long hallway between the bedroom and kitchen of our house, trying not to kick my mother or the cat. I could leap higher than anyone. I'd also spent a long time on the routine, forgoing homework to make up the choreography. Kendra and I had gone to an Indian movie at the local art cinema, and I loved the dance routines. I wanted to do something like that. It would be different. Special! Like nothing any dance team had ever done before!\n\nWhich would probably mean people would think it was weird.\n\nStill, I had to try. If worrying about people thinking I was weird stopped me, I'd never leave the house. It wasn't like the girls in my grade were going to like anything I did. But there were eight new girls on the squad, three freshmen, five sophomores, none of whom knew I was weird. They weren't in any of my classes, so they didn't think I was a loser. I could impress them with my completely special routine.\n\nThat day, a Friday, I stepped in front of the group, trying to be proud, trying to at least _look_ confident. I was, after all, six inches taller than I'd been in middle school with perfect 34 Cs and thighs like a Barbie doll's, that never squooshed together. Genetics didn't make bodies like mine, no matter what the magazines tried to tell us. But still, I stood before the group of fifteen girls in the otherwise empty gym, unsure how to start. I wondered if orchestra conductors felt like this, not completely confident that the violinists, oboists, or the guy playing the rainstick would obey his commands. Probably not. Probably everyone felt confident but me. Witchcraft didn't change the nature of a thing, so witchcraft couldn't make me confident.\n\nBut I tried to change my own nature. As I took my place before the group, I straightened my shoulders, shook my perfect ponytail, smiled, and tried to channel the other girls who'd stood in my spot before\u2014the Nicoles and Julies and Merediths who'd stood confidently on the foul line with _Cougars_ painted in green, and said:\n\n\"Okay, this is going to be awesome!\" I clapped my hands, astounded by the awesomeness of it all. \"I thought we'd do something different, a Bollywood-style routine!\"\n\nA few of the new girls nodded, like they knew what that meant, and one of them even said, \"Like those Indian movies? That sounds so cool.\"\n\nEncouraged, I went on. \"So, for the first eight beats, this is what we'll do. Start with one arm out to the side, like this, in front of your chest.\" I demonstrated, picturing myself as the Indian actress in the movie I'd seen. \"Then, shoulders up-down, up-down.\" Most of the girls copied me, but not all. I decided to keep going.\n\n\"Now, switch your arms the other way, and shoulders up-down, up-down.\"\n\nJennifer, who hadn't been following me, cleared her throat. Or, rather, she had a coughing fit, and most of the returning girls stopped dancing. They put their arms down.\n\n\"Come on, guys.\" I tried to act like everything was normal. \"I don't want to go on until we have the first eight. Up-down, up-down, then switch.\"\n\nI was screaming, but my voice got lost in the big gym.\n\nNow, none of the returning girls were following me, but the new girls were, and the routine was pretty easy. So I decided to pretend nothing was wrong. \"Freshmen, you're doing great! Show those seniors. Okay, one more time, then we'll move on. Up-down, up-down, then switch.\" Some of the new girls had dropped out too.\n\n\"Come on, guys!\" My voice cracked a little. I looked at the fluorescent lights to keep from tearing up.\n\nSuddenly Jennifer sat on the floor. Her cohorts, Gennifer and Meighan, followed. Then, the other junior girls, and the seniors.\n\nJennifer spoke. \"What is this from, some kids' show? It's dumb even for you, Violet.\"\n\nOne of the new girls, the one who'd said it was fun, started to open her mouth. Then, she shut it.\n\n\"It's Bollywood-style, like movies from India. The Indian film industry\u2014\"\n\n\"Does anyone care about this?\" Jennifer's hands were on her hips. \"We're gonna look stupid. Why don't you think of something else, and we'll try next week.\"\n\nI looked around. The adviser, Miss Levin, was supposed to be, um, advising, but she'd retreated into her office to call her boyfriend. And really, what was I going to do? Run to her and cry? Jennifer was the cocaptain. \"Fine,\" I said.\n\n\"Great.\" Jennifer stood up. \"I'm sure you'll be able to come up with something better if you . . . think about it more.\"\n\nI stared at the light. I knew I couldn't come up with something better. What I'd done was perfect. Besides, even if I did, they'd hate it. I couldn't get a break with Jennifer. She had Greg, had everything I'd ever wanted. Why did she have to be such a bitch?\n\n\"Meighan, show us your routine,\" she said.\n\n\"Gladly.\" Meighan smiled and walked up front. For the next twenty minutes, she taught a routine based upon Madonna's \"Papa Don't Preach,\" __ which was 1) borderline obscene; 2) copied from the music video; and 3) such an old song that all the teams had already done it. Everyone followed her like she was an innovator. Un. Freaking. Real.\n\nI thought about how freeing it would be to throw caution to the winds and announce that I was, in fact, the Wicked Witch of the West and make all their heads explode. The news coverage: \"High School Dance Team's Heads Explode.\" The T-shirts: \"Guns don't kill people: Pissed-off witches kill people.\" There'd be protests by religious groups, complaining that taking prayer out of schools had caused my breakdown. It would be worth being ostracized, though. I was already ostracized. I didn't think they burned anyone at the stake anymore. And I'd be safe because I did it openly. That was the stupid rule, right?\n\nBut, of course, I was too nice. Scratch that\u2014too much of a wimp\u2014to do it.\n\nWhen practice finally ended, I headed for the locker room, ahead of the others. It stunk of the sweat of thousands of freshmen. I got my gym bag, which I'd left on a bench. I wanted to change quick and get out.\n\nSomething was sticky.\n\nSomething was crawling on my clothes! Then, up my arms. Ants. Hundreds of ants.\n\nFrom the doorway, Jennifer giggled. \"Look!\" She was pointing at me.\n\nShe'd covered my clothes in something. Syrup? No, honey. Jennifer had poured honey into my bag! On my clothes!\n\n\"Something wrong, Violet?\" She came to where I was standing. A few other girls lagged behind her like the followers they were.\n\nI stared down, remembering all those days in grade school when I'd eaten alone, all those times they'd made fun of me\u2014 _she'd_ made fun of me. I felt the skin on my forehead tighten.\n\n_Don't stinking cry. Calm down._ This was easy. It was a few ants. I could control higher orders of animal than ants.\n\nI drew my clothes out of the bag. The honey, the ants, were all gone. I tried to keep my voice even. \"Wrong? What could be wrong, Jennifer?\"\n\nShe gasped, and her mouth quivered like Grimalkin's when she watched birds through the front window, knowing she could never get them, but longing. Sort of like I did with Greg.\n\nI fixed her with a stare under the long lashes of my lovely violet eyes. \"I know you would never do anything to my backpack, would you? You're so sweet and nice, and everyone loves you, and besides . . .\" I fluffed my T-shirt in the air to show her how not covered in ants it was. \"It's a bad idea to mess with me.\"\n\nShe laughed. \"And why's that?\"\n\nI had a headache, and my eyes felt hot. Only crying would relieve it.\n\nBut I wouldn't cry. I'd rather have a headache forever. \"It just is. You can figure it out.\"\n\nI took off my leotard and stood there in bra and panties, not even trying to be modest, letting her and the others see every inch of my perfect body, more perfect than hers, more perfect than anything nature could make. My brain, I had no confidence in, but my body was excellent. I clenched my back teeth to keep from sobbing, but I smiled. \"I know it would be too much to ask you to be . . . decent. So I'm just telling you to leave me alone.\"\n\nShe laughed. \"Decent? Omigod, you are so crazy.\"\n\nI pulled my T-shirt over my head, slowly, aware most of the girls were watching. I shrugged. \"Who knows how crazy I am?\"\n\nI slid my perfect, tanned legs into my little white shorts, then slipped on my sandals, admiring the pedicure that never chipped. Jennifer had stopped laughing. Maybe she'd realized nothing was funny. Maybe she was scared.\n\nThey all remained silent as I left the room.\n\nI stood outside, contemplating the blue and white afternoon. I lifted my head and squinted at the sun. A warm breeze set a nearby wind chime in motion. Across the street, a dog barked.\n\nI allowed my face to break for a moment, feeling the hot tears running down my cheeks, the blessed relief of the dam breaking against the tension in my head.\n\nI looked at the dog.\n\nI had seen the dog before, a Doberman, wiry as a welterweight boxer and miserable about being fenced in. It saw me too and began to bark and fling itself against the chain-link fence. I felt its pain. I was fenced like that dog, fenced by people's expectations.\n\nI lowered my eyes to meet the dog's. It was across the street, but it saw me. It calmed. It lowered its rump to the ground, sat, then curled into a ball. I held eye contact. _Good girl._\n\nSo I couldn't do anything to Jennifer without bringing the same on myself. But could I have the dog do something to Jennifer?\n\nI had nothing to lose by trying. Whatever I messed up, I could easily fix.\n\nThe dog was still staring at me. Its slender, black tail bounced up and down, as if it'd heard me.\n\n\"Good girl,\" I said aloud.\n\nI examined the fence that contained it. Chain link already bowed down from previous escape attempts. It was almost low enough for it to scale in a single jump. Almost.\n\nI visualized a weight, like an anvil in a cartoon, crushing down the fence. A wind whipped through the parking lot and across the street. The fence bowed. The dog sat, obedient, wagging its tail. This time, I pictured a steamroller, crushing it. The wind whistled through the trees. The fence bowed further, tapping the resting dog on the buttocks. It started, then woke.\n\n\"Stay,\" I whispered.\n\nIt stayed, but on the alert now, ready to spring.\n\nThe fence lay low on the ground, no protection at all.\n\nBehind me, I heard laughter coming closer, then a voice from inside. \". . . so funny! Did you see her face when no one would do it?\"\n\n\"Her routine wasn't that bad,\" another voice said.\n\n\"Oh, of course it was.\" I recognized Jennifer's high-pitched whine. \"Anything she does is total poop.\"\n\n\" _She's_ total poop,\" Meighan agreed.\n\n\"I can't believe she's even on the team,\" Jennifer said. \"Where are the standards?\"\n\nThe voices grew closer. I stared at the dog. _Good doggie. Stay one moment longer._\n\n\"She's so ugly,\" Jennifer just kept going. \"Disgusting, really.\" I heard the thunk-squeak of someone pushing the bar that opened the door. I moved to the side, out of the way, focusing on the dog, communicating. _Good doggie. Nice doggie. I'm your friend. And you're going_ __ _to hurt the mean girl who hurts me\u2014one bitch to another._\n\nCould I do this?\n\nSuddenly my life started flashing before my eyes, but it was all Jennifer, like a collage of all the mean things she and her friends had done, said to me, the turned backs and mocking faces, Jennifer's voice in my ear, always, saying, \"These seats are saved\" or \"Omigod, what happened to your hair? Did you brush it with a spaghetti server?\" The pick-pick-picking on my skin, my hair, my nails, my body. \"Are those new shoes, Violet? Where'd you get them\u2014the orthopedic store? Can you believe what a suck-up she is, getting an A on the test when everyone else failed? Suck-up, asking questions in class. If I had that nose, I'd hide my face. If I had that hair . . . those eyelashes . . . that body . . . little bitch.\"\n\nThe dog was up on its haunches, backing up, then clambering, springing over the fence. The rage and hatred in its eyes matched my heart. The dog accelerated, dodging a passing car, intent on its target. Too late, Jennifer saw it charging toward her. \"Oh, no!\" she screamed. Her friends, true to form, ditched her, edging back into the building. Jennifer, poor, sweet Jennifer, was left all alone as the black beast's savage jaws came closer, closer.\n\nAnd then, the dog was atop her, teeth ripping at her clothes, her arms. She was screaming, but her shrieks were drowned out by my own cries. \"Bad dog! Bad dog! Not her arm!\"\n\nThe dog sunk its teeth into Jennifer's cheek and pulled.\n\nIt was enough. The dog had done its damage. Jennifer's cries were still in my ears. I came from my hiding place. Jennifer's friends were in the door, cowering. It was just me, the dog, Jennifer, her face bloodied, with the teeth marks. I ran for the dog, breathless, as if I'd been running the whole time. I laid hands on the dog. \"Stop!\" I felt a jolt of electricity running from my body to the dog's. I pulled the dog off Jennifer. It stopped, motionless, as if Tased. I stroked the soft fur. It was, after all, a good dog. It backed away, then trotted to its own yard. I went with it, as if I were taking it there, but partway back, I let it break away.\n\n\"Hide,\" I whispered.\n\nI glanced at the fence. It sprung back into place.\n\nI ran and knelt over Jennifer. Her face was bloody, flesh torn, and she was sobbing, holding her hand to her cheek. \"Are you okay?\" She whimpered in response. I pulled a damp towel from my dance bag and ripped it in half. I handed it to her. \"Here. Apply pressure.\" I helped her do it. I was so nice.\n\nNow that the danger was over, Jennifer's friends came back, all concerned, all, \"Are you okay? What happened?\" pushing me aside. Someone ran to dial 911.\n\nThen, Greg was there. He must have been at practice. He knelt over Jennifer, beside me. \"What happened?\"\n\n\"It was a dog,\" I said, a little breathless just from being near him. \"It came out of nowhere and attacked her. I pulled it off her.\"\n\n\"Where did it go?\" Meighan said.\n\nJennifer was still screaming, sobbing, incoherent. But then, she formed words, painful words. \"It was her.\" With her good hand, she pointed at me. \"She did it.\"\n\n\"It was a dog,\" Gennifer said. \"A pit bull.\"\n\n\"A white one!\" said Meighan.\n\n\"It was her. It was her.\" Jennifer's voice rose to a violin's pitch. \"She made it attack me.\"\n\nGreg's eyes sought mine, and I made mine wide, confused. \"Jennifer, the dog attacked you. I got it to stop. I helped you.\"\n\n\"Noooo! You didn't. You made it attack me. You made it because of what I did to your stuff.\" She was cringing in pain but still strong enough to accuse me.\n\n\"Poor Jennifer.\" I laid my hand on her arm. \"You're in such pain from that bad dog. But of course, I can't control the dog. And besides . . .\" I moved my hand to her bloodied face. The wound was jagged, a lightning bolt from eye to mouth, streaks across her once-perfect nose. \"Why would I want to hurt you? We're teammates, right? Friends.\" I stroked her hair until her eyes closed. \"That's good. Probably better to sleep.\"\n\n\"You're a hero, Violet,\" someone said.\n\nA siren sounded in the distance, distracting everyone. So I was probably the only one who heard Jennifer's voice, softer than the breeze in the grass, whispering, \"You're a . . . witch.\"\n\nI turned to Greg. \"The paramedics are here. It sounds like she doesn't want me around, so I'll go.\"\n\n\"Thank you for helping her, Violet,\" he said.\n\nI shrugged. \"I was just so scared when it came after her. It was all, like, adrenaline when I pulled the dog off her. I mean, it could've attacked me. Maybe call me later and let me know how she's doing.\"\n\n\"Of course. You're a good friend.\"\n\nI looked at Jennifer. My spell had her sacked out on the lawn, three Cougarettes over her. \"Well, that's exactly what I want to be, a good friend.\" I smiled more at the sight of bleeding bitch Jennifer than at that thought. If I couldn't have Greg, I could at least have revenge.\n\nBut I meant to have Greg.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nGreg called that night, and we talked about Jennifer. Jennifer. Jennifer\u2014the pain she was in, the surgery she'd require, the way they didn't let him ride in the emergency vehicle and how mad that made him, the way they'd looked all over the neighborhood for the pit bull but no one had found it. Jennifer. Jennifer. Her name was like the bells, bells, bells in the Edgar Allan Poe poem, driving me mad.\n\n\"Did you see the dog?\" Greg said, \"the dog that attacked Jennifer? I thought it might have been that black Dobie across the street, but the fence was totally intact.\"\n\n\"No, it was definitely a pit bull,\" I said, not wanting to implicate the Doberman. \"Big, white one. It ran away after I got it off Jennifer.\"\n\n\"You're really brave. Okay, I thought maybe Jen was confused about the breed. She's been kind of loopy from the drugs they gave her, confused in the head. She kept saying _you_ attacked her.\"\n\nI laughed. \"I must have really sharp teeth.\"\n\n\"I know. I told her that was crazy, that you were always sweet and gentle. I still remember how you helped that bird when we were kids.\"\n\nI smiled. \"Of course I remember.\" I wondered what had happened to that sweet girl, the one who loved all living creatures. Kendra said you couldn't change the nature of a thing. The ability to strike out at my tormenters must always have been there. Now I was using it.\n\nI didn't mind. I'd had enough.\n\n\"Thanks for keeping me posted. Will Jen be back at school soon?\" I still didn't know how bad it was.\n\n\"Not for weeks. She has to have surgery for the scarring. The thing ripped off half her nose.\"\n\n\"Oh, that's terrible.\" It was. Plastic surgery might make her even prettier. I wanted Jennifer to know what it meant to be ugly. \"Let me know if there's anything else I can do.\"\n\n\"I will. Everyone says you saved her life.\"\n\nI winced. \"Well, anything for a teammate.\"\n\n\"It's actually good to hear your voice, Violet.\"\n\n\"Is it? Then, maybe you'd want to\u2014I don't know\u2014meet at school to talk some more tomorrow.\"\n\n\"That would be great. I usually sit with Jennifer at lunch.\"\n\n\"I know.\" How I knew.\n\n\"We could sit together until she gets back.\"\n\n\"And talk about birds. Get your mind off things.\"\n\nI hung up and went to bed happy, Grimalkin purring at my feet. Jennifer would be gone for weeks. Weeks! I had Greg all to myself. And now, I wasn't the frizzy-haired, hook-nosed loser I'd been. I was beautiful, talented, confident\u2014at least on the outside. And, on the inside, I was the girl he'd liked all along, the smart girl. At least, smarter than Jennifer.\n\nThe next few weeks were the happiest of my life. Greg and I ate lunch together, studied together, I drove him to school. Even Jennifer's friends were nice to me. They'd seen me pull the dog off her. At first, Greg and I mostly talked about Jennifer, how amazing she was, but soon, we branched off into less-annoying topics, subjects like life, college (we both wanted to be environmental lawyers), current events, subjects an idiot like Jennifer couldn't possibly talk to him about.\n\nWe planned to see the movie _Dead Poets Society,_ which was playing at the mall. \"It wouldn't be a date,\" I told Greg. \"We could just go as friends.\"\n\n\"I guess it's okay. Jennifer didn't want to go to that movie anyway. She said it looked stupid.\"\n\n_Jennifer's stupid._ But I didn't say it. I didn't want Greg mad at me. I wished there was some magic I could work to make Greg see how awful Jennifer was, how we were meant to be together. I couldn't use magic to make bad things happen to people, at least not directly. But what about making someone fall in love with me?\n\nI stopped by Kendra's house the day of our movie non-date. School was out now, and Greg was visiting Jennifer. I put the question to Kendra.\n\n\"Tell me again why I can't cast a spell to make Greg love me?\"\n\nKendra winced. She hated the word _spell_. Said it smacked of mystical books and the silly TV series _Bewitched_ , about a housewife who made magic by wiggling her nose. Magic, she said, came from deep within. It was a matter of harnessing it, rather than learning it.\n\n\"You can't make someone fall in love with you. Love comes from within too.\" She reached out her hand, an awkward gesture for her, and touched my shoulder. \"Unfortunately, you had several opportunities to work your magic, so to speak, with Greg. It hasn't worked.\"\n\n\"It's so unfair.\" I bit my cuticle. \"I have magic powers. I should be able to have anything I want. But this is the only thing I ever wanted.\"\n\n\"Is it really? The only thing?\"\n\nI thought about it, shredding my cuticle as I did. Of course it wasn't the _only_ thing. But Greg was the main thing. Had I gotten him easily, maybe I'd be satisfied, but, as it was, I wanted more. I wanted to be beautiful, more beautiful than Jennifer, than everybody. I was. And powerful. I was that too. But that wasn't enough, or hadn't been. I was so sick of people making fun of me that now I wanted to be better than everyone, at everything. And obliterate my enemies. \"Okay, maybe he's not _all_ I want, but he's the main thing. That and world domination.\" I waited for Kendra to laugh, but she didn't. \"But without Greg, I'll never be happy.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear.\" Kendra pressed her finger to her brow.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I'm just worried you'll never be happy.\"\n\nI took another bite of my cuticle. This time, it bled, but I immediately stopped it.\n\nGreat. I could save money on Band-Aids. What an astounding ability I had.\n\nGreg and I did go to the movie, though, which was about this boarding school teacher who encourages his repressed students to pursue their dreams, write poetry, seize the day. Then, one boy kills himself because he wants to be an actor, but his parents don't see it that way. Of course, the teacher gets fired.\n\n\"So that was a downer,\" I said to Greg as we walked through the mall afterward. \"The message is that if you write poetry and think for yourself, you end up either dead or so beaten down you won't dare have an original thought again.\"\n\nGreg laughed. \"You're right. But most of us don't have parents as bad as that guy's.\"\n\n\"Speak for yourself,\" I muttered.\n\n\"I think the real theme was _carpe diem,_ \" Greg said.\n\nIt was late, and the mall was nearly empty. I could hear, even feel our footsteps on the white marble floor. We were completely in step, just like when we were kids. I wanted to grab Greg's hand.\n\n_Carpe diem. Seize the day._\n\nI didn't grab it. I was too scared he wouldn't take it. Still, our arms brushed as we walked.\n\n\"Do you believe that?\" I asked. \"Seize the day? Do what you want because each day might be your last.\"\n\n\"I do. Don't you?\" He stopped walking to look at me. I could see us, reflected in the mall doors, him, tall and dark, me smaller, my hair flowing down my back. We belonged together.\n\nI shook my head. \"Guess I'm more cautious.\" Still I wondered how it would be to seize the day, do what I wanted. If I grabbed Greg now and kissed him, would he kiss me back? I looked up at him. His eyes met mine. It would be so easy to do that.\n\n\"You're so different than you used to be,\" he said. \"It kind of shows how things can change. One day, you were this ugly duckling. Sorry. But look at you now\u2014a swan.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" He would kiss me back. He would.\n\n\"Or what happened to Jennifer.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I wanted to go back to talking about me, about how I was a swan.\n\n\"That dog could have killed her. And then, she'd have been gone, and she'd never have known how I felt about her. That accident inspired me. You saved her for me.\"\n\n___Saved her? For you? You've got to be kidding!_\n\n\"Can I show you something? I've been carrying it around because I'm afraid I'll lose it.\"\n\nAnd then before I could say no, no, I don't want to see anything that has to do with Jennifer, he pulled something from his pocket, a red velvet box, and held it near my face.\n\nI backed away. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"It's a promise ring.\" He opened it. There was a silver ring with a heart and the tiniest diamond chip known to mankind in it.\n\n\"Promise? Promise what?\" I felt like my legs might buckle under me, like I'd be on the floor.\n\n\"That we'll get married someday.\"\n\n\"Married? You and Jennifer?\" I felt the bile coming up in my throat. I couldn't speak anymore.\n\nGreg was nodding, grinning like an evil doll in a horror movie. \"I'm giving it to her when she comes back to school. Unless you think I should seize the day and give it to her sooner.\"\n\n\"I . . . I . . .\" I tried to speak but could only choke. I caught sight of myself again in the mall doors. I was so beautiful, so beautiful, so . . . so what? What good was it? It was everything I'd dreamed of, and it wasn't enough.\n\nSuddenly the glass door shattered, blowing out like a bomb had hit it.\n\n\"Whoa!\" Greg jumped back. \"What happened? It didn't hit you, did it?\"\n\nBut it wasn't like he threw his body over it to save me.\n\n\"N-no.\" I saw myself in another door. Then that shattered too. My magic was ungoverned, out of control, getting away from me, and I knew I had to stop before Greg realized it was me, then realized I'd hurt Jennifer. I veered toward the one open door, looking down, half closing my eyes so as not to see myself, and I ran. Beside me, Greg was shouting, \"Whoa! Whoa, watch out! What is that?\" He put his arm around me, shielding me, and I wished I could pretend he was doing it out of love. But I knew much better. We ran through the parking lot. I dared look up, only to see myself in a car's windshield. It, too, shattered, but I hoped Greg didn't notice. I had to get out, get home, get away.\n\nFinally, closing my eyes entirely, I got to my car. I told Greg I thought there was glass in my eye, so he drove us home, me seeing nothing. Thankfully, talk about flying glass at the mall drowned out any thought about talking about Jennifer. Jennifer. Jennifer. I excused my looking down by crying. From the shock of it, I told Greg. I didn't have to pretend. My tears were real.\n\nI should have let her die. I had every chance, but I'd stopped it. Why? Why? What had Jennifer ever done but torment me? Why was I such an idiot?\n\nI wouldn't make that mistake again.\n\nI got home, finally, and groped my way to my bedroom, trying to avoid my mirrored closet door, the giant frame mirror over my dresser. I didn't wash my face or brush my teeth, fearing to enter the bathroom.\n\nBut when I stumbled to bed, something cold and hard touched my flesh.\n\nA mirror. The mirror. Kendra's same mirror she had given me the first day. How was it here?\n\nI stared into it. It didn't shatter. \"Kendra?\"\n\nThus summoned, Kendra appeared. She could see me too, for she stared at me. \"My darling, what's wrong?\"\n\n\"It's useless! He'll never love me! He _loves_ Jennifer! He wants to marry her. Marry! They're seventeen! He's supposed to go to college and be a football star. And my magic is all out of whack. I broke stuff.\"\n\nIn the mirror, Kendra nodded, but her eyes narrowed. \"Were you at Cutler Ridge Mall?\"\n\n\"Yes. How did you know?\"\n\n\"The news reported a bombing, broken glass everywhere. But they couldn't find the bomb.\"\n\n\"That was me.\" I was shaking, thinking about it. \"I couldn't stop it. I don't know if I can stop it now. I'm afraid to look at anything.\"\n\n\"My darling.\" Kendra's face held all the sympathy I never got from anyone else. \"When witches are unhappy, they generally make their displeasure known. It's unfortunate you were in such a public place, but you must calm yourself now.\"\n\n\"So what do I do?\"\n\n\"Try to think about someone else. Try to be happy. Concentrate on other things. Your studies. You're such a smart, wonderful girl. Find someone else. Forget him. Let him go.\"\n\nShe was saying all the things my mother should have said, if she hadn't sucked. Yet it seemed like she was speaking a foreign language. \"Forget Greg? I can't. I love him, only him.\"\n\n\"He doesn't love you. People get over failed romance all the time.\"\n\n\"No, never. Don't you understand? Everyone hates me. _Everyone._ They won't even do a dance routine if I choreograph it. They hate me, all of them. I even hate myself. I'm worthless. Worthless. Greg is the only one who ever cared for me, ever saw anything in me but ugliness.\"\n\n\"Shh.\" Kendra put a finger to her lips. \"That's not true. I love you, Violet. You are my true daughter. And you'll find someone else, someone better. Someone who will love you.\"\n\nI nodded, but I knew I wouldn't, couldn't. I would try to be happy, but the only way I could be was by getting Greg, by plotting Jennifer's utter destruction. I'd missed one opportunity. I wouldn't miss it again. Not just a dog bite, something worse.\n\nI'd have Greg\u2014someday\u2014if it took everything I had.\n\n\"Kendra?\" I asked. \"Am I the fairest one of all?\"\n\n\"Aw, honey, of course you are. Please get some sleep. It will be better. You'll meet someone else, someone who appreciates you as he never did.\"\n\nI nodded. \"Okay.\"\n\nAnd then, she disappeared, and I was looking at my own face.\n\nI was so beautiful.\n\n# PART 2\n\n# _Celine_\n\n# _(The Present)_\n\n#\n\n#\n\nWhen I was eight, my Girl Scout troop went to a sleepover at the zoo. My mom, our leader, had agreed to do it even though animals terrified her\u2014as long as the troop sold enough cookies to cover the cost. I think Mom thought it was a safe bet. We were rich, suburban kids who didn't have to work for much. But the thing is, everyone wants cookies. We figured if we each sold 150 boxes, we'd have enough for the sleepover _and_ matching leopard-print bandannas. Then we nagged our moms to take us door to door or hold booths in front of Publix supermarket so we could make our goal.\n\nMom seemed way less excited than scout leaders are supposed to be when she announced we'd made it. I didn't blame her. She was really scared of animals, and with good reason. When she was in high school, she was attacked by a dog that had bitten her face and arms so badly she needed plastic surgery. After that, she freaked at every barking dog. More than one had come after her. So, of course, we'd had no pets. It wasn't just dogs that stalked her. A few times, birds had attacked her, and once, when we were bike riding, a squirrel jumped right into her basket, ran up her arm, and grabbed her face. She'd crashed, and I crashed into her. She shook for an hour. So my mother's fears weren't unreasonable. But I really wanted to do the sleepover, so she agreed. Besides, the zoo animals were in cages.\n\nThat night, we got to the zoo at six. After a dinner of hot dogs, Cool Ranch Doritos, and pink lemonade (I remember all the details because of what happened after), we went on a special after-hours tour. One of the docents, a strikingly beautiful woman with bright auburn hair, took us first to the reptile house. Mom clutched my hand as we watched the savannah monitor show its pointed teeth. We walked on. Quickly. Next were the wild animals who'd been brought in for the night. The lion roared. Beside me, I felt Mom stiffen. I hugged her in solidarity.\n\n\"It's okay, hon,\" said our tour guide, assuming I was the baby who was scared. \"The cage is made of steel and has two separate doors. He's not getting out.\"\n\nMy mother laughed. \"I know. I'm being silly.\"\n\n\"Not at all. Lions are powerful animals. Better to fear too much than too little.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\" Mom squinted at the woman. \"You . . . you look so familiar. I wonder if we went to high school together.\" She touched the scar on her arm. \"But no, you'd be too young. You can't be more than twenty-five.\"\n\nThe docent nodded. \"I get that a lot. I seem to look like a lot of people.\"\n\nWe started to walk back to our sleeping quarters. The zoo at night was an eerie place, full of strange cries and creeping shadows. Above us, the canopied trees seemed to move, even though there was no breeze. Then, I saw a shape.\n\n\"Look! A monkey!\"\n\nIt wasn't in one of the trees contained in a cage. Instead, it was in a ficus tree growing near the path.\n\nAll the girls looked up, picking it out from the shadows. \"Aww, how cute,\" my friend Laurel said.\n\n\"Is it supposed to be out here?\" Mom said. \"It's not in a cage. Did it get out?\"\n\n\"Oh, Mom, it's just a little monkey.\" I heard her heavy breathing.\n\nAnd just as I said, \"little monkey,\" the creature let out a high-pitched shriek, swung down from the lower branch, then launched itself right at my mother. I stepped in front of it too late. It was on her.\n\nFrom a distance, in the dark, it had seemed like a tiny monkey. Close up, it was way bigger, the size of a cocker spaniel, with long, powerful arms. My mother crumpled to the ground, and the monkey was grabbing her hair, pulling it over and over so her head was slamming, slamming, slamming on the pavement. The monkey sunk its teeth into her cheek, her chin. I screamed. I screamed and was kicking at it, over and over, get it off my mother, away from her! My mother must have screamed too, but all I could hear were my own shrieks, see the dark blur of my fellow troop members running for cover, the docent calling for help on her radio, my mother shielding her face, the monkey biting her arms, her legs. I fell backward from kicking, but the monkey was still on my mother, biting her.\n\nFinally, someone came. They shot the monkey with a dart gun and pulled it off her. It was too late.\n\nMy mother was airlifted to the hospital, but the damage was too great. After a few days in ICU, they took her off life support.\n\nMy mother was dead.\n\n\"It was all my fault,\" I kept saying at her wake. Everyone was there, saying things I couldn't hear, didn't want to hear. My mother was dead. My mother was gone.\n\nI couldn't even see her. It was a wake, not a viewing. The funeral home hadn't been able to fix her up enough to show. Despite her scars, my mother had been a beautiful woman. She'd taken great pride in her looks. She wouldn't have wanted anyone to see her looking less than her best.\n\n\"Of course it wasn't your fault,\" a woman's voice said above me.\n\nI looked up to see an angel's face with bright blue, almost violet, eyes; fringed, long black lashes; all framed by wavy, auburn hair. I recognized her. The docent from the zoo.\n\n\"If anything,\" she said, \"it's mine.\" She turned to my father. \"I've been over and over it in my head, so many times, reliving it\u2014how the monkey got out, how I should have seen it first, taken you girls to shelter. Warned her.\" As she spoke, a tear coursed down her face. She wiped it away, all the while staring at Dad.\n\n\"Do I know you?\" he asked. \"You look so familiar.\"\n\nMy mother had said the same thing.\n\n\"I volunteer at the zoo,\" the docent said. \"I took the girls around . . . that night.\"\n\nDad shook his head. \"It was the fault of the zoo management or whoever should have locked that beast in a cage. If volunteers were responsible for safety, that is a sad state of affairs. Poor Jennifer was terrified of animals, and now . . .\"\n\n\"I am so sorry,\" said the docent.\n\nDad's eyes glistened. He looked at the woman again. \"Really, though. You look so familiar.\"\n\nThe docent wiped another tear. \"Don't you remember me, Greg? We went to school together. Violet Appel.\"\n\n\"Violet?\" My father stepped closer, staring at her. \"Violet, it's been so long.\"\n\nI could barely keep my eyes off her myself. I hadn't seen her that well that night at the zoo.\n\nMy mother had been beautiful, and people said I was too. But this woman, Violet, was different. She was stunning. Like, I actually felt stunned to look at her, like electric shock.\n\nMy father took her hand and sobbed. \"Violet!\"\n\n\"There, there, it will be okay, Greg,\" she said.\n\nThey stood there a long time, Violet holding his hand, my father crying, until finally, she said, \"I should let you greet the others.\"\n\nDad nodded. \"I'm so glad to see you, Violet. Maybe we can talk later.\"\n\n\"Of course, Greg.\" Violet moved away. \"I've missed you.\"\n\nDad said to me, \"Violet was my best friend in elementary school. Such a nice girl. I haven't seen her in years.\"\n\nAt the time, I didn't think about it, but now I realize that Violet had told my mother she didn't know her. She'd obviously lied.\n\nAfter the wake, she was back. She seemed to really want to talk to Dad. \"After what happened, I quit volunteering at the zoo. I couldn't . . . I couldn't go back.\" She shuddered a little. \"But I've loved animals since we made those birdhouses with your father.\" She touched Dad's hand.\n\nDad smiled. \"I remember that. Dad was asking about you last time I saw him. He remembers all that old stuff.\"\n\n\"Grandpa made birdhouses?\" Grandpa didn't remember my name, usually.\n\nViolet knelt beside me. She smelled like roses. \"Sweet child. Has your father never made a birdhouse with you?\"\n\nDad said, \"Jennifer was terrified of animals since the dog attack in high school\u2014you remember. She avoided them, and yet, they couldn't seem to stay away from her. Cats peed on her shoes. A raccoon lived on her car for a month and wouldn't leave when shooed. We had to sell the car. She had a job at an ad agency downtown, but she was forced to quit when pigeons ganged up on her on the street. Now this . . .\" His face broke, and he began to sob. \"I should have taken the troop myself! I should never have let her near the zoo.\"\n\nViolet embraced him, rocking him back and forth while he sobbed in her arms. When I think about it now, it was weird, like he was a little kid. But at the time, it seemed so perfectly comforting that I hugged both of them. She said, \"Don't blame yourself, Greg. There's no way you could have known.\"\n\nWe stood there, crying, the three of us, and somehow, Violet's presence made it better, made it almost right. It was like magic.\n\nTwo days after the funeral, Violet arrived with an animal carrier. From it, she drew a small ball of fur, orange and white. \"Someone left her in my yard. My cat was my fondest friend when I was a lonely teenager, so I thought a kitten might help. A cat always helps.\"\n\nI couldn't believe anyone as beautiful as her had ever been lonely.\n\nShe placed the kitten on the ground. I reached out, but she started to run away from me. Violet touched its back, and suddenly it switched direction and gamboled toward me.\n\n\"I asked your dad if you could have it,\" she said.\n\n\"Really?\" The kitten pawed at my leg. I scooped it up, and it began to purr, like the small motorboats we used to rent on vacation at the lake.\n\n\"Really,\" my father said from behind me. \"A child should have a pet.\"\n\nThat made me feel bad. The reason we hadn't had a pet was because of my mother, her fears. Now, I could have a cat. I'd rather have had my mother. But the kitten curled itself into a ball on my lap. It felt so warm.\n\n\"She likes you,\" Violet said, \"but who wouldn't like a sweet, pretty girl like you?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm not pretty,\" I said, though I'd been hearing it all my life. In fact, I thought I was strange-looking, with jet-black hair and white skin like my father's, though I had my mother's blue eyes. I hated when people said I was beautiful because it was always something like what Violet had said, something that implied I should have no problems because of my looks.\n\nObviously, that wasn't true. If anything, my looks made people like me less. The first day of kindergarten, the kids had just stood around, staring at me. But then no one asked me over to their houses or to sit together at lunch. Mom had always said they were scared of me. That was why she'd volunteered to be the scout leader, so she could help me make friends. Once people got to know me, they forgot about my looks\u2014sometimes.\n\nBut I wanted Violet to like me, so I didn't say any of this. The kitten nuzzled my face. Violet stood real close to Dad, smiling up at him.\n\n\"Your modesty makes you all the more beautiful,\" she said. \"Maybe one day, you can come over and see my cat. I'll make you dinner too. I'm a good cook.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" I hugged the little cat.\n\n\"We'll make a date.\" Dad touched Violet's shoulder. \"Thank you.\"\n\nI named the kitten Sapphire for her blue eyes, and the next week, we had dinner at Violet's house. She made what she called \"gourmet\" mac and cheese, with some kind of weird smoked cheese in it and told stories about working as a lawyer for the US Attorney's office, putting criminals away in jail. I played with her cat, whose name was Grimalkin.\n\nIn the next few months, we spent more and more time with Violet until we were seeing her every day. I didn't mind. Violet had two passions, animals and her beauty routine, so some weekends, we went on nature walks, like in the Everglades, seeing alligators and birds and once, a panther. Other times, she did my hair so easily it seemed like magic, or we went for mani-pedis, stuff I'd done with Mom. Of course, Violet wasn't my mom, but having her around made it a little easier. And Dad was a lot less sad. I noticed the photos of my mother went from the living room to his bedroom. Then, one day, they disappeared. I found a big photo of the three of us in his closet. I took it out and put it under my bed, but I didn't let either Dad or Violet see it.\n\nA year later, they got married. I wanted to be a flower girl in the wedding, but Dad said it wouldn't be formal, and it had to be small. \"I'm a widower. It's only been a year since your mom died. We don't want a public wedding.\"\n\n\"Yes, no fancy dress for me, but I've got my man.\" Violet leaned over and kissed my father on the mouth. I looked down. They kissed a lot. \"Besides, none of your dad's school friends liked me much.\"\n\n\"Why wouldn't they? Were they jealous because you were so beautiful?\"\n\nViolet looked at Dad and laughed. Then, she hugged me. \"Oh, my sweet girl, you crack me up.\"\n\nI didn't know what the joke was, but I laughed along anyway.\n\nI wanted Violet to love me. She was the only mother I had, after all.\n\n#\n\n#\n\n\"Can you guys stop making out?\" Violet was doing my hair for dance. At least, she was until my father came in. Then, she launched at him like a pumpkin in a catapult.\n\n\"We weren't making out. I'm just kissing my wife hello.\"\n\nI rolled my eyes. They were always kissing, and since Violet had my hair in her hand, it was getting tugged. \"I'm going to be late.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" Violet tore herself away from Dad and went back to brushing. \"Your hair's so pretty. Black as a crow.\"\n\n\"A crow?\" I wrinkled my nose. \"Crows are ugly.\"\n\n\"Have you ever really looked at a crow, Celine?\" Violet continued to brush my hair. I was eleven, old enough to do my own bun, but it was hard to tell Violet that. \"I mean, up close? They aren't completely black. In the light, you can see purple and green. They almost shimmer. And each feather is lined up perfectly with every other one. So beautiful.\"\n\n\"Why do you love crows so much?\"\n\n\"I love all birds. When I'm old, I mean to travel the world and see as many as I can. But crows and ravens will always be my favorite. It was because of a crow I met your father.\" She looked up at Dad. \"Remember?\"\n\n\"Of course. We rescued it on the playground. Some boys were throwing rocks at it, and Violet saved it.\"\n\n\"After that, we were always friends,\" Violet said.\n\nI detected a false note in her words. She and my father hadn't \"always\" been friends. She'd just showed up after my mother died. But there was no point in saying that, particularly when she had my hair in her hands. Besides, I loved Violet, and I liked birds too. Sometimes, we went for walks and counted how many different kinds we saw. \"Well, if you like crows, I'll like them too.\"\n\nShe hugged me for that, though her eyes were on Dad. Then, she put the last pins in and sprayed my bun. I always had the best hair in class.\n\nBut then, everything changed.\n\nI was thirteen when I had my first period. I had it at school, of course, because that's just how things go with me. And, when I went down to the clinic to get a pad, one of my friend's moms was there. \"Do you want me to call your dad?\" she asked.\n\n\"What? No! He'll get all weird. Call Violet if you have to call anyone.\"\n\nLaurel's mom got kind of an odd look on her face. \"You and Violet actually get along, huh?\"\n\n\"Yeah, she's nice. We're going bird-watching in Texas for spring break.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"Okay. I wish your mom were here. This is a day a mother and daughter should share. I can't believe it's been five years.\" She gazed at me. She and my mother had been best friends when they were kids. \"You look so much like your mom.\"\n\n\"You think so?\" I could barely remember her face. When I tried to picture her, I could only see the photo I still kept under my bed, her in the same pink dress, the same frozen smile. I couldn't remember the look and feel of her at all anymore. It was like the photograph had painted over my real memories of her. \"I have black hair like my dad.\"\n\n\"Yeah, but those big blue eyes, they're Jennifer's eyes.\"\n\nShe looked about to cry, so I said, \"It's all right.\" Because what else, really, was there to say? I just wanted out of there.\n\nFinally, she called Violet and shared the news. \"You can go back to class now,\" she said after.\n\nI got out of there as fast as I could.\n\nBut half an hour later, Violet was there, carrying dark jeans and checking me out of school.\n\n\"You didn't have to,\" I said. \"We're doing a lab in science. I sort of wanted to\u2014\"\n\n\"Science can wait. This is a special occasion for us girls.\"\n\nI shrugged. It was sort of weird that she and Dad hadn't had other kids, but it was better for me. So I guessed if I had to act like her daughter, it was worth it.\n\nShe took me to Marble Slab Creamery. We both got chocolate with Oreos mixed in, and as we paid, the college boy at the register looked me up and down. I turned away, blushing like I always did when guys stared at me. Later, when Dad got home, Violet made my favorite dinner (still the mac and cheese) and filled him in. \"Your little girl's becoming a woman.\"\n\nI squirmed when she said that, squirmed more when he said, \"A beautiful woman.\" With his hand, he turned my face toward him. \"Like your mother.\"\n\n\"She doesn't look like her.\" Violet touched my dad's face. \"She looks like you.\"\n\n\"More like Jenny,\" he said. \"My lord, Vi, she's even as beautiful as you.\"\n\nIt was only for a second, so I thought I imagined it. But, in that instant, I saw Violet's eyes turn from lavender to black as a crow's. Then they went back to normal.\n\nBut that couldn't have happened. She wasn't a witch or anything.\n\n\"Do you think so, Greg?\" Violet asked. \"Yes, I suppose she is, just as beautiful.\"\n\nShe, too, gazed at me, and I saw hatred behind her smile. From that day on, she never looked at me the same way again.\n\nAnd when we went to Texas over break, a red-footed booby swooped down and attacked my face.\n\n#\n\n#\n\n# _Sophomore Year_\n\nWhen I get on the bus, wearing my usual hoodie, army boots, and jeans a size too large, Whitney Jacobs stage-whispers that I look like a bag lady, but Alex Abercrombie does a Parisian pass, brushing his hand against my ass to get by me. I ignore them both. _Eyes on the prize._ Laurel's holding a seat for me. She's near the back, where we live, waving and generally looking more excited than anyone has the right to look at six-forty in the morning.\n\nI know why. And sure enough:\n\n\"Is your mom letting you go to the concert?\" she asks the instant I sit.\n\nThe concert! I let down my guard and do a little seat dance to let her know I'm excited too, then say, \"My wicked _step_ mother, if that's who you mean, isn't in on the decision. But my dad says yes as long as your mom's going.\"\n\n\"Well, of course. What did he think, a couple of fifteen-year-olds are going to hitch to Orlando?\"\n\n\"For Jonah Prince, I completely would.\"\n\n\"Can I get an 'amen'?\"\n\nAnd we squee in unison.\n\nWhitney and her mean girlfriends look back at us and roll their eyes. I smile.\n\n\"Jelly?\" Laurel says.\n\n\"Not of anyone who still says 'jelly.'\" Whitney turns away.\n\n\"Is 'jelly' not a thing anymore?\" Laurel whispers to me.\n\n\"Don't worry about it. She is such a hater.\" I pat Laurel's shoulder.\n\nJonah Prince, as everyone knows, is an incredibly gorgeous and gifted singer-songwriter. Previously the front man for the Boyz Band, he went out on his own when he noticed he was the only one with talent. And beautiful green eyes. And a hot British accent. I'm in love. Laurel and I host unofficial Jonah Prince pages on every social networking site I can think of, even Facebook, which only parents use.\n\nOkay, so I have no life. I study, hang with Laurel, and listen to Jonah. But I know that, when we go to his concert in Orlando (where we'll get front row floor seats because we're in his fan club and plan to spend the entire night before tickets go on sale on the Ticketmaster site, entering CAPTCHA codes so we can get tickets the very first second the presale begins\u2014and if that doesn't work, I'm spending a year's worth of babysitting money to buy them on StubHub), Jonah will pick me out from the crowd, his eyes attracted by the extraordinarily beautiful and artistic sign I'll make, and my total memorization of all his songs. He'll lead me onstage. I'll have the perfect outfit, of course, something that's actually figure flattering. Once there, he'll sing every song to only me, ignoring the boos of the other poor girls. I'll ask him to bring Laurel onstage to meet his drummer. After the concert, we'll talk for hours about the charity work he did in Haiti last year or the new songs he's composing. He'll ask me to come along on his tour, so I can get permanently away from my stepmother, who hates me.\n\nYeah, so it's a bit of a stretch. But it _has_ to happen. There has to be something really good coming to me, to make up for Violet.\n\nIn some cultures, like the Greeks and Turkish, they believe in the Evil Eye. It's the idea that, if someone envies you, bad things will happen. Since that fateful day when my father said I was as beautiful as Violet, I've become more beautiful (don't hate me\u2014I can't help it) and Violet's eyes have been seriously evil. Curling irons attack me, leaving scars. Tweezers rip out my eyelashes. Cleansers turn toxic and give me rashes. I avoid Violet\u2014and beauty products\u2014as much as possible. I wear no makeup, no hair spray. I don't get fake nails or even nice clothes. But people still stare at me. And Violet notices. And hates me for it.\n\n\"That's really trite,\" Laurel says, pointing to the chem notebook I'm studying for today's test. It has _J.P. 4-ever_ written on it in pink highlighter.\n\n\"Nothing about Jonah Prince is trite.\"\n\n\"Do you even know what _trite_ means?\"\n\n\"Yes, I do.\" The bus hits a bump, and I steady my notebook, covering the writing with my palm. \"But it probably makes us sound like nerds who use words like\"\u2014I lower my voice\u2014\"trite.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" she whispers, then giggles.\n\n\"Jonah is special. He writes his own songs and plays four instruments.\"\n\n\"Preaching to the choir. But my mom says he's just like Justin Bieber. Or someone named Bruce Springsteen, who was apparently famous when she was a teenager. Or the Beatles. Or Elvis. She says the names change, but the pathetic-ness of a teenage girl, scribbling initials of a guy she's never met, _will_ never meet, is always the same.\"\n\n\"Laurel, I love your mom. She's the closest thing I have to a mom, and she lets me call her Gennifer. Plus, she's letting us use her credit card to buy tickets.\"\n\n\"And driving us to Orlando,\" Laurel reminds me.\n\n\"And driving us to Orlando,\" I agree. \"Your mom is completely legit.\"\n\nLaurel laughs because she knows that's something her mom would say, trying to be cool. Laurel and I have been best friends since we were born a month apart fifteen years ago, to moms who were best friends. I'm told that, usually, when people's mothers want them to be friends, they inevitably end up hating each other. Laurel and I are the exception. At this point, she's kind of the only person I hang with, but Dad says it's better to have one good friend than ten bad ones. Violet sort of rolls her eyes when he says that, but it's true. Also, it's Laurel's house I hide in almost every weekend. Laurel's mom knows how weird Violet is, so she lets me sleep over. Without Laurel, I'd spend my weekends watching my dad and Violet suck face.\n\nStill, I say, \"But your mom's old, Laurel. She doesn't remember what it's like to be our age. When Jonah sings 'Beautiful but Deadly,' it's like we've already met, like he's looking into my soul.\"\n\nLaurel rolls her eyes. \"Yeah, I know. Being the most beautiful girl on the planet is hard for you.\"\n\nI look back at my chem notes. She knows I hate when people say I'm beautiful.\n\n\"Celine?\" Laurel tries to look over my notebook. She's super-cute with wavy, dark hair. She thinks she's fat, but she's not. She's curvy.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I say. \"I'm on a chemistry grind. I want to get an A so I can take AP chem next year. And this chapter is hard.\"\n\n\"All work and no play . . . ,\" she singsongs. \"You know, you could go for a normal guy. Bryce Richardson is into you, and he sort of looks like Jonah.\"\n\n\"Bryce Richardson isn't into me.\" Bryce is the hottest guy in our class\u2014and so knows it. I've seen him make fun of smaller guys, heavy girls, people with acne. I heard he wouldn't go out with one girl because her eyebrows were too close to her eyes. The guys with huge egos always like me. The right ones never do. I just want a smart, funny guy, but it's like guys my age are scared of me.\n\n\"I've seen Bryce looking at you,\" Laurel insists.\n\n\"I don't think so. You should go for him if you like him. I'm a little too sapiosexual for him.\"\n\n\"Sapiosexual? What's that? Sounds dirty.\"\n\n\"It means attracted to smart people. That kind of lets out Bryce Richardson.\"\n\nShe sighs. \"I'm giving up now. Next order of business: _Oliver!_ auditions are after school today.\"\n\nI sigh and close the notebook. \"Guess I'm done studying.\"\n\n\"You know you'll ace it.\"\n\nI don't want to talk about this any more than I want to talk about why I don't like Bryce Richardson. But Laurel's totally obsessed with theater. \"Why are we trying out for a musical again?\"\n\n\"Because I need to pay my dues in the chorus\u2014or, hopefully, a small but pivotal role\u2014so I can get a lead next year.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. I wasn't clear. Why am _I_ trying out? I have stage fright. And no talent.\"\n\n\"Because you're my best friend. And because, if I'm in the play and going to rehearsals every day, you can't hang out at my house to avoid Lady Violet\u2014unless you want my mom to teach you quilting. She'd completely love to do that.\"\n\nLaurel knows how important Violet avoidance is to me. At least, she gave me the heads-up on the play. She made me watch the movie version a few weeks ago, and it was pretty good. I guess being in the chorus wouldn't be horrible, as long as I can be in back where no one sees me.\n\n\"Okay,\" I say, \"so what do I have to do? Hopefully, not dance. Because I'm bad at that.\"\n\n\"Just a song. The drama teacher said 'Happy Birthday' __ was okay for chorus. They just want to see if you can sing on pitch.\"\n\n\"I think I remember all the words to 'Happy Birthday,'\" I tell Laurel, \"but we can go over them at lunch, just in case.\"\n\nLaurel rolls her eyes.\n\nWhen we get off the bus, Pierre Duval, a senior I don't know, is rolling by in his BMW convertible. \"Nice jeans, Celine,\" he yells. \"I'd love to get in them.\"\n\nI move to the other side of Laurel and try to ignore him.\n\n\"I am not trying for the role of Oliver,\" the guy onstage tells the drama teacher, Mrs. Connors. \"I may be little, but I'm not a kid. And I'm not cute.\"\n\nI've noticed this guy before, even though he's a year ahead of me. He was in my bio class last year. His name is Goose Guzman. He has dark, wavy hair, olive skin, a wicked sense of humor . . . and he's maybe four and a half feet tall. Is it wrong to say I want to meet him _because_ he's a little person? I figure he knows how it feels to be stared at for something beyond your control. Plus, he's funny\u2014as he's demonstrating at the moment.\n\n\"You're definitely not cute, Goose,\" Mrs. Connors says.\n\n\"Thank you.\" He half smiles, lifting only one side of his mouth. \"I'm also not a soprano.\" He makes his voice real deep when he says that.\n\n\"What part did you want to try for?\" Connors asks.\n\nGoose shrugs. \"Bill Sikes. Maybe Fagin.\"\n\nShe sighs. \"Bill Sikes is supposed to be a big, scary guy, Goose. I don't think\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, I see how it is. You're being heightist.\" Goose stands up very straight. \"Someday, when I'm the next Peter Dinklage or Warwick Davis, I'll tell people my high school drama teacher wouldn't cast me because I was too short.\"\n\nI chuckle. The guy is awesome.\n\nConnors rolls her eyes. \"I'm not refusing to cast you, just refusing to cast you as Bill Sikes. I won't consider you for Widow Corney either, if that's okay. Maybe you can be\u2014I mean try for\u2014the Artful Dodger.\"\n\nI remember from the movie that the Artful Dodger was a clever teenage pickpocket. Good call. Goose seems okay with that idea. At least, both sides of his mouth are now up. \"Fine. Either that or Fagin.\"\n\nMrs. Connors shrugs. \"Try for both. We'll see what happens. But who am I going to cast as Oliver? Most of the boys here are huge.\"\n\n\"Cast a girl,\" Goose says, \"a little, cute girl. Cast her.\"\n\nAnd he points right at me. I shrink down in my seat and try to think of some clever retort about how he doesn't seem to mind looks-based casting when he's not the one being stereotyped. But I realize it's probably not the same. Mrs. Connors looks at me and claps. \"Splendid idea. Anyone under five foot three\u2014except Goose\u2014will read for Oliver.\" She walks over to me. \"Can you sing 'Where Is Love?'\"\n\nI remember that song from the movie too. It perfectly described my life, a lonely child yearning for a lost mother.\n\nBut I don't want to be Oliver. I hate being the center of attention. This reminds me of second grade, when we did _Cinderella_ , and I really wanted to be a mouse. I got Cinderella. Not only did I have to memorize a ton of lines, but all the mouse girls hated me. I glare at Laurel, who's five eight, then say to Mrs. Connors, \"I only wanted chorus. I was going to sing 'Happy Birthday _._ '\"\n\nShe sighs audibly. \"Maybe just try?\"\n\nAnd, like the people pleaser I am, I say, \"I guess if you have the sheet music.\"\n\nTwenty minutes later, I'm standing onstage singing \"Where Is Love?\" Three other girls\u2014girls who actually wanted to be Oliver\u2014have already tried, and I could barely hear them. I could do that. No one's heard me sing before. I even avoid karaoke at birthday parties. I could waver off pitch on the high notes or sing so softly that no one could hear me. But when I get onstage, I start thinking about Mom, about how we used to bake cutout cookies at Christmas, and the Hannah Montana costume she made me for Halloween when I was five and thought Hannah Montana was cool. I remember all the crafts we did for Girl Scouts before that fateful day. And I start to sing about poor miserable Oliver, searching for his mother.\n\nHalfway through, I see Mrs. Connors wipe away a tear.\n\nWhen I finish the song, there's silence except a few sniffles. Sniffles!\n\nSomeone\u2014Goose\u2014starts to applaud and whistle. Thanks, dude. Then, everyone else applauds too.\n\nI go back to my seat, sort of hoping no one else tries out. Maybe I want the part after all. I wonder if this is how Jonah feels onstage. That would be something else we could bond about.\n\nNo one else tries out. Mrs. Connors starts with the girls who want to play Nancy. Which is all of them, except me. So after Laurel and a few others go, I head for the ladies' room.\n\n\"She thinks she's all that,\" I hear one of the other girls whisper as I walk by.\n\nSo unfair! I want to round on her and ask what, exactly, I did to make her say that. Of course I don't.\n\nWhen I come out, angrily, I pass Goose by the water fountain. \"Hey,\" he says.\n\n\"Hey,\" I reply.\n\nHe doesn't quite reach my shoulder. He has these chocolate brown puppy-dog eyes. \"You really moved me in there. My parents, they take in foster kids, and when you sang that song, it made me think of them, like, think of their _struggle._ Also, those are cool boots.\"\n\n\"Thanks. My mother died when I was little. The song reminded me of her.\" Why did I say that? I never talk about my mother. To anyone, let alone complete strangers. I hug my notebook to my chest. \"Um, I'm Celine.\"\n\nHe nods. \"I know. We had bio together last year. Goose.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah. I didn't think you remembered me. I was just a freshman.\" He was always at the center of a group of theater kids, making people laugh, while I sat off by myself and acted studious because I didn't know anyone in the class. All my friends took Earth-Space, the normal ninth grade class, but I love science, so I was ahead.\n\n\"You were the one who stood up for the sub that day,\" he says.\n\n\"Oh.\" Ugh. I look down, embarrassed. But since he's shorter than I am, down is right at his face. \"You remember that?\"\n\n\"It was memorable.\" He waggles his eyebrows, smiling that half smile again.\n\nYeah. One day in class, we had a sub. A new one, probably fresh out of college, and he stuttered. Badly. Since the class didn't have assigned seating, he had to call roll. Which was painful. It took maybe ten minutes to call thirty names, but it seemed way longer because people were being so rude. He searched for C-C-Columbo and G-G-Guzman with everyone laughing at him. Well, almost everyone. I actually specifically noticed that Goose wasn't. But he wasn't telling his friends to shut up either.\n\nWhen the sub reached the last name, Torres, his stutter made it come out Tit-tit-Torres, and everyone lost it, including the sub, who looked about to cry. It really bugs me when people make fun of someone who can't help it, and I didn't have any friends in that class anyway.\n\nSo I stood up. I had nothing to lose. I turned, faced the class, and just glared at everyone. And people actually stopped laughing, at least enough to hear me when I said, \"What are you, four years old? I'm sure it's soooo funny.\"\n\nWhich is the bravest thing I've done since trying to kick the monkey off Mom.\n\nAnd, for whatever reason, that shut everyone up. I knew people thought I was a bitch, but I sort of thought the same thing about them.\n\n\"It wasn't a big deal,\" I say. \"I just wanted to get started with biology. I'm going to study nursing, so I need good grades in science.\"\n\nGoose shakes his head like my dad does when he knows I'm lying. \"Don't downplay how brave you were, standing up to a roomful of people. You weren't the only person who was annoyed, just the only one who said anything. I didn't. You were like a warrior.\"\n\nI shrug and look away so he can't see my smile. Warrior. I like that.\n\n\"Serious badass. And you were brave just now, onstage.\"\n\nGlad to change the subject, I say, \" _That's_ true. I was terrified. I'm probably the one person here who doesn't want a lead. Hopefully, I won't get it.\" Now that it's over, I'm backing off the fact that I really sort of want it.\n\n\"Oh, you'll get it.\" He points to my notebook. \"So who's J.P.? Your boyfriend?\"\n\nHe's looking at the writing on my notebook.\n\nSo. Embarrassing. I try to sneak my fingers on top of the writing. \"Um, actually, he's a singer. Jonah Prince.\" I realize this does not make me sound like a warrior-type. \"It's dumb. My friend Laurel and I are getting tickets for his concert in Orlando this summer, so I was, you know, being a fangirl.\" I try not to look like someone who wrote three Tumblr posts about Jonah in the past week.\n\n\"Jonah Prince. That's the guy with the dance moves, right?\" Goose executes a Jonah Prince\u2013like spin. \"I've got some moves of my own.\"\n\nI stifle a giggle. He says, \"It's okay to laugh. I wasn't being serious.\"\n\n\"I guess we should go back in,\" I say. \"I think there's a dance audition.\" Which Laurel totally lied about.\n\n\"Wouldn't want to miss that. As you can tell, I'm a brilliant dancer.\"\n\nThat time, I do laugh. We head for the auditorium. Goose holds the door for me, then takes a seat with one of the better Nancy candidates. Another girl is onstage, singing \"As Long as He Needs Me\" off-key. I sit by Laurel.\n\nThe next day, when the cast list goes up, I'm Oliver. Goose Guzman is listed as the Artful Dodger, and he's hugging the girl he was sitting with, who got Nancy.\n\n\"I'm someone named Charlotte, and chorus,\" Laurel says. \"We'll never rehearse together.\" But I can tell she's thrilled she got a speaking part.\n\n\"Congratulations. Yes, we will. Oliver's in almost every scene.\" _Le sigh._ \"I'll be at your rehearsals and a bunch more. At least, it gets me away from Violet. And squee! Charlotte is a great part!\"\n\n\"The beginning of a brilliant theater career,\" Laurel agrees. And we jump up and down.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nThat night, at dinner, I tell Dad and Violet about the play.\n\nDespite a full-time lawyer job, Violet is an incredible cook. She scours food blogs and cookbooks and makes recipes that look like they should take hours, but still gets dinner on the table by seven. I think she stays up all night, chopping stuff. So, while normal kids are eating frozen breaded chicken breasts or even ramen, my family gets shrimp \u00e9touff\u00e9e with grits or, tonight, beef Wellington.\n\nGod, how I wish we could eat frozen chicken breasts sometimes. I love frozen chicken breasts with barbecue sauce on them. It's such a mom thing to make.\n\nI miss my mom.\n\nBut I eat everything in hopes that it will make Violet hate me less. It doesn't work.\n\n\"What's this in the middle?\" I ask, picking at my steak, which has been rolled in a crust like a pie and has something gray that looks like pureed mouse in the center.\n\n\"It's really good.\" Dad smiles at Violet and rubs her back. \"You're such a great cook. I don't know how you have time for this.\"\n\n\"We make time for those we love,\" she says.\n\nAnd then, he kisses her. On the lips. With tongue. Long pause while I throw up in my mouth.\n\n\"But what is it?\" I start to scrape it off, figuring they won't notice since they're so busy sucking face.\n\n\"Darling, don't do that. It's p\u00e2t\u00e9, okay? It's delicious. It's . . .\"\n\n_Liver! Do you know they force-feed the geese through a tube to make their livers more \"buttery\"?_ But I don't say it. I don't use any unnecessary words with Violet. I try to stuff the liver into my mouth to keep the words from coming out.\n\n\"Mmm. You're a great cook, Violet, um, Mom.\" In the beginning, she'd asked me to call her Mom, but it had seemed wrong. But, as years went by and everyone else had a mother, I changed my mind. It wasn't like Mom was going to know about it. And Violet was nice. Then.\n\n_Was nice._\n\nShe'd seemed happy about it. Dad said Violet had never had a good relationship with her own mother, a beautiful woman who'd joined us for Thanksgiving exactly once in the years Violet and Dad had been together, and who'd criticized the dry turkey (It was perfect, like everything Violet cooked) and left before dessert. I try to remember that when I get mad at Violet, but it's not easy.\n\n\"So I'm going to be in the school musical,\" I say, mostly to Dad. \" _Oliver!_ \"\n\n\"Oh, that's wonderful,\" Violet says. \"It's always so much fun to be in the chorus.\"\n\n\"Absolutely,\" Dad says. \"Violet did musicals in high school, and she was on the dance team.\" He's so pleased we have something in common.\n\n\"That's so cool,\" I say. \"I suck at dance. What were you in?\"\n\nViolet is actually momentarily happy, talking about herself. \"Senior year, we did _My Fair Lady_. I played the lead, Eliza. And junior year, I was Irene Molloy in _Hello, Dolly!_ \"\n\n\"She was breathtaking,\" Dad says, and takes a big bite of his liver-y steak. \"Just like this meal. I don't know how one woman can be so good at everything.\"\n\nAlmost like she's a witch.\n\n\"So breathtaking you never gave me a second look,\" Violet says. \"You were busy looking elsewhere.\"\n\nDad looks down at his plate. \"Mmm.\"\n\nI know I have to tell them. \"Actually, I'm not in the chorus. It's kind of a funny story. They were looking for a short girl to play Oliver.\"\n\n\"So you have the lead?\" Dad says. \"That's wonderful.\" Because he is just that clueless to how Violet will react.\n\nShe's already frowning. I say, \"It's not really the lead. All the girls wanted Nancy.\"\n\n\"Don't be an idiot,\" Violet snaps. \"The play's called _Oliver!_ not _Nancy!_ \"\n\n\"But I'm playing a boy. I'll have to wear my hair in a cap and look ugly.\" She should love that.\n\n\"Maybe you should cut it off, immerse yourself in the role of a London street urchin. When I played Eliza, I talked in a British accent twenty-four seven.\"\n\n_So weird._\n\n\"I don't think that's necessary,\" Dad jokes. \"Everyone can't be as dedicated as you, Violet.\"\n\nI can tell he's trying to help me, but it's still annoying that he always takes her side. I chomp on my beef Wellington. \"This is really incredible. You're a great cook, Violet.\" I chew real quick, like a rabbit, then take another bite. Dad and Violet are chewing too, which is better than tonguing each other.\n\n\"Anyway,\" I say when I've eaten enough to leave, \"I'll probably have rehearsal most days. Laurel's mom can drive me when Laurel's rehearsing too, but otherwise, maybe you can pick me up on your way home?\"\n\nI'm looking at Dad, but Violet says, \"Of course.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" I take one last bite. \"Mmm.\" Chewing.\n\n\"You must have a very beautiful voice,\" Violet says.\n\nI can hear the jealousy tinging her own voice. But why would she be jealous? She's beautiful and talented herself. Why hate me so much?\n\n_Because she's a total wack job._\n\n\"I think it was more that no one wanted to be Oliver. They tried to talk this one short boy into it, but he refused. And the few girls who tried couldn't sing the notes right.\" I take another bite even though I don't want it, then stand.\n\n\"I'm sure you're being modest.\" Violet's stopped eating, watching me.\n\nI sit back down, finish my bite, take another. When I've finished the whole gross, goose-torture experiment, I ask to be excused. \"I have a lot of homework.\"\n\nLater, when I go to wash my face, the soap feels hot on my cheek. I throw it aside and rinse off the water.\n\nAn ugly red welt spreads across my face. When I go to bed an hour later, it's even worse. I finally fall asleep with an ice pack pressed against my cheek. I put on Jonah's music to take my mind off it.\n\nThat night, I dream that Jonah and I are trapped in a burning building. He rescues me and takes me away, away from everything.\n\nThe next morning, my face is normal, like nothing happened. Before I catch the bus, I look for Violet. Dad's already left, and I want to remind her I'm sleeping over Laurel's. Violet's room is quiet. Maybe she left too.\n\nThe bedroom is carpeted, so my feet make no sound. A light shines from the bathroom. Violet's there. I can see her sitting at her vanity. In her hand, she holds a mirror, a big, round, silver one with a long handle. It's beautiful. There's a mirror over the sink, of course. Maybe she's trying to see the back of her hair. But no. As I stand there, staring, she speaks.\n\nTo the mirror.\n\n\"Mirror, mirror, in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?\"\n\n_Who's the most batshit crazy?_\n\nI bolt from the room, but not before I think I hear the mirror say something back.\n\n_Now who's crazy?_\n\n#\n\n#\n\nWe have a read-through after school that day. The second Laurel and I reach the auditorium, Goose runs to meet us.\n\n\"Please, suh, can I have some maw?\" he says in a British accent.\n\nI recognize Oliver's famous line and smile.\n\n\"Knew you'd be perfect for it,\" he says. \"I practically discovered you.\"\n\n\"And how did you know that?\" I try to give him some attitude\u2014I'm a drama geek now.\n\n\"All right, you caught me. I threw you under the bus so I didn't have to play a little kid. I hate playing kids.\"\n\nI nod. I get it. The same reason I hate playing princesses\u2014typecasting.\n\n\"Anyway,\" he says, \"enough chitchat. When Connors calls roll, say 'chop' instead of 'here,' okay? And pass it on.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Laurel says.\n\n\"Everyone's going to do it.\"\n\n\"That sounds like those bad antidrug videos they make us watch in homeroom.\" Laurel puts on a stoner voice. \"Hey, man, everyone's doing it.\"\n\n\"I'm sure this isn't going to end with one of us OD-ing on pot brownies.\" I look at Goose. \"Right?\"\n\n\"Right. So you're in?\" When we nod, he runs off to tell other people.\n\nWhen Mrs. Connors calls the first name, the guy playing Fagin answers, \"Chop.\" Mrs. Connors looks a little uncomfortable but calls the next name, Willow something. The girl playing Nancy answers, \"Chop.\" Then me, Bill Sikes, Mr. Bumble, all the way down to the chorus.\n\nAs the last name is called, all the older drama students yell, \"Timber!\" and pretend to fall on the floor like trees. They pull us uninitiated people down too. Mrs. Connors rolls her eyes and looks right at Goose. He grins at her, and she starts laughing too.\n\nAfter the read-through (during which my Cockney accent is roundly ridiculed in case I was getting too full of myself), Goose comes up to me again. \"How's J.P.?\"\n\n\"Still unaware of my existence,\" I say. _And my identity as his future bride._\n\n\"I heard one of his songs on the radio last night.\"\n\n\"Oh, really?\" I hold my breath. Guys just looove to say that Jonah sings like a girl. Obviously, they're jealous, but it's still annoying.\n\nBut Goose says, \"That song, 'Beautiful but Deadly,' it's pretty scathing social commentary about society's attitudes about appearance. I wasn't expecting that.\"\n\n\"Yes! Exactly! Most people don't get that. At least, most guys.\" Is he making fun of me?\n\n\"Guys like to hate on rock stars because they get all the girls. Me, I'm more confident in myself.\"\n\n\"I can see that.\" I smile. \"You should go to his concert. Lots of girls to choose from.\"\n\n\"I'd probably get trampled by hundreds of screaming women. Not a bad way to go, though.\"\n\nLaurel interrupts. \"My mom's here. You ready?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" To Goose, I say, \"Concert tickets go on sale tomorrow. You'd probably be the only guy there. Big advantage.\"\n\n\"Good tip. By the way, if you need help with your accent\u2014not that it's bad or anything\u2014you could come over after school. My mom likes this British soap called _EastEnders_ , and sometimes, we all speak in Cockney at dinner, just for fun.\"\n\n\"That _does_ sound fun.\" A lot more fun than watching my parents make out. \"I may take you up on that.\" Even though he obviously thinks my accent is bad.\n\n\"He's really nice,\" I tell Laurel as we leave.\n\n\"OMG,\" Laurel says. \"You didn't actually buy that stuff he said about J.P. Guys do not listen to Jonah Prince. He's either making fun of you, or he's a total horndog and using Jonah to flirt. Like he'd be your type.\"\n\nI guess she means because I'm pretty and he's short. Because, apparently, being beautiful automatically makes a person shallow. Like Violet.\n\n\"I don't know that I have a type.\" I don't like what Laurel is implying. Plus, it seems like she's judging Goose by his looks as much as people judge me by mine. I don't like to think that's true so I say, \"Besides, I think he's dating Willow.\"\n\nGoose has stopped to wait for her. I go back to him. \"Say, Goose, what was your favorite part of the song you listened to?\"\n\nHe thinks a second. \"There were lots of parts I liked.\"\n\nLaurel's nodding like, _sure._\n\n\"Well, what was one part?\" I ask, testing him, hoping Laurel's not right.\n\nHe thinks another second, then starts to sing:\n\nIf I could see you through your eyes;\n\nAnd you could see me through mine;\n\nThe world would change for the better.\n\nOnly then could we feel love divine.\n\nHis voice is strong and mellow. He looks away as he sings, like he's suddenly shy about it. For a second, it's like Jonah's there, singing to me.\n\nWhen he finishes, we just stand there, silent. Then he coughs. \"I don't think I remember any more of the words\u2014but I remember I liked it!\"\n\nI laughed. \"It's okay. That's my favorite part too.\"\n\nWillow\/Nancy comes up to us. \"I didn't know you were such a Jonah Prince fan.\"\n\n\"I'm full of surprises,\" Goose says. \"You ready?\"\n\n\"I am,\" she says. \"My mom says it's fine if I come over on a school night, since I told her it was to watch _EastEnders_ for the play.\"\n\n\"Great.\" He offers her his hand. \"Your chariot awaits.\"\n\nWillow leans in and kisses him. Then they walk off together. I give Laurel a look, like, _See?_ because Goose and Willow are obviously a couple. She's also tall, at least six inches taller than I am, so they make an interesting one.\n\n\"See you guys Monday,\" I say.\n\n\"Have fun buying tickets,\" Goose says.\n\nWhen I get to Laurel's mom's car, I text my dad to remind him I'm staying over. He doesn't reply. He doesn't care, of course, since it will give him more time to stay with his beloved, completely insane Violet.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nOur fan club membership, plus incredible persistence on four different devices, gets us floor seats! After that, we get every calendar we can find (wall, cell phone, the agenda books they give us at school\u2014the ones with inspirational quotes like, \"If you reach for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars\"\u2014which isn't even accurate) and write countdowns on them. We start a series for Tumblr and Instagram too. One hundred thirteen days exactly. We plan to cross off each day together, to share the anticipation.\n\nWe sit at the kitchen table, and while Laurel's mom makes us eggs, plan the entire day out. \"What should we wear?\" I ask.\n\n\"We could get T-shirts.\"\n\n\"But then we'll look like everyone else.\"\n\n\"I know! I know!\" Laurel starts jumping up and down in her seat. She's so cute. \"We could _make_ T-shirts. That would really get his attention.\"\n\nI try not to sigh. My fantasy of meeting my future husband does not involve looking like a screaming fangirl in a shirt that says _Waiting for My Handsome Prince_ in glitter. I read once that Elvis Presley fell in love with his wife because she didn't think he was that big a deal. Her parents even threatened not to let her see him anymore when she broke curfew. Talk about hard to get. It's bad enough my only shot at meeting Jonah is at a concert. I have no idea how I'll get him to notice me, short of a miracle where his eyes meet mine across a crowded basketball arena, and he just _knows._ Still, I plan on leaving in his private limo. It's destiny. I believe in destiny, so why not?\n\n\"T-shirts are unflattering,\" I tell Laurel. \"We should be different, rock some really fabulous outfits. We have months to plan and budget.\"\n\n\"Oh, okay.\" She looks sort of surprised. I don't usually show much interest in fashion. \"So you're going to buy clothes that fit and stuff?\"\n\n\"Yes. Okay. Hey, we could make signs. You're great at that artsy stuff.\" Signs are part of my master plan to get him to notice me. I had this idea about putting a line from the poem \"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,\" which I read is Jonah's favorite poem. How cool is it that he has a favorite poem? I thought about putting \"Dare to eat a peach,\" which is about taking chances. Or \"Dare disturb the universe,\" which is about not being afraid to be controversial. No one else would know what it meant, just Jonah. He'd get that I'm more than a fangirl\u2014I'm his soul mate. It would be like secret code. I decided not to tell Laurel that yet in case\u2014you know\u2014she thinks I'm crazy. Maybe I'm a little crazy, but you can't win if you don't try.\n\nOver breakfast, while Mrs. Mendez reads the newspaper, we discuss colors. \"Jonah's favorite color is purple,\" Laurel says, \"so we should use purple poster board.\"\n\n\"Won't everyone use purple because it's his favorite color?\"\n\n\"Pink and purple?\" Laurel amends.\n\nI guess peach would be a bit much. I'm not even sure if they make peach poster board. Orange isn't the same. \"Dare to eat a peach\" is probably too weird anyway.\n\nWe decide to make two signs.\n\n\"What will yours say?\" Laurel asks.\n\nSuddenly embarrassed, I say, \"I'm not sure yet. Maybe we shouldn't make it right away. It might get ruined.\"\n\nLaurel nods. \"The glitter will fall off.\"\n\n\"Last time I used glitter for a school project, Violet's lame-o cat, Grimalkin, rubbed against it, then licked herself. She yakked up glitter all over my bed, and all Violet cared about was whether the cat was okay.\"\n\n\"Grimalkin?\" Laurel's mom looks up from the paper. \"She still has that cat?\"\n\n\"As long as I've known her, I guess.\"\n\n\"She used to talk about that cat in high school,\" Laurel's mom says. \"I remember the weird name.\"\n\nI forgot that Laurel's mom had known Violet in school. But that was a long time ago. I remember Dad had his twenty-year reunion a few years ago. So unless Violet got the cat on the last day of high school, it would be even older than that. \"It must be a different cat. Cats don't live that long, do they?\"\n\n\"Probably not. It was a white cat, I remember, solid white. She had a picture of it in her locker. We thought that was so . . .\" Her voice trails off.\n\n\"You can say it. So weird.\" Violet's cat, Grimalkin, is white. It doesn't seem that old at all, though. \"Maybe she just gives all her cats the same name, like Lisa on _The Simpsons._ \" Violet is exactly that weird.\n\n\"Let's make the posters here,\" Laurel suggests. \"That way, Grimalkin Five won't eat the glitter.\"\n\nI giggle. I know mine will be purple and gold, colors of royalty. But I'll wear peach to stand out from the throngs of girls wearing purple.\n\nSunday afternoon, Dad shows up at Laurel's house, unannounced. I gather my belongings . . . slowly, and come to the door when Mrs. Mendez calls my name for the third time.\n\n\"Hey,\" he says when I'm in the car. \"We missed you.\"\n\n\"Really? I thought you and Violet liked having alone time. It gives you a chance to make out. Constantly.\" Since Violet stopped liking me, it seems like my dad and I never do anything together, so this was one of the few chances I had to talk to him alone.\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean?\"\n\n\"It means no one's parents do that. It's super-weird and makes me uncomfortable.\"\n\n\"I don't think that's true.\" His arm sort of flexes, holding the wheel.\n\n\"Did you see how mad she was that I got the lead in the play? She practically burst into flames when I told her. She's never happy when anything good happens to me.\"\n\n\"Hey, wait, what's bringing this on?\"\n\n\"She hates me. She's jealous. Or I remind her of Mom.\"\n\n\"That's crazy. You look much more like me.\"\n\nHis answer is so immediate that I know he thought about it before. I decide to ask him the question I've been wondering about.\n\n\"Why didn't you marry her in the first place? Why did you choose Mom?\"\n\nHe brakes to avoid a squirrel that runs in front of our car. I pitch forward. Silence. Or as silent as it can get in our neighborhood with a lawn mower going, a small dog yapping its head off, all the tranquil joys of suburbia.\n\nFinally, he says, \"Believe me, that's a sore spot for Violet.\"\n\n\"I bet it is.\" It's like I thought. She hated my mother for taking Dad. And that's why she hates me.\n\n\"I'm afraid I wasn't very nice to her. We were friends, always together, and then, one day, I just . . . stopped. I knew Violet had a crush on me, but she was sort of homely and I just wanted Jennifer. There was never a time when I didn't like your mother. Jen was so pretty, so much more outgoing and confident than I could ever be. And, since she hated Violet's guts, I had to choose.\"\n\nWait. I want to rewind to the part where he said Violet was homely.\n\n\"You're saying you dumped Violet because she was ugly? Ugly?\"\n\n\"Well, not dumped her. We weren't dating.\"\n\n\"But Violet was _ugly_?\"\n\nHe shrugs. \"I guess she was a late bloomer.\"\n\n\"So she had acne? Or was overweight?\"\n\n\"No, not that. A bad nose and stuff. Not much of a chin. I don't know, she was homely. Everyone made fun of her. Stop asking me about it.\"\n\nI feel a twinge of pity for poor Violet, ugly and with one friend, my dad. Then he ditched her for the pretty cheerleader. I push back the feeling that my mom was a mean girl. But I remember what Violet said about the cat being her best friend when she was a teen, what Laurel's mom said about her even having pictures of the cat in her locker, probably to get her through the day when everyone picked on her. It was sad.\n\nBut Violet isn't sad and pathetic anymore.\n\n\"No. What happened? Did she get plastic surgery?\" I always knew Violet had work done.\n\nDad looks surprised. \"No. I mean, I don't think so. She was just pretty in high school. It was sort of weird. Like one day I looked at her, and she wasn't ugly anymore. I don't know.\"\n\nI shake my head. \"You get that Violet is, like, the most beautiful woman I've ever seen?\"\n\n\"I know. Some people are just late bloomers, I guess.\"\n\n\"You said that before.\"\n\nWe're in our driveway. Dad says, \"Want to go out with us for pizza?\"\n\nI throw open the car door. \"Not really. I ate at Laurel's. And I have homework.\" Both are lies. I start toward the house.\n\nDad follows me. \"Hey, I think we should eat one meal together the whole weekend.\"\n\nI keep walking. Violet intercepts him, kissing him. I start upstairs.\n\nWhen I reach the steps, stupid Grimalkin throws herself at my legs, claws out, and rakes them down my calf.\n\n\"Ouch!\" Reflexively, I kick at the cat to get her off me.\n\n\"Don't do that!\" Violet shrieks. \"She's old!\"\n\n\"She attacked me out of the blue!\" I scream back. Like when that monkey went after my mother.\n\nThe cat ran\u2014ran like a kitten\u2014toward Violet and rubbed against her legs.\n\nAfter they leave for dinner, I go to Dad's closet, to a box where he keeps old yearbooks and stuff. I used to love looking at the photos of Mom and Dad, power couple. Mom was so beautiful in her dance team uniform and her homecoming dress. I never looked for pictures of Violet before.\n\nFirst, I check the high school ones. Violet's there, tall and beautiful as expected, star of the school play in a big black-and-white picture, and on the dance team. The pictures could have been taken yesterday. Nothing has changed except her poufy 1980s hairstyle.\n\nBut when I look further back, to eighth grade, the name Violet Appel reveals an awkward, hunched girl with a crooked nose, an overbite, and no eyelashes. I only recognize her from the name.\n\nIn a group photo, with the middle school choir, she stands in front, one of the shortest.\n\nIn the high school dance team photos, tenth grade Violet is in the center of the back row, statuesque and beautiful.\n\nViolet could have gotten a nose job.\n\nShe could have gotten a boob job, her eyelashes dyed, braces, makeup.\n\nBut you can't get surgery to grow six inches in two years, which is what she did.\n\nThe change is like magic.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nI have _Oliver!_ rehearsal every day after school. It's a great Violet-avoidance ploy, but also, I'm admitting to myself that I'm not completely miserable about being Oliver. In fact, I'm glad Laurel got me to try out. I've always thought I hated being the center of attention. Now I realize I hate being the center of attention _for my looks._ I'm sick of everyone fawning over my hair, my eyes, liking me because of how I look\u2014or hating me for the same reason. But, as Oliver, with a cap covering my hair, I'm getting attention for my singing and acting. Not that I want to be an actress or anything, but it's fun for now.\n\nYesterday, we practiced a scene where Oliver's locked in the funeral parlor alone, overnight. At tryouts, people sniffled when I sang \"Where Is Love?\" __ Now they flat out bawled. It feels great that people care so much.\n\nToday, we're practicing a scene Laurel's character is in. It takes place in the funeral home too. In it, a bully named Noah is picking on Oliver. He's a lot bigger, so Oliver just takes it. But then, Noah insults Oliver's mother, and Oliver goes nuts on him, pushing Noah into a coffin and kicking him. Charlotte, Noah's girlfriend, runs in screaming her head off. Laurel had to scream at the audition, and that's why she got the part. She's a great screamer. Once, she saw a marine toad eating dog food on her patio, and she screamed so loud the neighbors called 911.\n\nI can so relate to Oliver getting mad at someone insulting his mother. Violet always makes little comments about mine when Dad isn't around to hear. Like last year, the lady next door commented that I was growing up pretty, just like my mom. Violet said yeah, Dad had been so taken with Mom's beauty (yes, she'd actually said, \"taken with\"\u2014she talks like that) that he hadn't noticed how dumb she was. Mrs. Hernandez acted like maybe she'd heard Violet wrong. I felt like one of those cartoon characters, when they have smoke coming out of their ears. But, of course, blowing Violet up was out of the question.\n\nNow, when Tedder Strasky, the guy who plays Noah, says to Oliver (me), \"Your mother was a real bad 'un,\" I just picture Violet's face on Tedder's body, and I launch myself at him as hard as I can. I figure I can't really hurt him because Tedder's at least a foot taller than I am and outweighs me by a hundred pounds. But, to my surprise, he gives a yowl that doesn't sound like acting and falls on his butt, then slides to the edge of the stage. Goose and Willow are sitting in front, but they clear out real quick when Tedder goes barreling toward them. Tedder just sits there, winded, so I can't push him into the coffin.\n\nWhen Mrs. Connors yells, \"Cut!\" Tedder turns to me.\n\n\"Man, you're strong, girl. I did not see that coming.\" He looks annoyed, even though he's trying to laugh.\n\n\"Oh, sorry.\" I look down. \"Guess I really got into the part.\"\n\n\"No, it was good. It was kinda hot. I just wasn't prepared.\"\n\nI ignore the \"kinda hot,\" but say, \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Try not to maim the other actors, Celine,\" Mrs. Connors calls.\n\n\"Will do.\" I turn away, blushing, but not before I see Goose take his seat again and give me a thumbs-up. He mouths a word: _warrior._ Yeah, that's me. I roll my eyes.\n\nWe try it again, and now Tedder's ready for me. Connors says, \"Remember what it was like when she took you by surprise. That was really good.\"\n\nI'm hoping we're going to finish up with the funeral home scene so Laurel's mom can drive me home, and I don't have to bother Dad or, worse, Violet. But after I punch Tedder in the gut (gently) for the fourth time, Mrs. Connors says, \"Good work. I think we can move on.\" She calls Goose onstage for the scene where Oliver and the Artful Dodger first meet.\n\n\"Thank God,\" Tedder says. \"Do I get padding for the actual show?\"\n\nEveryone laughs, but I apologize again. Even though I think he's being a big baby at this point.\n\n\"Don't worry about it, little girl. I can handle you.\" I don't think he's totally kidding.\n\n\"You've got some real anger management problems, huh?\" Goose says when he comes onstage.\n\nWell, I do, but I say, \"I feel really bad.\"\n\n\"Don't. Strasky's exactly like the character he plays. He was a huge bully in middle school. He actually did steal people's lunch money. It's not just a clich\u00e9. It would almost be worth playing Oliver to get a chance to beat him up.\"\n\n\"You could take him,\" I say. \"He obviously has problems dealing with someone with a low center of gravity.\"\n\n\"I think he had trouble dealing with a girl\u2014he couldn't just break your face. But I like that: low center of gravity. I'm not short. I just have a low center of gravity.\"\n\n\"Go out for wrestling,\" I suggest.\n\n\"Can't mess up my pretty face for showbiz.\" He poses like one of those guys in the Calvin Klein ads, except with a shirt.\n\nMrs. Connors calls for us to start. She blocks the scene up to the song and runs through it a few times. Then, she glances at her watch. \"We'll start 'Consider Yourself' __ tomorrow.\"\n\nI look at my watch too. Five-thirty. Too early for Dad to pick me up, perfect for Violet. I start down the steps.\n\n\"What?\" Goose was walking toward Willow, who stayed to wait for him. But he stops and looks over his shoulder at me.\n\n\"Hmm?\" I turn back.\n\n\"You sighed.\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing. It's just too early for my dad to pick me up, and Laurel just left. It's okay, I can walk.\"\n\n\"I was just about to offer you a ride.\" He looks at Willow. \"You don't mind, do you?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" Willow says in a fake Cockney accent. \"We can give 'er a lift. You 'av to talk Cockney, though.\"\n\n\"What? Oh . . . um, I only live a wee bite awie from he-ah.\" It sounds more Irish than Cockney, but Willow nods. I remember what Violet said about speaking in a British accent during _My Fair Lady_ rehearsals.\n\n\"We're gonna stop at Tawget first,\" Goose says. \"Ye mind?\"\n\n\"No, that's fine.\" I have to outline a chapter for chem, but I'd still rather get home closer to when Dad does.\n\n\"Why are we goin' to Tawget awl of a su'in?\" Willow asks as we walk out.\n\n\"'Member wot I tole you?\" Goose says.\n\nWillow grins. \"Oh, it's a prahnk.\"\n\n\"Not a prahnk,\" Goose says. \"A sociological experiment.\"\n\n\"You 'av way too much time on your hands,\" Willow says.\n\nI laugh. Goose does seem to have a day with a few more hours in it than everyone else's. In addition to the timber prank, the other day he got someone to hide a walkie-talkie in the dropped ceiling in the dressing room, then talked into the other one, yelling, \"Let me out! Let me out!\" Half the cast thought he was stuck up there.\n\n\"I'm still cracking up about the ceiling thing,\" I say.\n\n\"See there,\" he says to Willow. \"And she is a h'independent observer.\"\n\nWillow musses his hair. \"I 'eard about this school where these kids released three pigs, labeled one, two, an' faw. The principal spent the 'ole day, looking fer number three. You should do that.\"\n\n\"As soon as I find someone to give me three pigs. Do you 'av any pigs, Celine?\"\n\nI shake my head.\n\n\"Maybe for the experiment, we shouldn't do the accents,\" Goose says. \"It kind of makes us seem . . . weird.\"\n\n\"You think the accents make us seem weird?\" Willow says. \"Not, say, your personality?\"\n\n\"I think that's a good idea,\" I agree, relieved.\n\nWe're in the school parking lot. Goose holds up his keys, and a blue Civic beeps. I'd assumed Willow would be driving, which was stupid. Still, I wonder how he reaches the pedals.\n\n\"Special pedals,\" he says, reading my mind.\n\n\"What?\" I say.\n\n\"My car,\" he says. \"I call her Nelly. She has extended pedals. People always wonder how I can reach. So I'm saving you the trouble of asking or rubbernecking from the backseat.\"\n\n\"That's cool,\" I say, embarrassed at being so obvious. And average.\n\nWe get in the car, a typically messy boy's car with crumpled assignments and McDonald's fry wrappers. \"Sorry it's such a mess,\" Goose says. \"I drive my brothers and sister around sometimes.\"\n\n\"Sure, and they're always leaving their chem homework.\" Willow uncrumples a paper she almost sat on. \"You'd get better grades if you handed this stuff in sometimes. And fasten your seat belt.\"\n\n\"God, stop being such a harassenger,\" Goose whines, but he does the seat belt. \"Mrs. McKinney said she'd take the homework late. She loves me. Everyone loves me.\"\n\n\"Don't know how you talked her into that,\" Willow says. \"But remind me to staple it to your forehead tomorrow.\" She mimes stapling it.\n\n\"So what's the sociological experiment?\" I ask.\n\n\"Yes,\" Willow says, \"what is this grand idea that's keeping me from studying for my gov test tomorrow?\"\n\n\"Selfies with strangers!\" Goose says. He's turned toward me, backing up the car, so I guess he sees the blank look on my face as well as I see the grin on his. \"You go to a public place, walk up to people, and take a selfie with them. Someone else films their reactions.\"\n\n\"And you don't get beat up?\" This is so not something I can do.\n\n\"Not so far. I only did it once before. A few people got weirded out, but others thought it was funny.\"\n\n\"I'll get the person with a can of pepper spray.\" Still, I wish I were like him. I've spent my whole life hating when people looked at me. Goose seems to love being the center of attention. It must be cool to be so comfortable in his skin. \"Can I be the one filming it?\" I know I'm a geek, but I suspect Goose wants an audience more than anything else anyway.\n\n\"We take turns,\" Willow says. \"It wouldn't be fair otherwise.\"\n\n\"Besides, you ladies are so hot, people'd probably rather have their picture taken with you than me.\"\n\nWillow slaps Goose's shoulder. \"Just for that, you're going first. That way, if we get thrown out for harassing people, there won't be any photographic evidence of me being there.\" But she's laughing.\n\n\"Gladly,\" Goose says.\n\nWe're near Target now, and I feel a little nervous, but also, sort of anticipating. Goose pulls into the parking lot and parks near where an old lady is loading bags into her car. \"How about her?\" Willow asks him.\n\n\"The old lady?\" Goose asks. \"Easy.\"\n\nBefore I can even process what he's doing, Goose is out of the car and running up to the old lady. \"Smile!\" he yells.\n\n\"What?\" the old lady says as he stands next to her. She's not much taller than he is, and at first she looks a little freaked out. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Just a picture?\" he asks. \"Please? And I'll help you with your bags.\"\n\nFinally, the old lady smiles, and Goose snaps the picture with his phone. Willow's filming the whole thing.\n\n\"Why do you want my picture?\" the old lady says.\n\n\"No reason,\" Goose says. \"You look beautiful. Can I help you with those?\" He grabs one of her bags by the handles.\n\nThe old lady looks a little confused, but when Goose puts the groceries into her car, she smiles again. \"Aren't you sweet?\"\n\n\"Yes. Yes, I am. Can we all get a picture with you?\"\n\nShe notices me and Willow, who is still filming. \"Oh, aren't you pretty girls? Of course. You made my day.\"\n\nWe gather around. Goose takes a selfie of all of us, and we finish helping the lady with her bags. She tries to give Goose a dollar, but he says, \"Free service.\"\n\n\"Well, bless you,\" she says.\n\nWe walk away, Willow saying, \"It's easy if you're going to offer to load their bags.\"\n\n\"What can I tell you? I'm just a wonderful person,\" Goose says. \"Now, I'm blessed too.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I say. \"It could have gone another way, and she could have kicked him in the face when he touched her groceries.\"\n\n\"She did seem a little like a ninja,\" Willow says.\n\n\"I'm nonthreatening,\" Goose says. \"We shouldn't approach anyone with kids, though. They'll think we're pervs.\"\n\n\"Good thought,\" I say.\n\nWillow goes next, accosting a nerdy-looking guy our age in the entrance. He's happy when she runs up next to him to take a picture.\n\n\"He was looking at your boobs,\" Goose says when she comes back. \"That's easy too.\"\n\n\"He was _not_ looking at my boobs. Why can't you acknowledge my gifts?\"\n\n\"I see your gifts. And so did he. Show me the picture then.\"\n\nWillow gets out her phone and glances at it. \"Okay, so he was looking at my boobs. At least I didn't have to do chores for him.\"\n\nNext, we go to accessories and try on knitted hats and scarves. \"Ooh, put on that red hat,\" Goose says. I put on a red hat and a striped scarf that looks like _Where's Waldo?_ It's silly, but Goose takes my picture. \"Model it, darling!\"\n\nWillow takes another photo with a different rando who also looks at her chest, but when Goose tries to take one with a girl our age, her boyfriend shows up and gets mad. We take more pictures of each other too, and a selfie of all three of us. Then, we head for the grocery section.\n\nGoose says, \"Your turn, Celine.\"\n\n\"Hey, I'm just along for the ride.\"\n\n\"No such thing as a free ride,\" Goose says. \"You need to come out of your shell. You're in theatah now.\"\n\n\"You'd better do it,\" Willow says. \"Otherwise, I'll never get home to study for my test.\" Willow looks around for a target. \"How about her?\"\n\nShe points to a woman. I can't tell how old she is, except she's older than us. She's in the frozen food section. She's wearing sort of a crazy outfit, a long, green, velvet skirt, black boots, and a black turtleneck. Her dark hair comes to her waist and has one purple streak. I'd actually love to get a picture of her to show Laurel. She'd like her style. And she looks nice.\n\n\"Okay,\" I tell Goose. \"I'm going in.\"\n\nI ready my phone, then run up to the woman, trying to be as confident as Goose and Willow. \"Selfies with strangers! Smile!\" And I snap her photo.\n\n\"Oh, look at you,\" she says. \"So pretty. Is this some kind of school project?\"\n\n\"Yes. Sort of.\"\n\n\"Okay. Well, glad I can help. What's your name?\"\n\n\"Celine.\" I am sooo embarrassed. \"Celine Columbo.\"\n\n\"Columbo.\" Her eyes narrow in recognition. \"Any relation to Greg Columbo?\"\n\n\"He's my father.\" Great. Now, she'll report back to Dad, and he'll think I'm on drugs. \"How do you know him?\" Hoping she'll say she hasn't seen him in years.\n\n\"Oh, I haven't seen him in years. I've known him since he was a boy, though.\"\n\nWhich is weird, because she doesn't look as old as Dad, nor does she have that Botoxed look of the fake-young. But then, I could say the same about Violet.\n\n\"Listen, we were just messing around,\" I say.\n\n\"I know. I'm Kendra, by the way.\" She backs up a few steps, staring at me, a weird expression on her face. \"My, you are lovely, Celine. I'd heard you were, but I never imagined.\" She reaches up and touches my face, just staring at me. \"So sweet and innocent.\"\n\n_Weird._ I back away. \"Listen, I have to go. You won't tell my dad you saw me, will you? I can delete the picture if you want. We were just kidding around.\"\n\nGoose, who has been uncharacteristically silent during this encounter, comes up to me now. He says, \"Hey, Celine, we should get going. Sorry, ma'am.\"\n\n\"Not a problem,\" Kendra says. \"I won't say a thing to your dad. I doubt I'll see him anytime soon.\" She turns and goes back to choosing a bag of peas. We hightail it around the corner.\n\n\"Oh, God, kill me now,\" I say. \"That was crazy embarrassing.\"\n\n\"What? I really liked hearing about how lovely you are,\" Goose says.\n\n\"Yeah, so sweet and innocent,\" Willow says. \"So she's crazy? There's lots of crazy people. We've all done it, now let's get out of here.\"\n\nShe seems a little annoyed so I say, \"Yeah, we should go.\"\n\nWe do, but Goose teases me the whole way home. I don't mind.\n\nGoose drops Willow off first because she keeps griping about studying. My house isn't much farther. Now that we're done talking about the prank, I can't think of much to say. I always get this way, tongue-tied around new people. It actually takes longer than I thought because Goose makes a wrong turn. Fortunately, he talks for a while, about the play, about how they're having the cast party at his house, and it's going to be awesome. But then, there's silence. I say, \"Thanks for driving me home. I hate having to ask my stepmother. And thanks for taking me with you. It was so much fun.\"\n\n\"Did you really think so?\" He stops at a stop sign and looks at me. Sitting, we're almost the same height. It's mostly his legs that are short. \"You seemed nervous.\"\n\n\"I was. I'm not good at talking to strangers. But I think it's important to face your fears.\" I think of my mom, how facing her fears had killed her. \"I mean, sometimes, like being afraid of talking to people. Or stage fright.\"\n\n\"You're afraid of _me_?\" He shakes his head. \"No one's afraid of me.\"\n\nI realize this sounds crazy. \"Not afraid, exactly. But sometimes, with this group, I feel like I can't keep up. Everyone's so outgoing.\"\n\n\"So you're shy?\" He nods like he's processing this new idea. \"That's why you always sit with your friend and only talk to her?\"\n\n_Do I do that?_ \"I guess. Why? Did you think I was a snob?\"\n\n\"Yeah, sort of. But maybe I just assumed that because you're so . . .\" He stops.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"So what? What am I?\" Though I know.\n\nHe shakes his head. \"Nothing. I was going to say I'd see you in the hall at school, even before the play, walking by yourself, and I figured you were a snob because you're so beautiful. Okay? Usually, girls who are complete tens don't have a reason to be shy, so you assume they're snobby if they don't talk. But that was idiotic to think, so I wasn't going to say it.\"\n\n_Et tu, Goose?_ I wonder if other people think that, people who aren't as honest as he is.\n\nI say, \"When you pointed to me that day and said I should be Oliver, I could have killed you. I only tried out for the play at all because Laurel wanted me to. She's my best friend. I wanted to be in the chorus and dance in back, not be a star. I hate when people look at me. I hate when people think they know what I'm like.\"\n\n\"Like I just did. Got it.\"\n\n\"You're not the only one.\"\n\nA car comes up behind us and honks. Goose starts driving again.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he says. \"I shouldn't have judged you by your looks. You might not realize this, but people judge me by my looks all the time.\"\n\nI smile. \"No. It was a good thing. An opportunity. Once I got the part, I enjoyed it.\"\n\n\"You're awesome in the play. I tear up when you sing, 'Where Is Love?' It's . . . lovely . . . so sweet and innocent . . .\" He laughs.\n\nI laugh too, realizing the conversation had gotten too serious for him. I roll my eyes. \"Anyway, I guess I have you to thank for me getting the part, since you didn't want to play it.\"\n\n\"Are you kidding? People would have come up to me, going, 'Please, suh, can I have some maw?' for the next year.\"\n\n\"And they won't do that to me?\"\n\n\"It's cute when you're a girl, right?\" He looks at my eye roll. \"Guess not.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry you didn't get to be Bill Sikes like you wanted.\"\n\nHe laughs. \"I didn't want to be Bill Sikes. I'm not stupid. I know I can't be Bill Sikes with a Nancy who could kick my ass. I wanted to be the Dodger. I figured by pretending I wanted to be Bill, I could guilt her into giving me Dodger, instead of making me be Oliver.\"\n\n\"Genius.\"\n\n\"That's me.\"\n\nWe're in my driveway now. I wish I could freeze time, freeze this afternoon and hang with him and Willow, instead of having to go home to Violet. Fun and laughter seem to follow Goose around, and I wish I could too. I like him, and suddenly it's really important that he like me. \"So you don't think I'm a snob anymore, do you?\"\n\n\"Nah, you went along with my stupidity, so you must be okay.\"\n\n\"I enjoyed it,\" I say. \"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Any time you need a ride, let me know.\"\n\n\"Oh, you don't have\u2014\"\n\n\"Any time, Celine.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" I get out of the car and walk toward the house. Halfway there, I notice Violet gazing out the window at me. When she sees me seeing her, she closes the curtain.\n\nI glance after Goose. He waited while I walked to the door, but now he's pulled to the bottom of our circular driveway. He looks back at me and grins. I wave.\n\nI walk inside, yelling, \"Hello!\" Even though Violet was there two seconds ago, there's no answer. Sapphire is on the staircase. I bend to pet her. A claw flashes, and my arm is bleeding. I pull back. \"Sapphire, you hurt me!\"\n\nAs if realizing her mistake, she nuzzles my arm, then licks the spot she scratched.\n\n\"Oh, are you sorry? You should be. I don't know what got into you.\"\n\nI remember Violet's face at the window, that odd, envious expression she's had on her face all the time lately. Could she have turned Sapphire against me?\n\n_Don't be crazy._\n\nAlmost as soon as I get to my room, Violet calls me for dinner. I think about saying I don't feel well to avoid it. But I'm actually hungry.\n\n\"Just a minute,\" I say.\n\nI take out my phone and go through the pictures we took at Target; Goose, Willow, and me with the confused old lady. Then, all of us, trying on accessories. I'm looking for the one I took of the strange woman, Kendra her name was. I want to send it to Laurel. But weirdly, it's not there. I remember telling Kendra I could delete it, but I didn't think I had. Had someone else taken the picture, not me? No. It was _selfies_ with strangers. I go through every picture on my camera roll, but it's like it was magically removed.\n\nFinally, I go down to dinner.\n\nDad and Violet have already started. Violet stares me up and down, like she's trying to figure out who I am.\n\n\"Mmm, this looks good,\" I say, just to say something.\n\n\"What happened to your arm?\" Dad asks.\n\n\"Sapphire scratched me. Can you believe it?\"\n\n\"That's not like her,\" Dad says.\n\n\"I know,\" I say. \"She doesn't even seem like she remembers she has claws.\"\n\n\"Sometimes, animals just turn on people,\" Violet says. \"Like someone will have a pit bull for years, and then one day, it attacks someone. Or what happened to your mother.\"\n\nDad and I both stare at her. Outside, someone's mowing their lawn. Otherwise, it's silent.\n\nI say, \"I must have scared Sapphire. She acted sorry afterward. She licked my arm.\"\n\n\"Well, be careful,\" Dad says.\n\nI glance at Violet. \"I will.\"\n\nDad goes to the gym after dinner. Violet never goes. She's one of those lucky people who has a perfect body, seemingly without exercising. I go up to my room to do homework.\n\nBut later, when I go down to get a glass of water, I pass their room. Violet is sitting on the bed, staring into the mirror. It looks like she's talking to it again, a whole conversation.\n\n_What a weirdo._\n\nI hear the words, _so beautiful._ But no, Violet's lips aren't moving.\n\nOkay, so I'm crazy. But no crazier than Violet.\n\nWhen Violet sees me, she turns the mirror facedown on the bed.\n\nI walk away.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nSo now, I stay away from cats, straight irons, beauty products, hair dryers, anything sharp, hot, caustic, or with the potential to become sharp, hot, or caustic.\n\nAnd Violet. I stay away from her as much as possible. I go to Laurel's house most nights for dinner and all weekend, every weekend. Dad doesn't even seem to notice. When Laurel's mom picks us up for the fifth time in one week, she comments, \"We're seeing a lot of you lately, Celine.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. I sort of hate being home lately.\"\n\n\"You're always welcome, Celine. You do more chores than my own children.\" She glares at Laurel, who glares at me. It's true. I've been nauseatingly helpful at their house, doing all the dishes and volunteering for other chores so they won't get sick of seeing me so much.\n\n\"What's wrong at home?\" Mrs. Mendez asks. \"Does her name begin with a _V_?\"\n\n\"Oh, it's not . . . Violet just doesn't like me that much. Guess I remind her of my mother.\"\n\n\"Yeah, they hated each other. Everyone else loved your mom, everyone but Violet.\"\n\n\"And now, she hates me. Only three more years until I leave for college.\"\n\n\"You can come over whenever you want, Celine. You can even just stay here if your dad says it's okay.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. I'd do anything for Jennifer Sadler's daughter.\"\n\n\"And my best friend,\" Laurel reminds her.\n\n\"Well, Jennifer was my best friend,\" Mrs. Mendez says. Then she stares out the window, like she's trying not to cry, or maybe like she's crying.\n\nAfter a while I say, \"So, what was Violet like when you were kids?\"\n\nMrs. Mendez wrinkles her nose. \"I hate to say it, but Violet was a total freak. We were a little mean to her, but honestly, it was hard to resist. Violet went out of her way to do weird stuff. Like, once, in fourth grade, she picked up a dead bird on the playground.\"\n\n\"A dead bird?\"\n\n\"Well, it turned out not to be dead. But it looked dead, and it probably had some kind of bird disease. We were all grossed out, but Violet just walked over and picked it up with her bare hands. Like it was nothing. It was such a typical Violet thing to do.\"\n\n\"Violet loves birds,\" I say.\n\n\"Violet loved being a weirdo. For a while, we referred to anything incredibly weird as 'Violetish.' Oh, we were terrible. She was just . . . awkward. Poor thing.\" She sounds a little like the mean girls at school when they know they're being mean, but they just enjoy it.\n\n\"But you said the bird wasn't dead. Maybe she was trying to help it.\" I remember, now, Violet told me this story, a long time ago. She said they'd rescued the crow.\n\nMrs. Mendez shrugs. \"I didn't see it, but Greg said it flew away.\"\n\n\"After she held it?\"\n\n\"After she held it.\"\n\nI think of something else. \"My father said she was really ugly when she was a kid.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, sooooo ugly. Poor thing. Crooked nose and no eyelashes. She looked like a parrot with no feathers.\" She smiles a little.\n\n\"And then, she got prettier?\"\n\n\"It was like a miracle, really.\"\n\n\"And she didn't have surgery or anything?\" I figured my dad, being a man, wouldn't be smart about stuff like that. A woman would know the truth. And maybe she was wearing five-inch heels in the dance photo.\n\n\"Not that anyone knew about. It wasn't like someone who got a nose job over summer vacation. I did that. With Violet, it just . . . happened. Everything in maybe a month or two. And she just kept getting more beautiful. More power to her, though. We were awfully mean to her.\"\n\nI noticed she had gone from \"a little mean\" to \"awfully mean.\"\n\n\"Including my mom?\" I asked.\n\nShe stares out again before speaking, then says, \"Not to speak ill of the dead, but especially your mom. She was brutal, even more so after she started dating Greg. Violet _always_ liked him, and Jen couldn't resist rubbing it in her face. I think part of her attraction to Greg in the first place was that it made Violet so mad.\"\n\nWhich makes me feel a little sorry for Violet. I hate that my mom was so mean to her, and kind of my dad too. My parents were obviously like the Bryce Richardson and Whitney Jacobs of their class. I hate that.\n\nAt least, until I get home and the mockingbirds in our oak tree dive-bomb me.\n\nAnd I see Violet watching me out the window, smiling.\n\nAnd I remember that she's decided to be mean to me, to make up for it.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nThere's a song in _Oliver!_ called \"Who Will Buy?\" In it, Oliver, who has survived the workhouse, being sold to a funeral home operator, and living in a den of pickpockets, has been taken in by the kindly Mr. Brownlow. He looks out the window at the beautiful morning\u2014a beauty he knows can't last, not for him. He wishes someone would buy the wonderful morning and the feeling in his heart so he can remember it forever. He knows he can't.\n\nIt's my favorite song in the show, and it's how I feel about being in the play too. After that day with Goose and Willow, Goose gets everyone to include me when they do stuff after rehearsal or on weekends. I bring Laurel along, so suddenly, we're part of this cool, weird group of friends instead of sitting home every night with Violet and her disgruntled cat. Everyone's also raving about my voice. Mrs. Connors says I should take drama and try for thespian conference next year. Laurel and I are both going to. This is the happiest I've been since I was a kid in Brownies, and my mom was alive.\n\nAnd, like Oliver, I know the skies won't stay blue forever.\n\nThe play is this weekend. There are two more days before dress rehearsal, so we're staying late every night. I'm barely home, which is good because the cats are plotting to murder me. Grimalkin waited by my bed last night and attacked my leg when I walked to the bathroom. When I fell (hard!), Sapphire went for my face. It felt like an ambush. Appliances are still turning against me too. I've started taking baths because the shower never stays the temperature I choose. Dad says he'll call the plumber, but he keeps forgetting until he hears my screams.\n\nBut the show's songs are in my head all the time. Today, in the bathtub, I start singing, Who will buy this wonderful feeling? I'm so high, I swear I could fly.\n\nWhen I walk downstairs to go to the bus, Dad and Violet are there, sharing coffee. Like, they're literally sharing it\u2014she's sipping out of a cup that he's holding. _Kill me._ I brush past Dad to get to the refrigerator for my lunch.\n\n\"Hey, you sounded incredible up there,\" Dad says.\n\n\"What?\" Violet stops drinking coffee. \"Who sounded incredible?\"\n\nDad brushes Violet's butt with his hand, a gesture that always makes me wince. He says, \"I heard Celine practicing in the bathroom. She has a beautiful voice, just like her mother . . . oh, and you too, Violet. But, of course, she inherited it from Jennifer. I sure can't sing.\"\n\nViolet looks like someone who found a pube in her ice cream. Then, she smiles. \"How wonderful. The play must be soon.\"\n\n\"Yes, when is it?\" Dad asks.\n\n\"Um, it's Friday and Saturday. But you don't both have to go if you don't want.\" I want Dad to go, not Violet.\n\n\"Of course we're going. What else would we do? Friday night? I'll put it on my calendar.\" Dad takes out his phone. \"Is there preferred seating for parents of the star?\"\n\n\"I'll check.\"\n\nViolet's sitting there with a weird, strangled expression on her face. I know she'll ruin it somehow. \"We're both looking forward to it,\" she says. But her eyes don't match her words.\n\nWhen I wake Friday morning, I have no voice. None at all. I take a decongestant, but I don't have a cold, so it doesn't help.\n\n_No!_ I want to scream it, but nothing comes out, not even a shriveled whisper. I am literally speechless.\n\nThis is impossible. I've never lost my voice in my life. Now, on the first day of a play I have the lead in, it's gone.\n\nI know Violet's behind it.\n\nThere have been so many clues, so many reasons for believing it's true, and only one reason for not believing it:\n\n_There's no such thing as witches._\n\nBut how can we know that's true, really true?\n\nThroughout time, we've believed in magic, not cute, Disney magic that makes stuff fly around the room, but black magic, magic that caused plagues and brought down churches. That's why they burned witches at the stake. That was what they feared when they hanged women as witches in Salem. But the women in Salem weren't really witches. Not the women who died anyway. Real witches would have been better at avoiding detection. Real witches wouldn't have been captured. Real witches wouldn't have died. Real witches would have taken revenge on their enemies.\n\nLike Violet had.\n\nViolet was an ugly child. Dad says so. Mrs. Mendez too. The middle school yearbook confirms it. But now, Violet is beautiful without surgery or anything.\n\nAnd my mother was Violet's enemy.\n\nTwice, in Violet's presence, my mother was attacked by animals. The second time, an animal killed her.\n\nViolet made them attack my mother. Violet killed her.\n\nI am my mother's daughter.\n\nSo Violet hates me.\n\nNow, objects and animals are attacking me.\n\nYet I know no one will believe me. I know my father won't. Why?\n\nBecause there's no such thing as witches.\n\nI don't know what I can tell Mrs. Connors or all my friends in the cast. I'm letting them all down.\n\nI knock on Dad's door. I want to go to a doctor.\n\n\"Come in.\"\n\nWhen I walk in, he and Violet are still in bed, watching the morning news, wrapped up in each other as usual.\n\n_Nauseating._\n\nDad sees me. \"Hey, it's your big day.\"\n\nViolet smiles, happier than I've seen her in a long time. She waves but says nothing.\n\nDad says, \"Would you believe it? Violet lost her voice. Can't say a word.\"\n\nI point to my throat, gesture and nod, like, _Me too_.\n\nThe doctor can't do anything. He sees nothing wrong with me. \"No cold. Throat isn't red. Nothing wrong with her tonsils,\" Dr. Alvarez tells Dad. \"Seems like selective mutism.\"\n\nI shake my head so hard my hair hurts my eyes, then I write a note. _I did not select to be this way_.\n\n\"I didn't mean you're faking. Perhaps a better term is hysterical mutism. Is anything upsetting you?\"\n\n_Other than having no voice and a stepmother trying to kill me? No._\n\n\"She has a play tonight,\" Dad says, \"a play she's been practicing for weeks. She has the lead.\"\n\n\"Maybe she's nervous,\" Dr. Alvarez says. \"Are you nervous, Celine?\"\n\nI shake my head. On my pad, I write, _I want to be in this play_. My eyes are full of tears.\n\nDr. Alvarez nods.\n\n\"But the strange thing, Doctor,\" Dad says, \"is my wife is having the same symptoms. They couldn't both be hysterically mute at the same time, could they? It would be an awfully big coincidence.\"\n\n_It would be except that Violet's faking. She cast some sort of spell on me, then pretended to lose her voice too so it would seem like an illness. That was obvious._\n\nBut I can't say it. I mean, aside from the obvious fact I can't speak, insulting Violet seems dangerous, considering she killed my mother. I'm just realizing that's what I'm saying about her. I believe that's true. I believe she murdered my mother so she could claim my father for her own.\n\nAnd, if that's the case, I don't want to get her any angrier at me than she already is.\n\nIf she killed my mother, she could kill me next.\n\nI get Dad to drop me off at school after the doctor. I have to tell Connors.\n\nShe sort of flips out when I do. It takes me a while to persuade her that I can't talk at all. She says maybe I'll be better for tomorrow's performance. I know I won't.\n\nI attend both performances, in solidarity with the cast. I watch my understudy screw up my part. I cry softly in the audience because softly is the only way I can cry. I tell Goose I can't go to the cast party. The cast party is for people who were in the cast. He begs me to come anyway, but I'd feel too awkward.\n\nWhen I wake Sunday morning, my voice is back. Like I knew it would be.\n\nSo is Violet's. Like I knew it would be.\n\n\"It's like magic,\" she says.\n\n_Exactly._\n\n#\n\n#\n\nI spend as little time at home as possible. I study with Laurel, stay at her house most nights, and only go home to refill on clothes or money or if I need something signed for school. My drama friends haven't ditched me (most pity me), so I hang with them too. When I do go home, I try to leave for the bus as early as possible.\n\nSunday night, two weeks after the play, Dad picks me up at Laurel's. I hear him in the kitchen, talking.\n\n\"So have you adopted my daughter?\"\n\n\"She and Laurel love spending time together,\" Mrs. Mendez says. \"It's so nice that they're friends. She said she asked you if she could stay over those days. Didn't she?\"\n\n\"Yeah, she texts me at nine at night and tells, not asks.\"\n\n\"Is that true?\" Mrs. Mendez notices I've entered the room.\n\n\"What's the big deal?\" I ask Dad. \"Violet doesn't want me around. I'm just granting her wish.\"\n\n\"That's not true,\" Dad says.\n\n\"It isn't? So if Violet had a choice between living with both of us or just you, she'd choose both?\"\n\nMrs. Mendez takes the pot she's stirring off the stove, then starts for the door. I don't blame her. \"I'll just let you two talk.\"\n\n\"We're leaving. Thanks for having her.\" Dad takes my overnight bag from me. \"Violet loves you.\"\n\n\"Yeah, I can see the adoration in her eyes. She practically busted a gut from pride when I got the lead in the play. She wasn't crazy-jealous at all.\"\n\n\"We'll discuss this in the car.\" He opens the door and waits for me to go out.\n\nIn the car, he puts on his serious Dad voice and matching expression that he must copy from reruns of _Full House_. \"Celine, Violet is a successful lawyer. An adult. Why would she be jealous of a teenage girl?\"\n\n\"You'd have to ask her that. I just know she is.\"\n\n\"Violet tries. She just doesn't know about kids. That's why we didn't have any.\"\n\nShe has him so brainwashed. I wonder if _that's_ witchcraft. \"Give me a break. I'm not some baby crying. She was fine when I was a kid. It's now, now that I'm old enough to be a threat.\"\n\n\"Why would you be\u2014?\"\n\n\"Don't tell me you haven't seen the stuff that's happening.\"\n\nHe stares at the road, taking the Dad-eyes off me. \"What stuff?\"\n\n_Well, first off, my mother being killed by a freaking MONKEY._\n\n\"You ignore it,\" I say. \"You ignore it all. You're so hot for her you don't see what she is.\"\n\n\"And what's that?\"\n\n\"A witch.\"\n\nStunned silence. All I can hear is the car's air-conditioning, blowing too cold on my leg.\n\nThen, Dad laughs. \"Good one, Celine. I thought you were going to at least tell me she was a criminal, something that could be real.\"\n\n\" _This_ is real. You know it. She reanimated a bird when you were kids. Then, she made that dog attack my mother in high school. Then, she made a monkey kill her. You were there when all those things happened. You saw it!\"\n\n\"You're insane.\" My father is practically shaking. \"You need help. I should\u2014\"\n\nI stop talking. Violet would be completely happy to have him put me in some facility for troubled teens. I may be troubled, but I'm not crazy. I've just finally\u2014finally\u2014realized the truth.\n\nBut Dad's never going to see it. He'll never believe she's a witch even with all the evidence. No one would, I guess. But he's not even going to admit she hates me, that she hurts me on purpose.\n\nThe other, harder, truth is that my father loves Violet more than he loves me.\n\n\"Fine,\" I say, \"maybe it's my imagination. But I'm not imagining that she doesn't like me. You know she doesn't want me around, even if you won't say it. So why can't I just stay at Laurel's?\"\n\n\"You can go there after school sometimes, but you can't live there. You're my daughter.\"\n\nWe're pulling into our driveway now. I say, \"Fine,\" knowing I'm going to do whatever I want. I jump from the car as soon as it stops moving.\n\n\"Violet has a good heart,\" he calls after me.\n\nI don't answer. Anything I say would be worse than saying nothing.\n\nI don't speak to Dad for the next few days. It's not obvious because I just go to school early and come home late. I sleep at home and avoid the cats like they're murderers\u2014which they may be.\n\nFriday, I'm standing, waiting for the bus with Laurel, when Goose comes running up to me. \"There's been an accident! It's your dad.\"\n\n\"What? What kind of accident?\" I flash back to the day with my mom, and it feels like a fist squeezing my heart. Would Violet hurt Dad?\n\n\"A woman came up to me and told me to get you. Your father's been in a car accident. He was airlifted to Jackson. That's all she said. I can take you there.\"\n\n\"Who? What woman? Did she have red hair?\"\n\n\"No. She looked a little familiar, but I'm not sure from where. Come on.\"\n\nI follow him and Willow in silence. What is this? Why would Violet hurt Dad? And who was the woman Goose talked to?\n\nPlease let Dad be okay.\n\nWe pull up in front of the emergency room. Now that we're here, it seems so much more real. Airlifted to Jackson. What if he's really hurt or . . . worse? \"I don't know what to do,\" I tell Goose.\n\n\"I'll go in with you. Let me figure out where to park.\"\n\nThen, I see Violet running toward me.\n\n\"That's my stepmother,\" I say to Goose. I start out of the car.\n\n\"I can still come with you. Just follow her, and I'll catch up.\"\n\nI really want Goose to stay. Really. But I know he probably wants to leave. And I'm sure Willow does. It would be too weird to have them stay at the hospital.\n\n\"It's okay. Thank you. I'll go with Violet.\"\n\n\"All right. Let me know what's happening. Text me, day or night.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" I run after Violet.\n\nViolet's hair is half up, half down. She's taken off her five-inch heels to go faster and holds her shoes in her hand. When I catch up to her, I can see that her face is tearstained. It's the one time I've seen her not perfect. She runs to the front desk. \"I'm looking for my husband, Gregory Columbo. He was airlifted here. He was in a car accident.\" A huge sob rips from her throat.\n\n\"You're Mrs. Columbo?\" a nurse asks.\n\n\"Yes.\" Violet's still sobbing. \"Where is he? You have to take me to Greg!\"\n\n\"Just wait a moment. I'll get the doctor.\"\n\n\"Please! You have to take me\u2014\" But the nurse walks away.\n\nViolet follows her. \"Maybe you shouldn't follow her in there,\" I say.\n\nShe looks at me like she's just realizing I'm there. \"I have to. Time is ticking.\" I can hear her breath, shallow, like a panting dog's, and that's how I know she suspects what I do: He's dead. My father is dead. I go to put my arm around her, but she shoves me aside and runs after the disappearing nurse, through the emergency room doors. \"Greg! I have to see him! Greg!\"\n\nShe's intercepted by a female doctor in a white coat. \"May I help you? You shouldn't be back here.\"\n\n\"It's my husband, Gregory Columbo. He was brought here. I need to see him.\"\n\n\"Yes, I was on my way out to you. I'm Dr. Martinez.\" The doctor is about Violet's age, short with blond hair in a messy bun. She looks like a mom, and her voice is soft. \"I'm so sorry. We did everything we could, but he didn't make it.\"\n\n\"Noooooo!\" It's a shriek. I feel tears spring to my eyes, and I wish Goose had stayed. I wish Goose had stayed. But Violet's reaction is much, much more. The sound is inhuman. \"I have to see him! You have to take me to him!\"\n\nThe doctor tries to get in front of Violet, who shoves against her. \"He was badly injured. It may be upsetting. In a little while, you can identify the remains.\" She places her hand on Violet's shoulder.\n\n\"No! Not a little while!\" Violet's voice fills the room, and the doctor jolts back as if shocked. \"You have to take me to him now! Right! Now!\"\n\nI hear glass shatter. The window on one of the doors has broken, but no one touched it.\n\n\"Very well. Just calm down,\" the doctor says. \"You might want to have the girl stay here. She shouldn't see him like this.\"\n\n\"She can stay.\" Violet wipes the tears from her face, but they just keep coming. \"I have to see Greg! Greg!\" It comes out a wail.\n\n\"Follow me.\" I notice the doctor keeps her distance from Violet.\n\nViolet follows, still breathing like a mastiff, practically running and almost overtaking the doctor. Despite the doctor's instructions, I follow, but when I get to the door she holds open, I stop.\n\nMy father\u2014his body\u2014lies motionless on a bed, a sheet covering most of him. Still, I can see that his head is bashed and bleeding. His face is almost unrecognizable. I stop. He isn't my father anymore. The doctor is right. I don't want to see him like that. But Violet elbows past me into the room.\n\n\"Greg!\" She throws herself onto his body, embracing him, like she's trying to touch as much of him as possible, give her life to his, and she begins to make weird noises. It sounds like she's praying or speaking in tongues, but not exactly. Not exactly words, either. She isn't crying anymore, but her voice rises to a wail in the quiet room, and her whole body vibrates.\n\nI remember what Laurel's mom said about the bird that was dead, then wasn't. Is Violet trying to bring my father back? Can she?\n\nI would be willing to deal with everything about Violet if she could do that, anything to have him back, even for a minute, anything to make things right.\n\nThe doctor comes up behind me. \"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have let her . . . I'll get a nurse for your mother, with a sedative.\"\n\nI nod, biting the back of my lips, then get out, \"My stepmother. She adored him.\" I know it's true. If I ever doubted Violet's love, seeing her writhing, covered in my father's blood, changes that. Violet is insane with grief. I feel my own, like a weight on my chest. I have no one I can turn to. I have no one but Violet.\n\n\"I'm sorry for your loss,\" the doctor says.\n\nViolet's on the floor now, still wailing. But now, I understand words. \"Greg! Come back to me! I can't lose you so soon! I can't . . . I can't! I caaaaan't!\"\n\nI run to her, trying to avoid looking at Dad's body.\n\n\"Violet, let's get out of here. Looking at him can't help.\"\n\n\"He can't be gone!\" she screams. \"What good is it to be able to fix birds and cats when the only one I want is dead on a table?\"\n\n_Birds and cats._ But I lead her out into the hallway. I try to embrace her, but she falls to her knees. She throws her head back and shrieks so loudly that the floor seems to shake like the ground is opening. The doors rattle, and again, a glass window breaks. Then another. And another. How is this happening? Is her grief so huge that she could make this happen? Is there a tornado outside? Did Violet cause it? Is she really a witch?\n\nI know the answer. If I didn't before, I know it now.\n\n\"Violet, stop!\" I yell. \"You can't do this. It won't\u2014\"\n\n\"Violet!\" A woman is walking toward us. She's about Violet's age, with a beautiful face and dark hair streaming down her back. The woman from Target. Kendra.\n\nGoose said the woman who spoke to him looked familiar. It was her.\n\nShe wears a black dress that looks like it's from another era. An orderly tries to stop her, but she stares at him, and he backs off. \"Violet, I'm here.\"\n\n\"Kendra.\" Violet collapses in a ball onto the floor. \"How did you know I was here?\"\n\nThe woman, Kendra, kneels by her, embracing her. \"I knew, my darling. I am always there for you, Violet. It's all right, my sweet.\"\n\n\"No!\" she sobs. \"No! He was my life! Now, he's gone. He's dead, and it's all for nothing. Nothing! It's all worthless. _I'm_ worthless without Greg!\"\n\nThe orderly who tried to stop Kendra is with Dad now, covering his body, covering his face so I don't have to see it again.\n\n\"This is a punishment!\" Violet wails. \"A punishment for what I've done, for what I am!\"\n\n\"There, there, Violet.\" Kendra rocks her, like a mother with a small child. \"There, there.\"\n\nBetween sobs, Violet says, \"But Greg was the only one who ever loved me!\"\n\n\"No, dear,\" Kendra says. \"I love you. I love you, and I will be with you forever. Forever and ever and ever when everyone alive today is gone. I love you.\" She holds Violet for a long time, letting Violet's sobs shake them both.\n\nFinally, she looks up at me. I know I'm staring, and I feel that my mouth is open. I shut it.\n\n\"You're Celine. We've met before,\" she says. When I nod, she adds, \"Poor child, both parents gone. You and Violet are all each other has.\"\n\nHorrible thought. My throat feels full at that thought, like I might never swallow again, like I might choke and die and be with my parents sooner, and be happy. But I nod. I breathe through my nose until I can speak. \"But who are you?\"\n\n\"I'm Kendra,\" she says. \"I am Violet's sister.\"\n\n#\n\n#\n\nKendra, at least, turns out to be normal, though I'm still not sure about the sister thing. Wouldn't we have known if Violet had a sister? She talks to the hospital and police about my father's body. Together, she and I visit the funeral home and make the plans. Violet stays in bed the whole time.\n\n\"Celine?\" Kendra taps my leg. I look up from my phone. I'd been thinking about sending a text to Dad. It seems like I should be able to. After all, it's only been a day. How can everything change in a day?\n\n\"I'm sorry, dear,\" Kendra's saying, \"do you prefer dark wood like mahogany or cherry? Or we could get something light like poplar.\"\n\n\"What?\" I put in Dad's name, text _I love you._\n\n\"For the casket. I'm so sorry.\"\n\n\"They're all nice,\" I whisper. Now that I've sent the text, I can see the whole line of others, all from me, unanswered, saying I'm sleeping at Laurel's. I slip the phone back in my purse and jab my finger at a reddish-brown one. \"That one.\"\n\nKendra nods. She plans everything and doesn't ask me anything else.\n\nThe day before the funeral, I go to school. It seems better than staying home with Violet, better than thinking about Dad being gone.\n\nBut as soon as I get off the bus, I realize it's a huge mistake. I stand there, not sure what to do, staring down at the sidewalk where the class of 2014 had painted lots of happy, green cougar paw prints, walking toward the school. All I can see are everyone's feet, yellow Converse, blue Converse, plaid Converse, flowered fake combat boots, white Vans, all walking with and against the paw prints, turning into an impressionistic painting as my eyes fill with tears.\n\n\"Hey, hey, why are you here? You shouldn't be here.\"\n\nI'm still looking down, but I can see the top of Goose's head, one dark curl going into another. He looks at me, his eyes meeting mine.\n\n\"I just figured that out,\" I say, and then, I start to sob.\n\nGoose begins to reach up to put his arm around me, then stops and tugs my hand instead. \"Come on,\" he whispers.\n\n\"Come on where?\"\n\n\"Shh. Quick. Get in my car. It's still early.\"\n\n\"What about you?\"\n\n\"Shh. Be quiet. Have to be casual in case someone sees us. School doesn't start for twenty minutes.\" He tugs on my hand.\n\n\"Won't Willow wonder where you are?\"\n\nHe looks away. \"We broke up. I don't want to discuss it. Or anything. Be quiet.\"\n\nHe pulls me along, through the Converses, Vans, Keds, and I follow. I don't want him to take me home.\n\n\"Don't worry. I won't take you home,\" Goose whispers, reading my thoughts. Then, real loud, so everyone around can hear, \"We'll just go get that paper you forgot, then come back.\" He tugs my arm. He is brilliant at navigating through the legs of taller kids, and he just pulls me along.\n\nI've stopped crying, at least. \"Okay, let's hurry then.\"\n\nFinally, we reach his car. The parking lot isn't crowded yet. The bus always gets there so early. I think I hold my breath the whole time we're buckling our seat belts and pulling out against traffic, but in a minute, we're free. Goose drives a block, then another, not looking at me. When we reach the park, he pulls into the parking lot.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" he says.\n\nWhen I collapse in tears against his shoulder, he says, \"Okay, dumb question. Dumb question. Aw, Celine.\" He puts his arms around me. \"I'm so sorry.\"\n\n\"I have nobody,\" I say. \"There's nobody left.\"\n\n\"There's nothing I can say. I wish I could make it better, but . . . I'm going to shut up, like I never do.\" He holds me harder. His arms are surprisingly strong, and I sink against him and sob. My head, my neck, my jaw hurt. Everything aches with the emptiness that comes from wanting to talk to Dad and realizing I never will, never again. Goose just holds me.\n\nFinally, when it's almost eight, I say, \"I don't want to go home. I came to school because it feels so empty there.\"\n\n\"I understand. We can go to my house and watch TV or something. My mom's home. I mean, I'm not trying to lure you there for immoral purposes.\" He's trying to make me laugh.\n\n\"Your mom's home? Won't you get in trouble?\"\n\n\"She works from home. She's an artist. And nah, she'll write me a note. She knows people need personal days sometimes. I needed a ton of them in seventh grade, when I took PE.\"\n\n\"That must've been tough.\"\n\n\"I'm not into sports . . . especially when people try to use me as the ball.\"\n\nI finally laugh. \"You're the best.\"\n\n\"I know. I'm awesome. We covered that. Come on. I hate missing Hoda and Kathie Lee. I hear they're doing makeovers.\"\n\nI really don't want to go to school or anywhere else. \"Okay. I love a good makeover.\"\n\n\"Girl, there is nothing to make over about you.\" He turns the key in the ignition.\n\n\"Yeah, just my life,\" I say. \"I don't know what I'm going to do now.\"\n\nWe pull out of the parking lot, driving right past a police car. Goose nods at the guy. \"Seriously, if you ever need a place to go, you can stay with us.\"\n\n\"Right.\"\n\n\"No, really. My mom is big on taking in strays. Stray dogs, feral cats, foster kids. She has a kind heart. She probably wouldn't even notice you're there.\"\n\n\"Great. I'm a stray.\"\n\n\"I didn't mean it that way. I meant you're a friend, and if you were in trouble, we'd help you.\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\nHe stops the car again. \"Look at me.\"\n\nSince there's not much choice, I do. The sun streams through the windows, and I blink at him.\n\nHe says, \"I'd do anything for you.\"\n\nI'm stunned for a second. It's a strange thing to say. Then, I recognize it. He's quoting the song \"I'd Do Anything\" __ from _Oliver!_ I laugh. \"Anything?\" I parrot the song.\n\n\"Anything.\" He says it seriously, not a joke.\n\n\"Okay. Thanks. Can we go now, before we get picked up for truancy?\"\n\nHe nods. \"Anything.\" He starts the car again.\n\nWe pull up to a big yellow house with marigolds planted in the front flower boxes. \"After you, milady,\" Goose says in a Cockney accent. A spotted cat jumps out of our way as we approach a black door that's a little wider than usual. \"The woman who owned the house before us was in a wheelchair, so they had lower counters and stuff,\" Goose explains. \"That's why the door's so wide, which we didn't need, but the other stuff was perfect for us.\"\n\nI notice the cat doesn't try to murder me. I like that in a cat.\n\nHe walks in and calls, \"Mom!\"\n\nThe house smells of coffee, a homey smell. A blond woman, shorter than Goose and wearing light blue sweatpants, comes out of the kitchen. She's carrying an African American baby in one arm and a bottle in the other hand. \"School's out a little early, isn't it?\" She sees me. \"Oh, I didn't know we had company.\"\n\n\"Celine, this is my mom, Stacey. Mom, this is Celine. She's having a rough day.\"\n\n\"Aren't we all?\" She looks at Goose. \"Don't you have a test in history today? You can't just blow off school for no reason.\" She has a southern accent. Over her head, I can see three kids, two boys and a girl, eating cereal at the island in their downsized kitchen. An orange cat is walking around. It rubs against my legs, but it doesn't try to attack me or anything.\n\n\"It's more than a normal bad day, Mom,\" Goose says. \"Celine's father died Friday.\"\n\n\"Oh, my God.\" Stacey rearranges the baby in her arms so she can give him the bottle. \"Oh, sweetie. I'm so sorry. You didn't want to stay home with your mother?\"\n\nMy throat feels tight. \"I don't have one of those either. She died when I was eight. I just have my stepmother now, and she's flipping out. I had to get out of there, but then, I couldn't handle school. Goose was really sweet and brought me here. I hope he's not in trouble because he was just being nice.\"\n\n\"Yes, my sweet boy. You poor thing.\" The baby turns away from her, but she coaxes him to take the bottle. He sucks for about a second, then starts fussing again. \"I have to get them ready for school, but you stay. Of course, stay as long as you want.\" She adjusts the baby again.\n\n\"Thank you. Um, can I hold him for you?\" I suddenly really want to be useful.\n\n\"You don't have to do that.\"\n\n\"I want to.\"\n\n\"Well, that would be nice, thank you. Do you want to sit on the sofa and hold him?\"\n\nI can tell she's worried I'll drop him, so I sit down on the squashy white sofa. She settles him into my lap. \"His name is Jeron. After he drinks the bottle, you rub his back until he burps.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" The baby feels warm and a little sweaty, but when he is in my arms, he starts to suck on his bottle contentedly. \"Good boy, Jeron.\"\n\n\"He likes you.\" Stacey disappears into the kitchen, where I hear her telling the kids to hurry. Goose sits next to me and starts flipping through the channels, which are mostly morning news shows and cartoons. He settles on _SpongeBob_ for a minute, then changes his mind. Stacey walks through the room with the three kids behind her, wearing blue and white school uniforms. The two boys look about the same age, maybe eight, and they're dwarves or little people (I don't know which is the right term, and I'm afraid to ask). One has dark hair and looks a lot like Goose. The other has red hair and freckles. The little blond girl is about five, an average-sized five-year-old.\n\n\"Are they all your brothers and sisters?\" I ask.\n\n\"Yes,\" Goose says. \"But if you mean did my parents have all of them, no. Tyler, the one with red hair, is adopted. His parents abandoned him. He's the same age as Tony, my other brother. Department of Children and Families contacted my mother because he was a person of short stature, and they thought she'd deal with him better than his parents had. She was fostering before that.\"\n\nI file away _person of short stature_ in my mental bank. I wonder if Tyler's parents ditched him because he was one. It seems impossible, but clearly, some parents suck.\n\n\"And Jeron is a foster kid, but we might get him too. We've had other babies that got sent back to their parents. My mom really likes babies. She had one that died, right after my sister, Isabella, was born. There's this genetic thing. So that was sort of the end with her, and she started fostering instead.\"\n\n\"So there are seven of you here?\" I say. \"Must get crazy in the morning.\"\n\nHe shrugs. \"I'm usually out of here before they wake up.\" He flips through the channels some more and settles on a movie. \"Oh, man, I love this movie. I love this! Have you ever seen it?\"\n\n\"What is it?\" Onscreen, a red-haired girl in crazy clothes and a hat is talking to a guy in even weirder clothes. All the extras look like corporate lawyers. Like, they're high school students who don't own jeans.\n\n\" _Pretty in Pink._ It's a John Hughes movie. He was, like, the god of teen flicks in the 1980s.\"\n\n\"Yeah, my dad made me watch _Breakfast Club_ together last year. That was him, right? I loved it.\" My stomach drops at the realization that, now, I will never watch another movie with Dad. I feel my eyes starting to fill, but I inhale and try not to cry.\n\n\" _Breakfast Club_ 's great too.\"\n\n\"Let's watch this,\" I say. \"Did it just start?\"\n\n\"Yeah, it's pretty close to the beginning. It's about this girl, Andie, from the wrong side of the tracks, and she likes this rich guy, Blane.\"\n\nSo I get totally engrossed in the story of red-haired, offbeat-dressing Andie and her best friend, Duckie, a short, weird guy who has a crush on her. People at school make fun of them because they're poor and also sort of weird. By the time Stacey comes back with the kids trailing behind her, Jeron is asleep in my arms.\n\n\"Oh, my gosh,\" Stacey whispers. \"You got him to sleep? That kid never sleeps.\"\n\n\"I forgot to burp him,\" I whisper back.\n\nStacey says, \"Hey, if he went to sleep, that's better. Do you want to try to put him in his crib?\" She says it like she doesn't think it's a great idea.\n\n\"Nah, he might wake up. I can keep holding him if you want. I'm not going anywhere.\"\n\n\"We're watching _Pretty in Pink,_ Mom.\" Goose has paused the TV.\n\n\"That's a great movie. Good music.\"\n\n\"If you like music from the eighties,\" Goose teases.\n\n\"Hey, _I'm_ from the eighties,\" Stacey says.\n\nThe little girl is starting to sit down with us, but Stacey gestures to her to come on. \"We'll be late, Isabella.\" To me, she says, \"I'll take Jeron off your hands when I come back.\"\n\n\"It's no problem. It's sort of . . . life affirming.\" The same cat from before rubs against my legs again. I sort of jump. \"Sorry, cats hate me.\"\n\n\"Oh, these cats are harmless.\" Stacey takes Isabella and Tyler by the hands and says, \"Come on\" to the other boy. He follows her out.\n\n\"She seems like a really great mom,\" I say. \"You're lucky.\"\n\n\"Guess I am.\" Goose unpauses the movie. \"This is my favorite part.\" Onscreen, Andie's friend Duckie is wearing a yellow jacket and doing a crazy dance to an old song, \"Try a Little Tenderness,\" __ trying to impress her and obviously failing miserably. I giggle.\n\n\"That's love,\" Goose says, \"when you're willing to make a total ass of yourself for a girl.\"\n\n\"Have you ever done that?\"\n\n\"Not so far. Not on purpose anyway. But . . .\"\n\n\"But what?\"\n\n\"Nothing. I talk too much. Shh. Let's watch this.\"\n\nI wonder what he means. Stacey doesn't come back for a while, and in the movie, Andie accepts a date with Blane, breaking Duckie's heart. Then, Blane breaks her heart by asking her to the prom, then canceling because his rich friends don't approve. My arm is starting to ache, and I ease Jeron onto the sofa, planting myself on the floor so I can keep him from sliding off.\n\n\"I don't see what Andie likes about Blane so much,\" I say to Goose. \"He's got no spine. He doesn't want to admit to his friends that he likes her.\"\n\n\"I guess he's supposed to be hot,\" Goose says.\n\n\"He's not that hot. And hotness only goes so far.\" After seeing my dad spend seven years with beautiful but crazy, I know that for a fact. \"After you've known someone a while, you stop looking, I think. Character is more important.\"\n\nIn the end, Andie wears a pink dress and goes to the prom by herself. But Blane apologizes, so she walks off into the bright prom lights with Blane.\n\nAnd Duckie tells her it's fine!\n\n_Totally lame._\n\n\"That was a crazy-stupid ending,\" I say to Goose. \"The girl had no pride.\"\n\n\"Right?\" he agrees. \"Did you know that in the original version of this movie, Andie wound up with Duckie, but test audiences didn't like it. So they went back and changed it. They re-filmed the whole ending to make it that bad.\"\n\n\"Really? Test audiences have no souls. She should totally have ended up with Duckie.\"\n\n\"Absolutely. You get it. I knew you'd get it.\"\n\n\"It was so stupid. He would never have said that.\" I imitate the actor who played Duckie. \"'He's not like the others. Go to him.' It must have hurt the actor's soul to even have to say that.\"\n\nGoose nods. \"I agree.\" He switches the TV back to _SpongeBob_ , which is still on. Or on again. Patrick is obsessing over getting nachos. \"So you'd go with Duckie instead of hot Blane?\"\n\n\"I told you, hotness only goes so far. My stepmother is obsessed with appearances, and it makes her crazy. Besides, I sort of think Duckie is cute. In his own way.\"\n\n\"Really? He didn't strike me as your type. You're still marrying Jonah Prince, right?\"\n\nI laugh. Does he think I'm silly for obsessing over a rock star? \"Oh, absolutely.\" I turn over my hand so he can see the faded writing on my fingers, where I've written _J.P. 4-ever._ \"We talked last night. He promised to take me to homecoming next year. On his private jet. And then we'll go to Paris and buy a horse\u2014two horses, one for each of us.\"\n\n\"Get me a horse too.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah,\" I agree. \"He totally said three horses. Wanted to know what color you wanted. I said palomino.\"\n\n\"Good call.\"\n\nWe fall back into silence, watching _SpongeBob._\n\n\"I'll miss school again tomorrow for the funeral,\" I say after a while.\n\n\"I was thinking about going to that too.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I know Laurel's going, and her mom. But having more people as a buffer between me and Violet would be good. The thought of sitting there all alone with Violet is just freaky, almost as freaky as my father's body in a box in the ground.\n\n\"Would you want me to go?\" Goose asks.\n\n\"Yes. Yes, I would so want you to go. But . . . you'd do that?\"\n\n\"Like I said, I'd do anything.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I say. \"Can we just sit here and watch _SpongeBob_ for the rest of the day?\"\n\n\"Absolutely. Sometimes, watching _SpongeBob_ is the best thing. _SpongeBob_ never disappoints.\"\n\nSo we keep watching. My eyes feel about to close. In the background, I can hear Stacey talking to Jeron and making him another bottle, the next-door neighbor's lawnmower, and the squirrels outside, at war with the blue jays over a bird feeder. We watch maybe three more _SpongeBobs,_ maybe more than that. I'm not sure because, at some point, I give in and I fall asleep.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nAfter the funeral, Kendra moves in with us. She says it's to help Violet. I'm still not sure I believe she's Violet's sister, but it's good to have her there because Violet is definitely several pins short of a bowling alley. She doesn't go to work. She doesn't eat. She doesn't even cry.\n\nInstead, she spends day and night sitting on her bed, staring into her hand mirror.\n\nShe doesn't talk to it anymore, just stares. I wonder if it still answers back.\n\nA week after my father's death, I hear Kendra talking to her as I'm passing by on the way downstairs.\n\n\"Don't you think you should go to work?\" she asks.\n\nViolet draws a brush through her hair. She holds it up so the auburn strands catch the light. \"I have no reason to go to work.\"\n\n\"Of course you have. Your job is important. You help people.\"\n\n\"I don't care about helping people. When have I ever?\"\n\n\"As a girl you did.\"\n\n\"I'm not that girl anymore . . . thank God.\"\n\n\"I loved that girl,\" Kendra says.\n\nGrimalkin brushes by me. She takes a swipe at me with one paw. I should go. I start toward the stairs again.\n\n\"Your beauty, then,\" Kendra says, and I stop again. \"It used to be so important to you to be beautiful. Perhaps you could do some modeling, commercials.\"\n\nI see a circle of light moving on the wall, as if someone was flipping a mirror over and over. The cat is stalking back toward me. I can't bring myself to kick her down the stairs, even though I hate her.\n\n\"I am beautiful, aren't I?\" Violet's voice says.\n\n\"Of course you are, my darling,\" comes Kendra's reply. \"But your hair is messy.\"\n\n\"Am I the most beautiful woman in the whole world?\" Violet asks.\n\nKendra hesitates. \"You are one of them.\"\n\n\"I mean, if I brushed my hair?\" Violet asks.\n\nStill, Kendra doesn't just say yes. _Just agree with her! Lie to her!_\n\nBesides, who is more beautiful?\n\n\"My dear, you are very beautiful. Any man would be happy to have a woman of your beauty.\"\n\n\"I don't want any man. I want Greg! I've only ever wanted Greg!\"\n\nFrom the bedroom, I hear glass break. I run downstairs before they can know I was eavesdropping.\n\nThat day, I forget my book for English class. I ask the teacher for a pass to go to my locker. When I get there, I find a mirror inside.\n\nViolet's mirror.\n\nWhich is weird in and of itself because I didn't put it there and I didn't leave my locker open.\n\nThe hallway is silent. The white floors, unoccupied by hundreds of feet, gleam like ice. I don't want to touch the mirror. It might be poisoned or attack me. Violet's things tend to do that.\n\nYet, something compels me to reach for the handle. I turn it over.\n\nSecond weird thing: It's not broken, though I heard it shatter this morning.\n\nI lift it and search for my face inside.\n\nBut my face isn't there.\n\nKendra's is.\n\n\"I need to speak with you,\" she says.\n\nThe mirror slips from my hand, shattering against the terrazzo. I look around to see if anyone has noticed, if anyone heard.\n\nNo one there. I debate running, leaving the splintered glass there, hoping someone will clean it up before fifth period. I have to. I grab _The Book Thief_ from my locker and slam the door. It bounces open, so I hold it closed. I start to replace the lock. My hands are trembling.\n\nAs I do, before my eyes, the pieces of the mirror rise from the floor, hundreds of slices of silver, shining in the fluorescent light.\n\nThey dance before my eyes, then form into an oval mirror, neatly replacing themselves in the frame.\n\nIt flies up into my hand.\n\n\"Careful this time.\" Kendra's voice is a whisper. \"I need to speak with you after school. Can you come to my house?\"\n\n\"What? How? How are you doing this?\"\n\n\"Isn't it obvious?\" She smiles. \"I'm a witch.\"\n\n\"There's no such thing as\u2014\"\n\n\"I know you believe in witches, Celine. You've been living with one for years.\"\n\nValidation. Someone confirming all my crazy suspicions. I wish I could tell Dad. Now, the victory seems hollow. A thousand times a day, I remember he's gone, and it's like he has died again.\n\nI say, \"You know . . . about Violet?\"\n\n\"Of course. And I know you're not safe with her. But you have to get back to class. Come to my house after school. It's the big, gray one on the corner of Salem Court, the one that looks abandoned. Get your friend to drive you, the boy from Target.\"\n\n\"Goose.\"\n\n\"He'll drive you.\"\n\nI know he would, if I asked. And I know the house. I didn't know anyone lived there. \"How do I know I can trust you?\"\n\n\"You don't. But you know you can't trust Violet. Also, if I wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead. I want to help you.\"\n\n\"Violet hasn't killed me . . . yet.\" My hand is shaking, rattling the mirror back and forth.\n\n\"Yet. Because of your father. Now, your father is gone.\"\n\n\"So you're saying . . . ?\" She's saying Violet is going to kill me.\n\n\"My house. After school. With the boy.\"\n\nHer face disappears from the mirror.\n\nAnd then, the mirror disappears from my hand.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nTwo hours later, I'm in front of the abandoned house with Goose. I have no idea why, but Goose, at least, had been excited about it. \"Really?\" he said. \"Someone lives in that house? She invited you? Cool. We always thought it was haunted. On Halloween, we dared people to touch it.\"\n\nI nodded. \"So did we. Laurel and I did it last year.\" I've explained as little about this as possible. It seems better to just let it unfold.\n\n\"So I get to go inside. Cool.\"\n\nI laugh. \"You said that.\"\n\nBut now that we're here, he seems less sure. The driveway is almost impassable, with weeds and branches scraping the sides of the car. At least two windows are broken, and the paint that used to be white is dirty gray, where there even is paint.\n\n\"You're sure someone's not playing a joke on you?\" Goose says as he negotiates the driveway.\n\n_Considering she came to me inside a mirror, no._\n\n\"I don't think so.\" A flock of crows lands in the yard, settling on the bushes and in the trees. I wonder if they're friends of Violet's.\n\nGoose puts the car in park. \"You think those crows are going to shit on my car?\" When I shrug, he says, \"Maybe wait here while I look around, in case something's weird?\"\n\n\"That's okay. I'm glad you're here, though.\" I open my door and step out. A branch scratches my arm. One crow caws. Then, they all begin to until the yard is filled with their cries.\n\nGoose swears under his breath, but follows me to the doorstep. The house doesn't look any less abandoned up close. Leaf-covered cobwebs drape the door, as if it hasn't been opened in years. Grass and flotsam collect in the porch corners, and the doormat is almost entirely worn away. I knock. My hand chips away a layer of dust and dead bugs.\n\n\"Why?\" Goose says.\n\n\"Why what?\"\n\n\"Why are you glad I'm here? You won't let me be the big hero and go in ahead of you while you wait at a safe distance. What if someone comes after you with a knife?\" He tries to stand in front of me.\n\n\"No one's going to come after me with a knife. And, if they did, I wouldn't sit in the car while you bleed to death on the steps anyway.\" It sounds funny, except when you think about it. \"What I really need is someone to be here with me, experience it with me, so I'll know I'm not crazy.\"\n\nAt that, the door opens with a creak.\n\n\"Ah, I see you're both here,\" Kendra says.\n\nShe's holding the mirror.\n\nKendra steps aside so we can enter. My foot goes from dusty slate steps to . . .\n\n. . . shiny black-and-white-checked marble floor.\n\nThe inside of Kendra's house is nothing like the outside. Everything inside is brand-new, and it's all black, white, or hot pink. It looks like a set for the musical _Hairspray_ (which we're supposed to be doing at school next year), with pink walls, a pink jukebox, pink Lava Lamps, and a soda fountain with black tables and hot pink chairs. Kendra, wearing a fluffy, pink and black dress that could go to the prom, points to a spiral staircase that leads to a loft above the room.\n\n\"Follow me.\"\n\nWe do. The staircase is narrow, and, through the steps, I can see the room swimming pinkly below. I notice Goose is looking up at the ceiling.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" I ask him.\n\n\"I have a thing about heights.\" He looks a little green, which clashes with the pink, and takes the last steps very deliberately. Soon, we're at the top in another black-and-white-tiled room with hot pink sofas. Kendra gestures that we should sit. I notice Goose takes the seat farthest from the stairs.\n\n\"Good to see you,\" Kendra says. \"I wish it could be under better circumstances.\"\n\n\"You saw me this morning,\" I remind her. \"At my house.\"\n\nShe nods. \"Indeed, I did. But I will be seeing little of you from now on, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"What? Are you going someplace?\" Weird though she is, I sort of like having Kendra around, as a buffer between Violet and me. I can't imagine staying with Violet forever. Yet where else is there? Three of my grandparents are dead. My father's father lives in a nursing home. He probably doesn't even know Dad died.\n\n\"No. You are.\"\n\n\"What?\" The pink fluorescent lights are disorienting. I look down, but the checkerboard floor seems to be moving. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"You're in danger. You're in danger, and you must leave that house.\"\n\nGoose says, \"What kind of danger?\"\n\nI look at my hand. It glows in the flashing pink jukebox lights. My head is light, spinning. I wonder if this is how it feels to be on drugs.\n\nI say, \"My stepmother is a witch.\"\n\nGoose laughs, but an uncomfortable laugh. \"Yeah, my mom can be a witch sometimes too.\"\n\n\"You are using the term _witch_ in a derogatory way?\" Kendra straightens her shoulders.\n\n\"Is there another way?\" Goose looks confused.\n\n\"A literal way,\" Kendra says. \"For someone who has magic powers and can use them for either good or evil.\"\n\n\"Oh. Right.\" He laughs again, unbelieving.\n\nI'm saying nothing because my head is hot. I put my hand to my forehead.\n\n\"Besides, your mother isn't a witch in either sense. She has no powers, and she is a kind woman who takes in foster children.\"\n\n\"How did you know that?\" Goose asks.\n\n\"I know everything.\"\n\n\"I guess Celine told you.\" He looks to me for confirmation.\n\nKendra shakes her head. \"Celine told me nothing.\" She looks at me. \"Are you all right?\"\n\n\"I . . . the lights . . . all the pink. It's very pretty, but I think it's giving me a headache.\"\n\n\"I think life is giving you a headache. Understandable. How's this?\"\n\nShe waves her hand, and in a second, the room changes to a French provincial d\u00e9cor, yellow flowered sofas and dark wood. Much calmer.\n\n\"Better. Thanks.\"\n\nHuh. She just waved her hand and changed everything. This does not surprise me as much as it should.\n\nGoose is looking at his hands like he expects them to melt. \"Whoa. What the\u2014\"\n\n\"There are witches.\" I look around, trying to figure out a way of explaining what I don't completely understand myself. Even after the mirror, I can't quite believe this. \"There are witches, and my stepmother is one of them. She used to be an ugly girl, and then, she made herself beautiful.\"\n\n\"She can do that?\" Goose asks.\n\n\"Yes. And I'm afraid Violet is a bad witch.\" Kendra sighs. \"She wasn't always so. When I met her, she was a little younger than you, a sweet girl, a victim. But, perhaps that's what made her what she is. She always wanted revenge on her enemies, and she got it.\"\n\nGoose is up. He starts to pace, then sees the stairs and sits back down. I say, \"Got it how?\" Though I think I know.\n\n\"When she killed your mother.\"\n\nEven though I thought I knew this, it still shocks me. Confirmation of my worst suspicions.\n\n\"You . . . you knew she did that? Why didn't you say anything?\"\n\n\"Who would have believed me?\" Kendra asks. \"A woman is attacked by a monkey. Should I tell the police that Violet manipulated it? Do you think they'd believe someone can communicate with animals? Your father didn't, and he saw her do it twice.\"\n\n_The dog._\n\n\"And I couldn't risk being detected. Witches belong to no age, no time. I have no driver's license, no birth certificate but a family Bible dated 1652, no passport. Even my fingerprints have worn away. That happens in three hundred years.\"\n\n\"You've been alive three hundred years?\" Goose says.\n\nI say, \"But you should have told before she hurt someone.\"\n\n\"That's what I'm doing. I'm telling _you_ before she hurts _you._ \"\n\n\"Hurts me? You mean kills me?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nThe air leaves the room. Silence. Goose has stopped, staring around the room like he can't believe it. Why would he? I barely believe it, and I've been living with a witch for years. I now realize there were so many signs I should have seen, little things like Violet's ability to whip up a recipe with dozens of ingredients in the half hour after she got home from work, like the fact that she still looked twenty-five years old, more than twenty years after she graduated high school. I was stupid. Dad was stupid. Still, I would love to go back to a time when I could not believe it.\n\nAnd she wants me dead. Dead.\n\nGoose looks at Kendra. \"So you're saying her stepmother is an actual witch, she killed her mother, and now she's trying to kill Celine?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Kendra says. She says it like it's obvious.\n\n\"Did she kill Celine's father?\"\n\n\"No. She loved my father.\" I look at Kendra. She nods that it's true.\n\n\"That she did. She loved him too much. It made her crazy. And now that he's gone, she has nothing and is even more insane. She's consumed by loneliness and her jealousy of you.\"\n\n\"Why is she so jealous of me? I know she is, but I've never understood it. I don't have anything she would want.\"\n\n_She wants me dead. I still can't believe it._\n\nGoose laughs. \"Even I know you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Who wouldn't be jealous of that?\"\n\nI stare at him, stunned. He knows how much I hate to talk about my looks. At least, I thought he knew.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Celine, but it's the truth. You're beautiful, so beautiful it's almost unreal. And people hate you for it, even beautiful people. You can't ignore that anymore.\"\n\nI wonder if he resents me. I hate this. My beauty has never done me a bit of good. It makes people hate me, makes idiots want to be my friend. I wish I could just be average. But I say, \"Fine. But Violet is beautiful too. Obviously, she made herself as beautiful as she could with her magic.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Kendra says. \"As beautiful as she _could_. But there are limits to magic. Your innocence, your goodness, are part of what make you beautiful, a part Violet does not have. She lost it when she began to play with the darkness, and now there is nothing she can do to be as beautiful as you. As long as you live, she will always be second, just as she was second to your mother.\"\n\n\"Second? What about Keira Knightley? Amanda Seyfried? Tyra Banks?\" I name the most beautiful women I can think of. \"Should they be watching their backs too?\"\n\nKendra grimaces. \"Perhaps. But they don't live in her backyard, so perhaps she'll forget them. We'll keep her away from movie theaters, just in case,\" she joked.\n\n\"We'll have to keep her away from Celine, you mean,\" Goose says. He's standing again, and he comes to stand in front of me, all protective. \"If Violet can't make herself more beautiful, why can't she just make Celine ugly, give her zits or something? Wouldn't that be enough for her? She doesn't have to kill her.\"\n\nI mouth _Gee, thanks_ at him.\n\nKendra says, \"She could, but only if she reveals herself. She can change someone else's appearance only if they know about it. Otherwise, any spell she casts reverberates back to her.\"\n\nI understand now. \"Is that why she lost her voice when she made me lose mine?\"\n\n\"Yes. But there are other ways she can hurt you, as she found a way to hurt your mother.\"\n\n\"You mean kill my mother.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" She sits closer to me. \"You must go into hiding.\"\n\n\"Hiding? But how? I have school.\"\n\n\"School will wait. It has to.\" She places her hand on my shoulder. \"Violet has confided her plan to murder you. I've offered to help.\"\n\n\"Help?\" Goose says. \"What kind of sick\u2014?\"\n\n\"I lied,\" Kendra says. \"I told her she needs to withdraw you from school, say you're moving in with your aunt in another town. Then, I will take you away and murder you. I told her I'd help because she's been such a delight to me. And she was. She was like my own daughter.\" She looks down. \"Where did I go wrong?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you where,\" Goose says. \"Where you didn't tell the world about her years ago, when you knew she had something to do with what happened to Celine's mother.\"\n\nSuddenly Kendra is gone. The space where she was is just empty. Seconds later, she materializes downstairs.\n\n\"There's not a jail cell that can hold her,\" she says. She disappears again.\n\nThen, she's back with us. \"Besides, I didn't think it would get this bad. I loved Violet like my daughter. She was all I had. It's like how parents of killers always say they never suspected.\" She turns to me. \"I will take you away, but to a safe location. Is there someplace you can go, to hide?\"\n\nI stare at Kendra. She looks different than the first day I saw her, younger. I have a feeling she can change everything about her looks, if she wants. She could kill me and disappear, and no one would know. I have to trust her because there is no point in not trusting her. It's like she said before: If she wanted to kill me, I'd already be dead.\n\n\"My friend Laurel. I always stay with them. Her mother was my mom's best friend. She hated Violet. If she thought I was in danger\u2014\"\n\n\"Ah, yes, but you do often stay there, which is precisely why it wouldn't work. Violet would immediately look there to see if you were hiding. No, it needs to be someone else, someone she doesn't know, a distant relative, perhaps. Or a friend.\"\n\nShe's looking at Goose, who has paced closer again. He picks up on the cue.\n\n\"She could stay with me, with my family.\" He holds out his hand. \"I'd do anything for Celine.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Kendra says. \"I know.\"\n\nAnd I know too.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nGoose drives Kendra and me to his house. The whole time, my head is throbbing from the conversation with Kendra. Could it be true? Could Violet actually want to have me killed? But, of course. It makes perfect sense. Violet has never loved me, maybe not even back when she acted like she did. Did I think that, without Dad, the one thing that bound us together, she would suddenly want to be my mommy? Of course not. Her loathing for me would only increase. Without her darling Greg there, I was only a reminder of my mother, a girl she'd hated.\n\nMy stomach, my heart, my entire body feel empty: _There is no one now in the entire world who loves me._\n\nIt's hard to remember a time when there was.\n\nWe're at a stoplight. Goose reaches over and touches my arm. \"It'll be okay, Celine.\"\n\nI shake my head. \"How do you know that?\"\n\n\"Because it has to be.\"\n\nThe light turns green, and we drive on.\n\nIt seems so drastic, to abandon school, abandon my whole life on the word of one woman, one witch. Yet what choice do I have? I've seen this all happen. I know it's real. Goose says he can talk his parents into letting me stay. He's so nice. Why is this guy I barely know so nice while the person who is supposed to care about me is so horrible?\n\nKendra insisted on coming along to explain it all to Stacey. \"They need to know what they're getting into. It's not just letting a friend of yours stay a few days. It's not even the same as a foster child. They would be harboring a runaway. Your life is in danger. They'd need to keep you safe and tell no one.\"\n\nTerrific. Why would they put themselves in that kind of danger for me?\n\n\"Would it ever end?\" I ask Kendra.\n\n\"At some point,\" Kendra says, \"Violet will have to move on. Witches always do. Then, you could start a normal life again, maybe go to college.\"\n\nIt doesn't seem like much of a plan, but there's nothing else to do. For some reason, I keep thinking about my AP exams. I won't even get to take them.\n\nWhen we get to Goose's house, Stacey is browning meat on the stove. Jeron is hanging in a baby swing. The other three kids are spread out at the kitchen table, doing three different homework assignments.\n\n\"Oh, you brought company.\" Stacey wipes her hands on her apron. She gives Kendra's pink prom dress a quick up-and-down look. \"My son always finds such pretty girls.\"\n\n\"Should I have worn something else?\" Kendra whispers to me. \"Is this too much? Should I change now?\"\n\n\"No!\" Goose and I both say, real quick.\n\n\"It's fine,\" Goose adds. \"Mom, this is Kendra, and you remember Celine.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" Stacey moves the pan off the stove. \"How have you been, dear?\"\n\n\"Fine,\" I say automatically. \"Well, except . . .\"\n\n\"That's why we're here, Mrs. Guzman,\" Kendra says. \"Celine has a big problem, and we're hoping you can help.\"\n\n\"I live to solve problems,\" Stacey says.\n\nI look to see if she's joking, but the funny thing is, she doesn't seem to be. Her eyes are full of concern.\n\n\"Mom, what's an adjective?\" Tyler asks.\n\n\"Stupid,\" Tony says. \" _Stupid_ is an adjective. Don't you ever do Mad Libs? It's a word that describes someone, like _fat_ or _freckly_.\"\n\nStacey gives Tony a look. \"Antonio, we don't call anyone stupid around here.\"\n\n\"I didn't call him stupid. I just said stupid is an adjective.\"\n\n\"Don't you need help sometimes?\" Stacey demands.\n\n\"I need help _now,_ \" Tony says, \"with math.\"\n\n\"Oh, gosh.\" Stacey looks at Kendra and me. \"Can you just wait one second?\"\n\nQuickly, she dumps the browned meat into a colander to drain, then she heads over to the two boys.\n\nIn the swing, Jeron laughs. Goose is so lucky to get to live with such a happy family.\n\nMaybe I will be too.\n\n\"Can I help him with his math, maybe?\" I ask.\n\n\"Oh, could you?\" Stacey says. \"But I thought you needed to talk to me.\"\n\n\"Goose can explain. I like math.\"\n\n\"Oh, good, because it's not my favorite.\" She walks back to Goose and Kendra. \"What can I do for you?\"\n\nI don't hear most of their explanation because I'm reading about the builder who needs 244 bricks to build a house and has to buy them in boxes of six. Isabella's crayons keep rolling off the table. I almost think she's doing it on purpose, to get my attention. Still, I keep retrieving them.\n\nSo the first thing I hear is Stacey saying, \"I'm sorry, but you expect me to buy that?\" She elbows Goose. \"I'm sort of amazed you believe that.\"\n\n\"I know it sounds crazy.\" He looks up at Kendra. \"Isn't there some way you can make my mother understand, like what you did at your house, with the decorations?\"\n\nKendra lifts her hand to her chin. \"Another parlor trick, so to speak? Oh, okay. But perhaps we should go into the actual parlor\u2014meaning the living room\u2014so as not to freak out the children.\"\n\n\"Good idea,\" Goose says. They walk around the corner.\n\nTony's doing better with his math, and I don't think I'm supposed to do it for him anyway. I sort of want to know what's going to happen. So I stand. I walk over to where the ground beef is draining and pour it back into the pan. I never get to cook at home, but Mrs. Mendez sometimes makes spaghetti with meat sauce, which I guess is what Stacey's making. There's a jar of sauce and a box of pasta on the counter. I don't know if Stacey wants to add anything else to the sauce, but I find a pot and put on some water to boil.\n\nSuddenly, from the corner of my eye, I see a commotion in the living room. Lights are flashing purple and green, sparkling like falling fireworks. Small objects fly by. I run to see what's happening in time for everything to stop.\n\nKendra and Stacey are standing there with a very tall man. He's definitely at least six four, and he definitely wasn't there before.\n\n\"What the\u2014?\" the man says.\n\nI do a double take, look at his face.\n\nIt's Goose, a foot taller than Kendra, where before, he'd been a foot shorter.\n\n\"You . . . did this?\" Stacey is backing away, screaming, \"Put him back!\"\n\n\"How do I look?\" Goose peers into the mirror on the wall, but since it's hung low, he has to bend down to see. \"I can't tell because my face looks the same\u2014all studly and hot. But look at you down there\u2014so cute!\"\n\n\"I liked you better before,\" I say. \"Kendra, you have to put him back. What will people at school say?\"\n\n\"They'll make me the star of their basketball team.\" Goose mimes a slam dunk.\n\n\"Put him back. Please,\" Stacey says.\n\n\"Fine.\" Kendra is pouting. \"People say they want a demonstration. Then they get all mad when you demonstrate.\"\n\nShe looks up at Goose, then goes into a sort of trance. It all repeats, the room, the lights. At the end of it, Goose is back to normal. He stares up at me.\n\n\"You could make me an inch taller, couldn't you?\" he says to Kendra. \"Or maybe just give me better hair?\"\n\nShe shakes her head. \"That's how Violet got started. Little things.\"\n\n\"Celine, what's an adverb?\" Tyler asks from the kitchen.\n\n\"A word that modifies a verb. Sort of like an adjective. They mostly have 'ly' on the end. Like, 'He grew shockingly.' _Shockingly_ is an adverb.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" Tyler calls.\n\n\"I put on some water to boil,\" I tell Stacey, who looks like she's about to fall over. \"Do you need a glass of water?\"\n\nShe nods, shakily, and I go to get it. She backs up to lean on the wall.\n\nWhen I come back, she's saying to Kendra, \"So you're saying that Celine's stepmother has . . . powers like that, and she's going to use them to hurt Celine?\"\n\nKendra nods. \"To kill Celine.\"\n\n\"Oh, sweetie.\" She takes the water from me. \"I'll have to discuss it with my husband, of course.\"\n\n\"That's just a formality,\" Goose says. \"He never says no to you.\"\n\n\"He's right,\" Stacey admits. \"I still have to ask, though. But he'll be happy to let you stay. How could we say no?\"\n\n\"Thank you. I'll help around the house. I'll tutor the kids. I'm really good at math. I'll\u2014\"\n\nStacey puts her arms around me. They only come up to about my waist, but the hug is warm and strong, like a mom's. I lean into her. She says, \"It's okay. I know you will. You've been through so much. I want you to be safe. Every child deserves to be safe.\"\n\nThat may be the first time anyone has ever said anything like that to me.\n\nWhen Mr. Guzman comes home he is _not_ real happy about the idea. Kendra demonstrates her powers yet again (this time, by cleaning up the kitchen using only her mind\u2014which I can tell Stacey appreciates). Then, they retreat to a bedroom to argue. Goose and I listen through the door.\n\n\"She's a minor,\" Goose's father says. \"We could be accused of kidnapping.\"\n\n\"We're not kidnap\u2014\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter. You take someone else's kid, you're kidnapping. It's the law. We could try to get a legal guardianship.\"\n\n\"And then, everyone would know where she is,\" Stacey says. \"This woman already killed her mother.\"\n\n\"And you believe that?\" Mr. Guzman says.\n\n\"I do. And if you're wrong, and the girl dies, how will you feel? You fight for people's rights for a living.\"\n\n_If the girl dies._ Me. I'm the girl. My whole life depends on the outcome of this conversation. The outcome of this conversation and Kendra, which is a scary thought.\n\nNext to me, Goose whispers, \"He's a lawyer, unfortunately. My mom can talk him into anything, though.\"\n\nMr. Guzman says, \"I know I do. I'm trying to protect my family here. You want to protect the whole world.\"\n\n\"Yes, I do!\" Stacey yells. \"It takes a village, Jorge.\"\n\n\"Why do we always have to be the elders of the village?\"\n\n\"Someone has to be!\"\n\n\"We don't even know this girl,\" he says.\n\n\"Maybe we should put the sauce on,\" Goose whispers. \"I'm thinking we can probably still hear them from the kitchen.\"\n\n\"Good idea.\" I'm not sure I want to hear them.\n\n\"Your son knows her,\" Stacey says. \"Are you saying you don't trust his judgment?\"\n\n\"He's seventeen. He sees a pretty girl and\u2014\"\n\n\"Come on!\" Goose takes my hand and hustles me to the kitchen before I can hear what he does when he sees a pretty girl. Kendra is sitting at the table helping with homework, her pink tulle skirt puffing out over the tabletop. The boys are finished with what they were doing and are on to a history assignment, which is the same for both of them. Kendra is holding crayons while Isabella colors.\n\n\"You're pretty smart,\" Goose says.\n\n\"I've done high school thirty-seven times,\" Kendra says. \"I enroll whenever I get bored. If I went to your high school, I'd be the valedictorian without even using magic.\"\n\nGoose laughs. \"I may need some help with chemistry then.\"\n\n\"We can study together,\" I say before I remember that maybe I won't be studying, won't even be going to school.\n\n\"Your dress is so pretty.\" Isabella pets Kendra's poufy skirt.\n\n\"If you do a good job, I'll make one just like it for you,\" Kendra says.\n\n\"I think she usually adds an onion to the spaghetti sauce,\" Goose says.\n\nI find an onion and a knife to start chopping it up. Tears fill my eyes, and I pretend it's the onion. I want to stay in this warm, safe house with Goose's warm, safe family. But I wish I didn't need to. I wish I could go back in time to when I was eight years old and everything didn't suck.\n\nKendra comes up behind me and whispers, \"It's okay. If they say no, we'll think of something else. You're safe. I'll make sure of it.\"\n\nBut that's when Stacey comes into the kitchen and says, \"You can stay with us.\"\n\n\"You talked Dad into it?\" Goose asks.\n\n\"I didn't have to talk him into it,\" Stacey says. \"He knew it was the right thing to do. Right, Jorge?\"\n\nHe walks in behind her. \"I can't ignore someone in trouble. Welcome to the family, Celine.\" He sticks out his hand. \"Don't get us sent to jail.\"\n\nI wipe the onion juice off on my jeans before offering my own hand. \"I won't.\"\n\nThat night, Kendra invites me to visit her house after school tomorrow. She does it loudly, in front of Violet. \"In fact,\" she says, \"I can drive you to school in the morning too.\"\n\nShe tells me to pack any items I really want in my backpack. \"Nothing Violet would notice missing. You're supposed to be dead. I might be able to bring you some other things later, but it's better to be safe. Violet is a powerful witch, so I'm not sure what I can slip past her. Take your favorite things.\"\n\nIt's amazing in a situation like that, how few things matter. I take photographs of my mom and dad, a bracelet my father bought me made of tiny golden seashells, some clothes, underwear, and toiletries. I take all my saved-up birthday money in case I need anything else, or for an emergency.\n\nLast, I go to the computer and print photos off my phone: Laurel and me, wearing matching _I_ \u2665 _Jonah_ T-shirts, me and Goose at Target. I put the latest Jonah Prince album on a disc. I delete the photos of Goose from the hard drive so Violet won't know about him.\n\nI hand my phone to Kendra.\n\n\"I guess I can't use this anymore.\"\n\nKendra shakes her head. \"Stacey knows you're coming tomorrow, late morning. She's ready for you.\"\n\nI've already told Laurel I'm moving in with my aunt in Tennessee. I told her I'll be living in the mountains with little internet access. \"I was thinking maybe you should make a sign that says, 'Dare to eat a peach,'\" I told her.\n\n\"I'm not going,\" she said.\n\n\"You should. Take someone else. Just, you know, think of me when you're there.\"\n\nShe sighed. \"This sucks.\"\n\nI can't believe I'm not going to see Jonah.\n\nNow I ask Kendra, \"Can I write to Laurel ever?\"\n\n\"Not for now,\" Kendra says. \"It's too risky. What if her mother ran into Violet and said they'd heard from you?\"\n\n\"That's unlikely. Her mother hates Violet.\"\n\n\"It's possible,\" Kendra says. \"I'll help Laurel to . . . forget you.\"\n\n\"Just what I want, my best friend to forget me.\"\n\n\"I know, dear. I'm sorry.\" She's said it a hundred times. I know she blames herself. I can't say I don't blame her for parts of it. But she's the only person who can help me now. At least, I hope she can.\n\n\"How are you going to withdraw me from school? You're not a relative.\"\n\nKendra looks down a second like she's deep in thought. Her dark hair cascades over her eyes. When she looks back up again, the eyes that meet mine are Violet's. Her whole face is. And her hair transforms from brown to auburn. \"They won't know that.\"\n\nIt's sort of terrifying. I want to go back to that time in my life when I knew nothing about magic, when I didn't suspect it existed.\n\nI look around the room. This will be my last night going to sleep here. I've lived here my whole life. I lived here with my mother, back when I was happy. I wonder if I'll ever be happy again.\n\nI guess it's up to me now. I have Goose's family to protect me. But I need to protect them too\u2014from Violet.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nThe next morning, Kendra, disguised as Violet, takes me to school. I don't say good-bye to Violet, who is crying in her room. I amble down the stairs and to the front door, taking in each wall, each rug, each stick of furniture. I know I'll never be here again. When I get outside, I pause. The yellow birdhouse I built with Dad when I was ten hangs in our Hong Kong orchid tree, uninhabited. We had wrens last year, but now they're gone. I walk over to the tree. I glance up at Violet's window to make sure she isn't watching me. Nothing. I pull down the birdhouse from the tree.\n\n\"I'm ready,\" I say when I get in the car.\n\nKendra is wearing one of Violet's favorite work suits, black skirt with a bright purple jacket. She doesn't drive the car. It sort of drives itself. She doesn't even put her hands on the wheel.\n\nI watch as the car stops for a school bus with no input from Kendra. \"So Violet thinks you're just going to take me to your house after school to kill me?\"\n\n\"Pretty much.\"\n\nI feel a chill go up my arms. I remember Violet, when I was a kid, taking me to the park to feed the ibises, how I used to laugh as they pecked at the crumbs with their slender beaks, and Violet told me they were the first birds to come out after a hurricane. She didn't hate me then. How could she hate me so much now? What would be happening had Kendra not intervened? What if Violet finds out?\n\n\"Thank you,\" I say. \"I know this is hard for you.\"\n\nKendra strokes my arm where the little hairs are standing on end. \"I wish I had done more, sooner. I loved Violet so much I didn't see it, didn't see what she'd become. Love can blind us.\"\n\nWe're at school now. The car steers itself into the parking lot, and we get out.\n\n\"Act like you like me, so no one gets suspicious.\" Violet-Kendra takes my hand.\n\nI pull away. \"If we held hands, that would be suspicious. No girl my age would hold hands with her stepmother.\"\n\nI walk ahead of her to the office.\n\nWhen she finally gets someone to help her, she says, \"I'm Violet Columbo. I'm withdrawing my daughter from school.\"\n\n\"Withdrawing from school? Why?\" The woman's eyes immediately go to my waist. Oh, God, she thinks I'm pregnant.\n\n\"I mean she's transferring to another school. Here.\" Kendra reaches into her purse and pulls out Violet's driver's license along with a sheet of paper.\n\nThe lady looks at the paper. \"Tennessee. Far away. We're sorry to see you go.\"\n\nI look sad. It's not hard. I am sad. My whole life is over, school, taking drama next year, seeing my friends. It's almost like Violet _is_ killing me, killing everything about me. I feel my face get hot around the eyes.\n\nBut, soon enough, it's over and I'm back in the car with a Kendra who looks like Kendra again. \"What happens when my info goes to that other school?\"\n\nKendra wrinkles her nose. \"What other school?\"\n\n\"The one in . . .\" I realize what she means. \"Oh, I see.\"\n\nWhen we pull in to the Guzmans' driveway, Stacey has just pulled in too. She must be coming back from the kids' school. She's taking Jeron out of his car seat.\n\n_This situation is so . . . awkward. I don't know this woman, but I'm moving in with her._\n\nBut as soon as Stacey sees me, she turns around. \"Welcome to our home.\"\n\n\"Oh, thank you.\" I want to hug her, but her hands are full, so full without me, fuller now. \"You have no idea\u2014\"\n\n\"It's fine, sweetie. You're safe here. Come on inside.\"\n\nI turn to say good-bye to Kendra, but she and the car are both gone. How does she do that? And will I ever even see her again?\n\nI follow Stacey inside. I offer to take Jeron, but she says she's got him. She hands me her keys. \"Lock the door behind us,\" she says.\n\nI notice the door has three locks, the regular one and two dead bolts. She sees me looking at them. \"I've fostered kids who were removed from their parents' custody. Drug dealers, really bad people. It seemed like a good idea to have some extra barriers.\"\n\nI nod. I know that, if Violet finds me, no door will keep her away. And yet, here with Stacey, I do feel safe, safer than I've ever felt since I was little.\n\nI lock all three locks. Each makes a satisfying clunk.\n\nWith Jeron on her hip, Stacey takes me on a tour of the house. \"Your room's in the back, where it's quieter. You have to share with Izzie, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"That's okay. She's sweet. I've always wanted a sister.\" The room has bunk beds. The bottom is made up with _Little Mermaid_ sheets. The top is more sedate, but still pink, waiting for me. The walls are Pepto-Bismol pink with giant snails and starfish painted all over them. Stacey must have painted these, and I love it all.\n\n\"See if you think so in a week. We had to clean for a couple of hours to get it presentable for you. But Isabella helped. She's excited about having a big sister.\"\n\nI smile, feeling good for the first time in a week. \"I'll help her clean up. I'll help with all the housework.\"\n\nStacey doesn't protest or say I'm a guest. She just thanks me. I'm glad. I have no intention of sitting on my butt all day, sponging off them. It strikes me that I never saw Violet clean the house. She must have used magic. Still, I'm guessing I can figure it out.\n\nStacey shows me around the rest of the house. It's big and pretty and most of the walls are bright yellow, cheerful enough to maybe let me forget that, even though I'm with these great people, I'm a prisoner here. There's a piano in the living room, and I ask Stacey who plays.\n\n\"I used to, when I had more time. Now, the boys do.\"\n\n\"Goose plays the piano?\"\n\nShe laughs. \"Can't picture him sitting still that long, huh? I made him learn when he was younger. He complained so much, said the teacher was mean, but now, he plays great. I'll make him play for you.\"\n\nI say, \"I'm so grateful to you.\"\n\n\"Stop being grateful. This family, we help kids who need it. You need it. Besides, my spoiled son can talk me into anything.\"\n\n\"He's a talker.\" I grin.\n\n\"He wanted to stay home today.\" She steers into the kitchen and puts Jeron in his swing. She starts taking out stuff for a bottle.\n\n\"Can you show me how to make that? I want to help.\"\n\nShe hands me a canister of powdered formula and the bottle. She shows me how much water to add. \"I only got him to go today by saying it might be suspicious if he missed too much. He's a little lazy.\"\n\n\"He gets good grades, though. I saw him at the honor roll assembly.\"\n\n\"Because I stand on his neck.\" She laughs. \"Not literally. He doesn't like homework, though.\"\n\n\"I can help you with that too. I'm good at homework.\"\n\n\"Don't worry so much, Celine.\"\n\nBut I do. Still, I nod and offer to give Jeron a bottle.\n\nAfter that, Stacey puts him down for his nap. \"I have to get some work done now.\"\n\n\"What do you do?\"\n\n\"I illustrate kids' books. I can show you my studio later. We built out the garage. But right now\u2014\"\n\n\"I know. You've got to work while you can.\"\n\n\"Make yourself at home. You must be exhausted from all the stress.\"\n\nI don't think I am, but she probably needs to work, so I go to my\u2014our\u2014room and climb the ladder to the top bunk. I survey the room. The sea creatures watch me. I guess Stacey painted them. It's something my mom would have liked. When I was little, my room had a border of cows jumping over moons. I kept it long after I was too old, but eventually, Violet redecorated. From above, I can see that Isabella didn't do that thorough a job of cleaning. Clothes and papers are stuffed behind the dresser and desk. I'll offer to help her, or maybe just clean up myself.\n\nBut first, I want to shut my eyes.\n\nI crawl under the crisp, pink sheets that smell of laundry detergent and bury my head in the pillows. I wish I could have brought my own pillow from home\u2014I've had it for years, and it's smooshed just the right way\u2014but it was too big. Also, my music, which was on the phone. I have the CD I made of Jonah, but no CD player. I'll have to ask Goose if he has one. Still, the bed is comfortable, and I close my eyes.\n\nIn the dream, I am little. Or, at least, everyone else is bigger. I'm someplace cooler than Florida, and it is fall, apple-picking time. I'm at an orchard with Dad. Then, I realize my mother is there too. She's so young and beautiful, her blond hair flying behind her. We are so happy, running, stumbling, falling through the piled red and gold leaves to trees heavy with fruit. Mom holds my hand as my father hoists me onto his shoulders. I reach for the sky, grasping a crimson apple instead. I start to bite into it.\n\nIt falls apart in my hand.\n\nSomething is crawling out of it. Insects. Maggots. And then, they are all over me, down my hand, up my arm, devouring me, my mother, my father.\n\n\"No!\"\n\n#\n\n#\n\n\"Hey!\"\n\nSomeone is shaking the bed, making the world vibrate.\n\nI wake, staring at my hand. It is still there, still the same. Gradually, objects take focus behind it. I stare into the eyes of a blue stingray, then a red crab. Where am I?\n\nI look down to where the shaking came from. Goose is there, by my bed.\n\n\"Are you okay? I wasn't going to come in, but you were . . . you seemed . . .\"\n\n\"It was just a dream, just a nightmare.\" I smile. \"I'm glad you're here.\"\n\nHe looks up. \"Heights. My favorite.\"\n\n\"I'll come down.\" I gesture for him to move over, then throw my legs over the side of the bed and slide down.\n\n\"How was your first day?\" he asks.\n\n_You mean, other than the fact that my parents are dead and I'm living with strangers because a crazy witch is stalking me?_\n\n\"Great,\" I say.\n\n\"I doubt that.\"\n\n\"I miss my house, and my school, and everyone\u2014and especially, my dad. But I'm glad you're here now. It's a lot less lonely.\" I reach for his hand. \"You're so sweet.\"\n\nHe grins. \"When my brothers and sister get home, you're going to wish for lonely.\"\n\n\"I doubt that. I've never had siblings. Laurel has a brother, though, and he messes with her, but they're always there for each other. I always sort of wanted a big brother.\"\n\nHe looks down. \"I guess I can be your brother, then.\"\n\n\"I didn't know you played piano.\"\n\n\"One of the many things I'm awesome at. Want to hear me?\"\n\nI remember my promise to Stacey. \"Don't you have homework?\"\n\n\"What are you, in cahoots with my mother?\"\n\n\"Maybe a little. Your mom is awesome.\"\n\n\"That's because you don't know her.\"\n\n\"I know she let me come live here. She's the best.\" I put my hand on his arm. \"Come on. I can sit with you while you do it. I was taking chem this year too. I could do it with you. That way, when I retake it, I'll be all set.\"\n\nI stop. Will I ever take chem again? Will I ever get to walk down the street again? Or will I be hiding forever? Goose is right. I barely know his family. I don't even know him that well. Did Kendra put some kind of spell on them to make them have me? Or did she just know they were the kind of people who would?\n\nGoose says, \"Okay, deal. But first, let's make smoothies. Our neighbor, Mrs. Ozanich, has a bunch of mango trees. She gives us tons of mangoes every year, and my mom freezes them. We still have frozen mangoes left from last year, and it's almost time for the new ones to ripen. So Mom says we have to make smoothies every day.\"\n\n\"I've never had a mango,\" I say.\n\n\"Wow, how can you live here and not have mangoes?\"\n\nWe go to the kitchen and take out the frozen mangoes, yogurt, and juice for smoothies. We make enough for Goose's siblings too. \"To keep them quiet,\" he says. Then, we start on chemistry. Mrs. McKinney is one of those teachers for whom copying from the book is a sort of religion. She's assigned them to copy fifty-plus definitions. I offer to read them aloud while Goose writes them.\n\n\"I'd rather do it the other way around, I read and you do the copying,\" he says, \"but I guess they'd notice if I suddenly developed pretty, girly handwriting.\"\n\n\"How do you know my handwriting is girly?\"\n\n\"Hmm, one, you're a girl, and two, I saw how you wrote 'C.C. loves J.P.,' which, three, is a girly thing to do.\"\n\n\"Oh, it is?\" Of course I know it is.\n\n\"Yup. A guy wouldn't write that on a notebook even about his actual girlfriend.\"\n\n\"So guys don't express their emotions. Got it.\" I gesture for him to get out some paper.\n\n\"I didn't say that. Guys express their emotions by doing things.\"\n\n\"Like what?\" I say,\n\n\"I don't know, taking care of a girl, fighting off bears, slaying dragons, repairing plumbing, going to work sixty hours a week to feed their families, like my dad does.\"\n\nI think, again, of my dad, about how mean I was the last time we spoke. He thought Violet and I loved each other when he married her. I did love Violet then. How did it all go so horribly wrong?\n\nGoose waves his hand in front of my eyes. \"You there?\"\n\nI snap to. \"Women do things for people they love too.\"\n\n\"Like what? Bake cookies?\"\n\n\"I guess. Yeah, we make things nice, and cookies might be involved. What's wrong with cookies?\" There was a sign up at Offerdahl's, the sandwich place near my house, that said, _Cookies Are Love_.\n\nHe laughs. \"Nothing. I love cookies. What else?\"\n\nI make a mental note to make cookies for his family, maybe tomorrow. I'll ask Stacey if she has chocolate chips. Otherwise, there should at least be stuff for sugar cookies. \"I don't know. I've never been in love\u2014other than with rock stars who don't know I exist. Have you?\"\n\nHe thinks about it a second before shaking his head. \"No, not really.\" He gets paper from his backpack. \"We should do this. I want to dazzle you with my musical ability before I get stuck helping my brothers with their homework. What's the first one?\"\n\n\"Acid-base titration. That's t-i-t . . .\"\n\n\"Ha! Made you spell a bad word.\"\n\n\"Idiot. R-a-t-i-o-n.\" I wait for him to finish writing. \"It means a procedure that is used to determine the concentration of an acid or base.\"\n\n\"Got it.\"\n\nThe definitions take over an hour, and then he has pre-calc, which I can't help him with except by keeping his siblings away from him. Isabella has developed a little girl-crush on me, so I get her to help me clean up behind the dresser while Stacey helps the younger boys with homework. Then, Isabella and I set the table.\n\nIt's after dinner before we go to the piano, but Goose actually does dazzle me, playing the _Moonlight_ Sonata __ from memory. Then, he takes out a book of vocal selections from _Oliver!_ and makes me sing along.\n\n\"You're incredible,\" I say.\n\n\"I wouldn't say incredible. You mean because of my size?\"\n\n\"No. I didn't say that. I would never\u2014\"\n\n\"No, you didn't. I'm sorry. People tend to underestimate me. When my mom first took me for lessons, the guy didn't want to teach me, said I wouldn't be able to play because my fingers would be too short or something. I believed him, but my mom found a different teacher, and she told me about this French dude, Michel Petrucciani. He had a genetic disease that not only made him small, but also made his arms ache when he played. He died young. But he became a really famous jazz pianist. They said he was a dwarf but played like a giant. So, after that, I knew anyone could play.\"\n\n\"I'd like to hear him sometime. But I just meant you play really well for anyone. I wish I'd learned. I was begging my parents for lessons when . . .\"\n\nI don't want to say it. It feels like I've been thinking about Mom a lot, like I'm always complaining.\n\n\"You didn't because your mom died?\" he finishes.\n\n\"I love singing, though.\"\n\n\"I could teach you to play,\" he says. \"You could practice during the day, as long as you don't wake Jeron. My mom will kill you if you wake Jeron.\"\n\n\"Really? You'd teach me?\"\n\n\"Sure, why not? I think they sell beginner books for older students in the school bookstore. But we have my brother's books for now. It's a little babyish.\" He pulls one out from behind his book. There are cartoons of birds sitting on a musical staff. \"Okay, it's a lot babyish, but it shows all the notes. You start with middle C.\" He gestures for me to sit down. I do, next to him, hip to hip. He picks up my hand and places it so the thumb is on a white key that's next to another white one. \"Each finger has a number. The thumb is one, forefinger is two, and so on. That's how you know which finger to use, so you don't tie yourself in knots. CDEFG.\"\n\nHe guides my hand, playing each one. My blue nail polish is chipped. I'll have to ask Stacey for nail polish remover.\n\n\"What's that?\" Goose points to a burn scar on my finger, the one from the curling iron.\n\n\"Oh, it's weird. It's a burn. Violet could make appliances . . . turn on me. I know it sounds crazy.\"\n\n\"Nah.\" He strokes it with his finger. \"Poor little finger.\"\n\n\"It didn't hurt that much.\"\n\n\"Mom wants you to take out the garbage.\" Tony comes up behind us. \"And I'm supposed to practice.\"\n\n\"You could go a week without practicing. You only want to practice now because I am.\"\n\nTony grins. \"Recital's coming up.\"\n\nI stand. \"I'll help you with the garbage.\"\n\n\"No. You can't go outside,\" Goose says. \"It's not safe.\"\n\n\"I just feel like I should help more. Your family is helping me so much\u2014\"\n\n\"You helped me do a ton of chem busywork. It would've taken twice as long without you. I hate that crap. I'll be back in a few minutes.\"\n\n\"You're not going to watch me play, are you?\" Tony says.\n\n\"Only if you want me to,\" I tease.\n\n\"I don't.\"\n\nSo I go into the family room and watch a reality singing show __ with Stacey and Isabella. A few minutes later, Goose comes back in. He stands in the doorway, motioning for me to come over.\n\n\"Goose wants to talk to his girlfriend.\" Isabella giggles.\n\n\"Shh,\" Stacey says.\n\nI head over to him. \"What?\"\n\nHe pulls me away. I can hear Tony practicing an unrecognizable song for the tenth time.\n\n\"There was someone out there, watching me,\" he whispers. \"Don't go near the windows.\"\n\n\"Someone? Like who?\" I'm whispering too, so Stacey won't hear. Or someone outside.\n\n\"I don't know. I heard rustling. I saw . . . a shape. Our neighbor, she's outside gardening a lot, but not at night.\"\n\nHe's worried. So am I. If Violet's watching Goose, she's as good as found me. How would she, so quickly?\n\n\"I'll check,\" Goose whispers. \"I just want you to stay away from the windows, okay?\"\n\nThe doorbell rings. We both jump.\n\n\"I'll get it!\" Tony starts to get up.\n\n\"No! You keep practicing. You have a recital coming up\u2014and it's not sounding real good at this point.\" Goose walks to the door. \"And remember, no one's supposed to know about Celine being here.\"\n\n\"I know, I know,\" Tony says. \"It's your dear little sister that's going to be the weak link there.\"\n\nGoose waves him off. At the door, he says, \"Who is it?\"\n\n\"It's me,\" says Kendra's voice.\n\nGoose starts to open the door.\n\n\"Wait. How do we know it's Kendra?\" I ask.\n\n\"Only Kendra would know you know Kendra,\" she says from outside.\n\nGood point. Still, Goose opens the door warily.\n\nA woman who looks nothing like Kendra stands there, a blond housewife in yoga pants. She steps inside. \"Close the door.\"\n\nI do, and as I do, she melts into Kendra again, dark hair, purple-streaked, wearing a veiled black hat and high-heeled boots that make her look from the Victorian era.\n\n\"It's done.\" She looks at me. \"You're dead.\"\n\nI draw in a breath. \"You mean\u2014\"\n\n\"I mean Violet believes you're dead. I brought her the proof she sought.\"\n\n\"What proof?\"\n\nShe opens her hand. I step back. In her palm is an object, a finger. _My_ ring finger, wearing a turquoise ring my dad brought back from a trip to Arizona. The blue nail polish is chipped, and on the knuckle is a burn scar. I look at the finger that is still on my hand. They're identical, other than the blood.\n\nAnd suddenly, it all becomes real, too real. I feel a tightness in my throat. My vision looks black, gray, like someone is fiddling with the lights, and my head feels tight.\n\nAnd then, I'm on the floor. Someone is pressing a wet rag to my forehead. Someone else is holding me.\n\n\"Celine?\" It's Stacey who's cradling me in her lap. \"Are you okay?\"\n\n\"Yes, it was just . . .\" I search for Kendra. Gradually, she comes into focus.\n\n\"I shouldn't have shown it to you. Sometimes, I don't think.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" I say. _Yeah, seeing my severed finger was a little jarring._ \"Will it work? Will she believe I'm dead because of that?\" Stacey's stroking my hair like a mom.\n\nKendra says, \"She knows I'm a witch, so she knows I can make things up. But she trusts me. If she stops trusting me, she'll get suspicious.\"\n\n\"So that means\u2014\"\n\n\"It means I have to pretend I adore her when she completely disgusts me. Ah, well, if anyone can do it, I can. I've had centuries of practice.\"\n\nI take Kendra's hand\u2014the one that isn't holding my finger\u2014and squeeze it. I know I'm not the only one Violet has hurt.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nThat night, when I go to sleep, I dream of the orchard again. But this time, when I reach for the fruit, I fall from my father's shoulders to the ground, into a pile of apples, some ripe, some rotten. Down, down, I sink deep into them, and they multiply like cancer cells, massing around me, eating me alive. I look up, searching for my father's hand, but he is doing nothing to save me.\n\nI wake, sweating, sobbing. I reach out, searching for the nightstand, the clock. There is only air. Gradually, I remember where I am. Goose's house. Safe. For now. Objects take shape in the darkness. The buzzing of a thousand bees becomes a ceiling fan. A monster in the corner becomes Isabella's giant stuffed bear, the kind people win at the fair. I try to sleep, but now, I am awake. I can't listen to music because I left my phone with Kendra. I don't want to disturb the family, especially Isabella, but the more I lie here, the more terrified I become, thinking of Violet coming for me. Not only for me, but for Goose and his parents, his siblings, even little Jeron. I'm putting them all in danger. They are all at risk for me, and there's no end in sight. Kendra has no plan. Maybe I should run. Or just give myself up to Violet.\n\nIn the darkness, I climb down the ladder. My backpack is still there, packed. I take out jeans and a T-shirt, put them on. Isabella stirs in her sleep. I stand still until she settles back in. I pick up the backpack and my shoes.\n\nIn the family room, I sit on the sofa to put on my sneakers. I leave the lights off. I don't know where I'm going. I have my birthday money, over a hundred dollars. Maybe I could take a bus somewhere, somewhere far from Violet, then look for a shelter. I start to tie my shoelaces.\n\nThe lights go on, blinding me. I blink, then look toward the door. It's Mr. Guzman.\n\n\"Night owl, huh?\" he says.\n\n\"I had a nightmare. Then, I couldn't sleep, and I feel . . .\" I stop.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Nothing. Just insomnia.\" I know if I tell him I feel guilty about being here, he'll just try to reassure me, tell me how much they want me here. I am already taking enough from these kind people, who are risking so much for me. I don't need to burden them with my guilt too.\n\nHe says, \"Are you okay? What was the dream about?\"\n\nI notice he's dressed for the office already, carrying a briefcase. I remember what Goose said about how hard he works.\n\n\"I don't want to make you late,\" I say.\n\n\"I'm not late, I'm early. I like to read the paper when it's quiet. You're . . .\" He hesitates, looking me up and down. \"You sleep with your jeans on?\"\n\nI nod.\n\n\"Shoes too?\"\n\n\"I was just putting them on.\"\n\n\"I can see that. My question is why? I know you can't be thinking of taking a walk.\"\n\n\"I was thinking about leaving.\" It just pops out.\n\nHe doesn't reply, only nods. I add, \"I guess I just . . . I feel bad, making you hide me.\"\n\nHe shakes his head. \"You didn't make us do anything. We volunteered.\"\n\n\"I know, but\u2014\"\n\n\"But nothing. We're responsible for you. You think if you left, we'd just forget about you, like a cat that shows up on our doorstep for a while, then leaves?\"\n\n\"I guess not.\" I really thought he didn't want me to stay. I know Goose and Stacey pressured him to keep me.\n\n\"My wife and son didn't talk me into anything,\" he says, reading my thoughts. \"I'll admit I was . . . hesitant to take you in, but now that we committed, we're in this. If you left, we'd have to look for you. We couldn't just leave you out there on your own, in danger. The police would be involved. Do you want that?\"\n\nI shake my head.\n\n\"Me neither. So why don't you go back to bed for a while? It's not even six.\"\n\n\"Maybe I will.\" I stand and start to go.\n\nWhen I reach the doorway, he says, \"Celine?\"\n\nI turn back.\n\n\"I have a big trial today. I've been preparing for months, and my client stands to lose big if I do a bad job.\" He pauses, staring at my feet, still in sneakers. \"I don't have to worry about whether you're going to run away, do I?\"\n\n\"No, sir. You don't need to worry. Thank you.\"\n\nI go back to bed until Isabella wakes me, wanting to know if I can braid her hair. Goose has already left for school.\n\nI practice the piano all day, except when Jeron is asleep. That's when I make oatmeal cookies from the recipe on the box of oatmeal. I learn Tony's whole piano book. That day, after school, Goose brings me an _Adult All-in-One Piano Course_ book and a book of Jonah Prince's greatest hits. \"I stopped at the music store in Suniland. So you have something to write 'I heart Jonah' in,\" he says.\n\nI'd wondered where he went. I flip through the pages. It has \"Beautiful but Deadly,\" my favorite song, and all these pictures of Jonah.\n\n\"I heart your family,\" I say.\n\n\"You should've known we'd be awesome, having met me.\"\n\n\"I did. I just didn't know _how_ awesome. You're so lucky.\"\n\n\"We don't want anything to happen to you,\" he adds.\n\nI wonder if Goose's dad told him about my escape attempt. I hope not. I don't want him to know. And I don't want anything to happen to them either.\n\nLater, in my room, I cut one of Jonah's pictures out very carefully, with scissors, and tape it up next to my bed. A souvenir of the life I used to have, when I cared about things like rock stars.\n\nThat night, I don't have any nightmares. Instead, I dream I'm with Jonah. It's the same kind of weird dream I used to have, where he rescues me. This time, I'm a princess, like Sleeping Beauty, comatose in my golden bed. Jonah comes through the window and kisses me. I wake and gaze into his eyes. A handsome prince! He rescues me, taking me into his strong arms. We're in love, will be in love forever.\n\nOf course, I know it's not real. Still, I wonder if the dream means I'm safe.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nWhen you're little, you think it would be cool not to have school, to just sit home and watch TV all day, every day. When my mom was alive, and sometimes even in the early Violet years, I used to love staying home, eating soup, and watching _Fairly OddParents._\n\nLet me tell you: It gets old real fast. There's a definite limit to how many game shows, courtroom dramas, and soap operas a person can watch\u2014especially if that person isn't eighty years old. When you find yourself _really_ rooting for the uniformed soldier to win the hot tub in the showcase, __ it is time to turn off the TV.\n\nI do. I study for classes I'm not taking at school. I'm way ahead in Spanish. I research different ways to French braid Isabella's hair. I practice on her dolls. I bet she has the best hair at school. I listen to the Jonah Prince CD I made, and Goose loans me an old iPod he has. I make cookies almost every day, which makes me Tony and Tyler's favorite person. I also get good at the piano real fast. By the end of the first week, I can play Minuet in G __ by heart _._ But, when I tell Goose I want to learn _F\u00fcr Elise_ , he says I need to learn to play scales first.\n\n\"Okay, that should take a day,\" I say, feeling jazzed.\n\n\"You need to play them well,\" he says, \"two octaves, twelve different scales, and that's just the major ones.\"\n\nI roll my eyes. \"Fine. Teach me.\"\n\n\"You're welcome.\" He sits beside me on the piano bench. He's wearing some cologne that smells citrusy. Then, he starts in on C, showing me how to sneak my thumb under the first two fingers to reach the F. His hands are small, but he makes up for it with speed and skill, then he tells me to try. I do.\n\n\"Arch your hand more.\" He reaches for it, lifting my palm.\n\n\"Next, you're going to hit my knuckles with a ruler.\" I stare at my fingers, remembering the one Kendra held in her hand.\n\n\"Only if you don't practice the right way. Again.\"\n\n\"Such a power trip,\" I say. \"You've just been waiting for someone to boss around.\"\n\n\"Nah, I've had siblings for years.\"\n\nI've noticed that, since I've been here, Goose comes right home after school. I know he didn't before. He hung out with friends, went to their houses, played pranks at Target. Even Stacey commented on how much he's around. Thank God for Goose. I'd explode from loneliness if he didn't spend the hours after school with me. I don't care if I have to help him with his homework. I'd _do_ his homework for him if he wanted. He is my best, my only friend now.\n\nToday, I ask what I've been wondering about for weeks. \"So . . . why'd you and Willow break up?\"\n\n\"The F major is a little different than the first few,\" he says. \"You use the first four fingers, then roll the thumb onto the C.\"\n\n\"Goose?\" I say.\n\n\"I'm ignoring you,\" he singsongs.\n\n\"Fine. Don't tell me.\"\n\n\"It was mutual,\" he says. \"Now, you try.\"\n\nI start the scale, but I don't remember where I'm supposed to use my pinky. So I stop.\n\n\"So, okay, mutual's good,\" I say.\n\n\"Yeah, we _mutually_ decided that since she's a senior and I'm only a junior, and we're not in love or anything, she should date someone who'd look better in her prom pictures.\"\n\nHe plays the scale for me again, so I can see where my fingers go. \"You actually don't use your pinky at all,\" he says.\n\n\"You're kidding,\" I say. \"I mean about Willow, not the pinky. She said that to you?\"\n\n\"Not in those words.\" He points to my fingers, and I try again. I get it sort of right.\n\n\"What words, then?\" I cross my arms in front of my chest. I'm done playing until he talks.\n\n\"Well, for context, you have to know that when I took her to homecoming, her mom made me stand on a step stool for photos. And I was still a head shorter than her.\"\n\n\"That's because she's super-tall.\" When he gives me a look, I say, \"Well, partly.\"\n\n\"Oh, completely. It was definitely her freakish _tallness_ that was the issue.\" He stands up. Have I overstepped? But he says, \"So then, when I asked her about prom, she said she thought maybe she should go with someone else. Not anyone in particular, just 'someone else,' like anyone but me. Then, she said\u2014actual words here\u2014she didn't want me to have to find a tux because she knew it was hard for me to rent in my size.\"\n\n\"Seriously?\" I say. \"Well, it's her loss.\"\n\nHe shrugs like he did before, but doesn't sit down. \"I wasn't in love with her. She wasn't 'the one.' It just sucks to get dumped.\"\n\nI nod. \"She sucks. You'll meet someone better.\"\n\nHe sits back down. \"I guess.\" He gestures at me to try again.\n\nI do. This time, I get it perfect, but he yells at me to arch my hand. \"You're hitting extra notes with your palm.\"\n\n\"Okay, okay.\" I start again, arching my hand sarcastically high. Goose seems to think it's perfect.\n\n\"Good. Again,\" he says. When I start to play, he says, \"Sometimes, I get tired of always being the court jester.\"\n\nI'm not sure I heard him right, over the music. I stop playing. \"What?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"I think it was something.\" I cross my arms again.\n\nHe gestures for me to play again, but I don't, waiting for him to elaborate. He says, \"People only like me because I'm funny.\"\n\n\"That's not true.\"\n\n\"It is true. Like, last year, in English class, we had to write a poem and read it aloud. I don't know if you know this about me, but I write poetry.\"\n\n\"How would I know that?\" I start to play the scale again but also sneak glances at him out of the corner of my eye. He has strangely long eyelashes, and, in the lamplight, they make a shadow on his face like a moth flying.\n\n\"I guess you wouldn't,\" he says. \"But I do. This should have been an easy assignment. But I knew that, if I read some teen angst poem, or even something about a tree, people would've busted a gut laughing. It would have challenged their image of me in a way they wouldn't want it challenged. So I wrote a limerick and got a C. But at least when they laughed, they weren't laughing at me.\"\n\n\"Are limericks that easy to write?\" I finish the scale. \"I thought they were hard.\"\n\n\"They're easy if you write about a girl from Nantucket,\" he says.\n\n\"I'm surprised you even got a C.\" I laugh, but then say, \"Okay, so here's what I think about that. First off, you're too hard on yourself. People love you. You're super-popular. You could be class president if you wanted.\"\n\n\"Yeah, right. If they love me, they love me because I'm funny.\"\n\nI shake my head and go on. \"They like you because you're _fun._ You're the most fun person I know _,_ which is different than just being funny. Secondly, you don't know if they'd have laughed because you didn't give them a chance. You were the one who didn't want to challenge their image of you. You chickened out.\"\n\n\"I know what would've happened.\"\n\n\"Maybe. Maybe not. But third, you're probably right. You probably do have to change who you are some to be popular. Everyone does. When I was in middle school, Whitney and the mean girls wanted me to be in their clan. But they only liked me because of my looks, and I didn't want to be a mean girl. So I decided just to stop trying, not have a group. That's why I'm not popular.\"\n\nHe thinks about it, then says, \"Okay. But I wasn't _normal_ not popular before I changed. You could be popular if you wanted. Your looks are enough. My looks are another story.\"\n\nI nod, acknowledging that's probably true. I know what it's like to look different, but I can't pretend that being beautiful is the same\u2014at least outside of Violet's house.\n\nI say, \"Tell me about it.\" Because I know he wants to, even if he won't admit it.\n\n\"I'd rather teach you the G major scale,\" he says.\n\n\"Let me guess. One sharp, so it goes like this.\" I play exactly the same fingering as C major, but starting on G with the F a half step higher.\n\n\"That was right,\" he says, looking sort of stunned.\n\n\"I'm gifted,\" I tease. Actually, the G major scale was in my piano book, right before Minuet in G, and I worked on it. \"Now, tell me your sad, sad story, and I'll tell you mine. Bet I win.\"\n\nHe laughs. \"Challenge accepted. Okay. So, when I was a kid, I had no friends. Zero. I was smaller than everyone, and no one wants to hang out with the weird-looking kid. Occasionally, people would be _nice_ to me, like take obvious pains to include me, to show they weren't assholes. Or because their parents told them to. But I was never the kid who just got invited to hang out after school.\"\n\n\"That sucks,\" I say.\n\n\"It did. And there's more. Once, when I was nine, this kid, Coleman, invited me to his birthday party. I was excited because, usually, I didn't get asked. People would hand out invitations at school, and every boy would get one except me and this kid, Ricky, who picked his nose until it bled. But Coleman invited me. So I showed Stacey the invitation, and the next day, I told him I could go.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" I finger the G major scale again, to distract him from the fact that he's actually expressing an emotion for once, instead of being a total _guy_ like he usually is. \"So then what?\"\n\n\"He said, 'Oh, I only invited you because my mom said I had to ask all the boys.' I felt like someone kicked me in the stomach.\"\n\n\"Ouch,\" I say, wanting to reach back through time and hold that little nine-year-old boy's hand. But I play the scale again. I hate Coleman. I don't even know him, but I hate him.\n\n\"Yeah. Anyway, I wasn't really invited, so I didn't want to go. Obviously.\"\n\n\"Obviously.\"\n\n\"But I'd already told my mom about it, and I didn't want to tell her why I'd been invited either. She was so happy. She bought this big gift, a Lego _Star Wars_ starfighter set. So that Saturday, I faked a stomachache to get out of it. Stacey was so upset. She kept asking me if I felt better, telling me it was okay if I went late. She was worried I wouldn't get invited again if I blew it off. She was even a little mad at me. Finally, I told her the truth. Man, did that reek.\"\n\n\"What happened?\" Though I can imagine.\n\n\"She cried. She flat out bawled. She kept saying how cruel kids were, threatening to call Coleman's mom and tell her. I begged her not to. It wouldn't make things better. Finally, I told her to please stop talking about it. So then, she gave me Coleman's gift. I spent that day making a starfighter with my mommy because I had no one else to make it with.\"\n\n\"Stacey's the best, though.\" His story is so sad I sort of want to cry myself, but I suppress it. \"Do you want to show me A major?\"\n\n\"Nah, that's enough new stuff for one day. Work on those. Try with both hands.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" I start playing C major, but softly.\n\n\"Anyway,\" he continues, \"one day right after that, I told a joke in class, just by accident, said something funny. I don't even remember what. I'd been funny to my family all along, but never in school. I was too shy. But everyone laughed. Actual positive attention from my peers. I liked it. So, I decided I was going to be funny all the time. That weekend, I went to the library and got all these joke books and books of insults, and when I got to school, I started telling them. The first kid who insulted me, I said, 'You're so dumb, you're flunking recess.'\"\n\nI laugh. \"That's funny.\"\n\nHe rolls his eyes. \"Yeah. If you're nine, it's hilarious. Everyone laughed and started making fun of him, instead of me. So the next time someone insulted me, I said, 'Is that your nose, or did the _Millennium Falcon_ park on your face?' I thought of that one myself. I was a huge _Star Wars_ freak, and this guy had an enormous nose, so it was perfect. It was easy to come up with jokes when I did it ahead of time, not on the spot. And people laughed at that too. The next week, someone invited me over to his house for real, not just to be nice. It was the same guy I'd told the nose joke about. Turned out he liked _Star Wars_ too. And he respected me now.\"\n\n\"Or feared you,\" I say.\n\n\"Nah, we were friends. We still are. It was Tristan Hernandez.\"\n\nI gape. That was the guy who played Bill Sikes. Tristan's huge (as is his nose), and they're best friends. \"You're kidding.\"\n\n\"Nope. So ever since then, I've spent every spare moment thinking of funny things to say, coming up with pranks and stuff. It's hard work. But no one makes fun of me anymore. They want to be my friend. I'm cool. But they don't know the real me.\"\n\n\"Do I know the real you?\" I hold my breath, awaiting his answer.\n\nHe shrugs. \"This is him. You like him?\"\n\n\"He's a good piano teacher,\" I say.\n\nHe smiles, showing a dimple on one cheek, but not the other. \"Thanks.\"\n\nSilence. I want to say something else, tell him he's _not_ that ugly kid he obviously thinks he is, that he's funny and charming, but he's also handsome, especially when he smiles. Sure, the first thing I noticed about him was his size, but his beautiful, brown eyes were a close second. But that would be awkward, so instead, I just sit there with a dumb grin on my face, playing F major.\n\nThen, we both speak at the same time.\n\n\"Is the real you _ever_ funny?\" I ask.\n\n\"It's not that I'm never funny,\" he says, then laughs when he realizes what I've said. \"Of course I'm funny. I'm hysterical, obviously. Just not all the time. I have deep thoughts too.\"\n\n\"Got it. Deep thoughts. I'd hate to think it was all a lie. Can I read your poetry sometime?\"\n\nHe looks away. \"I shouldn't have told you about it.\"\n\n\"Why can't I?\" I stop playing and make my lips an exaggerated pout.\n\n\"'Cause it's embarrassing. What if you hate it? What if you think it's stupid?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't. I'm your friend.\"\n\n\"Right. Friends.\" He nudges me over and starts playing \"Clair de Lune,\" a piece he says he plays to relax _._ He's still not making eye contact. The music is soft and gentle, moonlight over a river. \"Okay, how about this? Someday, I might leave a poem lying somewhere, where you can find it. Just don't ever tell me you read it, okay?\"\n\nI roll my eyes. \"Guys are such idiots. Don't want anyone to know they have souls.\"\n\n\"Soul? What's that? I sold mine to the devil in exchange for piano-playing ability.\" He keeps playing, showing off, not looking at me. Now, the music sounds like falling water. \"Hey, this is huge for me. You're the only one I've ever said this to. You're the only one who knows the real me, the me that gets pissed off at the world sometimes, the me that thinks it's not fair.\"\n\n\"Life's not fair,\" I say. \"I know a lot about getting pissed off at the world.\"\n\nHe nods. \"I bet you do.\" He keeps playing, his arm brushing mine with each arpeggio, stronger, then softer, like a river, flowing toward the ocean, then crashing into rocks. For a minute, it's only the sound of the piano. The piano and our breathing.\n\nThen, at the highest point, he says, \"Okay, your turn. How old were you when your mom died?\" and I wonder if he's timed his question, as I timed mine, so I'll think he's not listening, concentrating on playing.\n\n\"Eight,\" I answer. \"So you were not getting invited to Coleman's party, and my mom was planning the Zoo Sleepover of Death. They said it was a freak accident\u2014I mean, she got attacked by a freaking monkey. One day, she was there. Then, she's gone, just like my dad.\" I suck in a shaky breath, closing my eyes and letting the music flow over me. It's so beautiful and a little sad. I still can't believe my dad is gone forever. I barely had time to process it before I had to deal with this, with Violet. \"It feels like I'm sleeping over a friend's house, and when I get home, he'll be there. I regret every time I stayed at Laurel's and wasn't with him. Who knew it was my last chance? Violet took it from me.\"\n\n\"You've been through a lot.\" Goose stops playing, giving me his full attention now that it's not about him. The silence seems louder where the music used to be.\n\nI say, \"When my mom died, people were really nice, at first. They brought so much lasagna our freezer was full for months. They offered to watch me after school. I had tons of invites. But then, it sort of stopped. It was like everyone forgot us. They'd do things with their families, and wouldn't ask us, even if they used to when my mom was there. The only one who was still friends with me was Laurel.\"\n\n_Laurel._ I swallow hard. Yesterday, Goose left his laptop on the kitchen table when he went to school, and I saw Instagram photos of Laurel and this girl, Britney, wearing matching pink shirts that said _Waiting for My Handsome Prince._ I bet they're going to the concert together too. Britney's willing to wear the lame-looking T-shirts, and she'll be sitting in my seat. _My_ floor seat with _my_ best friend seeing _my_ Jonah Prince. The concert's in two weeks.\n\nStill, I say, \"Laurel was my best friend, and her mom was my mother's best friend since they were kids. One day, I was complaining about how no one ever wanted to hang with me anymore. She was playing at our friend Cassie's house, but Cassie hadn't asked me.\" I start playing C major again, just with my right hand.\n\nI say, \"Laurel, she got this sort of weird look on her face. She said that Cassie had told her that her mom didn't want her to play with me anymore. Her mom said that when girls didn't have mothers, they went wild. She thought I'd be on drugs or something. I was eight, and her mom already had me pegged as a future crack addict. Laurel said she wasn't going to be friends with Cassie anymore either.\"\n\n\"So your mother was dead, and your friend ditched you too?\" Goose said. \"That's harsh.\"\n\n\"Friends, plural. All __ my friends ditched me. Maybe they weren't all as mean about it as Cassie, but they totally forgot about me. The only one who stayed with me was Laurel. I think maybe the others never really liked me in the first place. Their moms were friends with my mom. She was the leader of the Girl Scout troop. Once she was gone, they didn't care about me, and neither did their kids.\"\n\n\"How could they not like you?\" he says. \"You're so . . .\" He stops.\n\n\"Beautiful?\" I roll my eyes.\n\nHe shakes his head. \"That wasn't what I was going to say. I was looking for the right word.\"\n\n\"What word is that?\"\n\nHe thinks about it. \"Fierce. That's a word. You're fierce. People think you're like this fragile flower because you're so little and pretty. But you're really strong. You've been through all this, and it hasn't broken you. And it hasn't made you less sweet.\"\n\nWow. That's maybe the greatest thing anyone's ever said to me.\n\nI say, \"I guess they don't see that about me. And I don't even know if it's true. I feel so alone. My parents . . . my dad. I have nobody. Nobody.\" My eyes fill up with tears. They just do that randomly now, but usually not in front of anyone. Just out of the blue, I'll be wallowing in self-pity. I hate it, but sometimes I can't help it, with all that's happened. The piano keys swim before me so I can't see which is which.\n\nGoose sees. He puts his arms around me and pulls me toward him. \"You have me . . . us. I know it's not the same.\"\n\nI sniffle, then sob. His hold on me tightens. His arms feel so warm, and he smells of lemony cologne.\n\n\"I'm an orphan,\" I say. \"I wish I could just take care of myself.\"\n\n\"I'll take care of you. I'll get my parents to. They took in Tyler and Jeron. They can take you in too. It doesn't have to be temporary. You can stay here forever.\"\n\n\"That's crazy.\" But I remember what his dad said, about not treating me like a cat. Maybe it isn't crazy.\n\n\"It's not crazy,\" he says. \"It's okay. You'll never have to go back to her or anywhere you don't want. We'll take care of you, Celine. I know it's not the same as having your parents, but I . . . we'll love you, my family. You'll never be alone.\"\n\n\"But . . .\"\n\n\"Shh. Just stop . . . stop thinking I'm wrong, okay? I'm telling you the way it is. While I am around, you will never be alone. I know I'm not a big guy, but I'm big enough. We all are.\"\n\nHe takes me by the shoulders and backs off, making me look at him. His brown eyes hold conviction. He believes what he's saying. It's incredible. I've only known him a few months. Who knew there were people out there who were so kind? I'm not used to it.\n\n\"You're so . . . why are you so sweet to me?\"\n\nHe laughs. \"That's me, Mr. Sweet.\" He lifts a hair out of my eyes, wiping a tear. \"You win.\"\n\nI say, \"Win what?\"\n\n\"The pity prize. You said you were going to win, and you did.\"\n\n\"I don't want to win. I don't want pity.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nI bury my face in his shoulder and sob with abandon.\n\nHe holds me tight, and he lets me.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nThe days go by. Slowly. Stacey and Jorge attend spring concerts, and Isabella comes home with a dance recital costume that makes her look like a duckling. So cute! I help her sew the straps to be the right size. Tony's piano recital has happened. The school year is almost over. When Kendra had arranged for me to live with the Guzmans, we had agreed it would be temporary, a few months, a year at most. Then, she said, Violet would get past it, move on. Once I was off Violet's radar, Kendra would help me create a new identity, move me to a new town, get me a new family, sort of a Witness Protection Program with witchcraft.\n\nThe part I had pushed back in my mind, the part I'd avoided acknowledging, the part I'd definitely never told Goose's parents was this: Violet never \"got over\" anything. She hadn't gotten over her love for my father, whom she'd met at age ten. And she'd killed my mother years after she'd last seen her in high school. She'd stayed, like an alligator waiting, mouth open, for its unsuspecting prey, until my mother had felt safe. Only then did she strike.\n\nOf course, she thinks I'm dead. Maybe that will help.\n\nStill, it won't be as easy as Kendra thinks. I had secretly hoped to be able to go to the Jonah Prince concert with Laurel in June. But it's late May, and I haven't seen Kendra since the day I moved here. Will I never go to school again? Never have friends, other than Goose? Never have a boyfriend, marry, or have children, just stay here like one of those kidnapped girls who lives her whole life in someone's walls\u2014albeit with really nice people? Would that be enough for me? And what about the Guzmans? Always sheltering me, swearing the kids to secrecy about me, that had to be hard on them.\n\nOne day, after practicing _F\u00fcr Elise_ for two hours, I retreat to my\u2014our\u2014bedroom to listen to my Jonah CD. Goose is doing math homework, so I don't want to disturb him. I bring the book Goose got me, to look at the pictures. I wish I could get a copy of _J-14_ or _Tiger Beat_ that would be sure to have pinups of Jonah. But it's not like I can ask someone to buy me something so silly\u2014even with my own money. So all I have is the songbook. That, and my dreams.\n\nAt night, I listen to Jonah on my headphones, and I try to conjure up the dream I had about him again. I know it's just a fantasy, but my reality is so crazy-awful. But instead, I dream of apples, rotten, exploding apples. Lately, I've dreamed of being rescued, but the guy who saved me wasn't Jonah. At least, I don't think he was. I couldn't see his face. Still, I can feel my rescuer's arms around me, his lips on mine. I seek out his eyes and know that I am safe!\n\nOnly to be awakened by Isabella's snoring. They should take her to be allergy tested! Actually, something in the air is giving me allergies too. It hangs heavy, filling my lungs, making me feel like I'm half asleep all the time.\n\nMy fantasies are taking over my life, and I will go insane.\n\nCould work. If I'm locked in a mental institution, Violet won't find me. I could make friends, insane friends. I can grow old and fat, pretending I'm in Jonah's arms.\n\n_Le sigh._\n\nToday, I'm listening to \"When I See Your Face\" when Isabella comes in.\n\nIsabella is the one person who keeps me firmly grounded in reality. It's pretty hard to live in a fantasy world when a five-year-old keeps begging you to play with My Little Ponies. Fortunately, I really _love_ playing with My Little Ponies. Isabella insists on being Pinkie Pie, but she lets me be Rainbow Dash sometimes. I think it's important for her to learn to share. I gave Goose money to buy her Pinkie Pie's helicopter, from me, for her birthday.\n\n\"I like this song.\" She does a little dance around the room.\n\n\"Do kids your age like it?\" I ask, hoping they don't. If kindergarteners like the same music you do, that's bad.\n\n\"I don't think they've heard it.\" She points to the songbook in my lap. \"Who's that?\"\n\n\"That's Jonah Prince, the guy who sings it.\" I turn over the book so she can see the color photo on the cover.\n\n\"You have his picture up by your bed too.\"\n\n\"How do you know that?\" I ask, wondering if she had climbed up onto my bed. I knew she could. Last week, when she couldn't find her tap shoe, it had turned up under my pillow.\n\n\"I can see it.\" She points to the picture and, since I'm sitting on the floor, I can see it's clearly visible from her perspective. Which means Goose sees it too. At worst, he knows I ripped out a page of his gift. At best, he thinks I'm a lame fangirl who keeps a rock star's picture over her bed. Of course, he already knows I wrote Jonah's name on my notebook.\n\nOkay, so I _am_ a lame fangirl.\n\nThey said on _Entertainment Tonight_ (which I watch because I am now the only teen on the planet not on social media) that Jonah's dating this Teenz Channel star, Allegra Kendall. They also say he drinks and parties a lot. Not exactly my type, but it's his music I love. Besides, I know I'm not really going to marry him. I just want to go to his concert like a normal girl, and maybe fall in love with a normal boy someday. I'm not actually insane . . . yet.\n\nNow, Goose comes in, so he must finally be finished with his pre-calculus. \"Yay, you're done!\" I stand and try to block his view of the photo.\n\nHe looks at Isabella, who's still dancing. \"Did you ask her about the mangoes?\"\n\n\"What about the mangoes?\" I love the smoothies we make, but I thought we were out of frozen mangoes.\n\n\"Good news\u2014Mrs. Ozanich brought us new mangoes. They're ripe again. My mom wanted us to cut them up and peel them, to put in the freezer.\"\n\n\"Sounds like fun.\" If Goose said this, it would be sarcasm, but I actually like helping. Feels like earning my keep.\n\n\"Yeah, fun.\" Still, we head to the kitchen where the counter is stacked with a dozen mangoes, red, orange, and gold, and oozing sap. I think of my dreams, of the apples. Could these too all turn to muck and maggots? But I haven't had the dream in a few days. I feel safe. The mangoes are beautiful, the colors of sunshine.\n\nI pick one up. There are two peelers, and I hand one to Isabella. \"Do it over the sink,\" I tell her. Since the kitchen is fitted for smaller people, she can do this easily. It's harder for me. When I first moved here, I kept leaning on counters that weren't quite where I expected, but now I'm used to it. Still, I'll let Goose cut them up.\n\n\" _Ferris Bueller_ _'s_ on tonight,\" Goose says.\n\n\"What's a Ferris Bueller?\" I ask.\n\n\"Celine, didn't you ever watch TV?\"\n\n\"Maybe not as much as you did.\" Laurel and I watched a ton, but it was all stuff like _Bridezillas_ and _Say Yes to the Dress_ , __ stuff you wouldn't share with a guy friend.\n\n\"Cultural illiterate. Well, it's a John Hughes movie, the same guy who wrote _Pretty in Pink. Ferris Bueller's Day Off_ is my favorite. You have to watch it.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" I try to slide the peeler under the mango skin. It's not as easy to peel as an apple, but at least it stays whole in my hand. Suddenly there's a knock on the window.\n\nI look out. It's someone I don't recognize, an older woman, dressed up with a hat, like a Jehovah's Witness. But they usually come to the front door.\n\nShe mouths _Kendra_ so I understand.\n\nGoose sees too and starts toward the door. I glance at Isabella. Goose says, \"Hey, isn't your dance show on, Isabella?\"\n\n\"Mom says I have to do this, right?\"\n\n\"Nah, we got it,\" he says. \"Why don't you go watch?\"\n\nIsabella goes to the family room and, again, Goose starts for the door. But, then, Kendra is in the room.\n\n\"Oh!\" She puts her hand down onto a pile of mango peels. \"What a mess.\" In an instant, the mangoes are peeled and chopped, flying into the Ziploc bags we had for them, and the kitchen is cleaner than before.\n\n\"That's better.\" She turns to face us. \"I have good news. I think Violet has decided to move on.\"\n\n\"Really?\" That so does not sound like her.\n\nKendra nods. \"She was talking about taking a job transfer to another office, another city. She says no one in this town has ever liked her, so she should go someplace new. I encouraged her. I told her she could travel, as I had. We could even travel together. She agreed that she could forget Greg better if she didn't live in his house. Wasn't that emotionally healthy of her?\"\n\n\"Very.\" _It sounds fictional._ \"Other than the fact that she only got there by thinking I was dead.\"\n\n\"We take what we can get,\" Kendra says. \"She's applied for a job transfer. Once she leaves, I really think you can move on with your life.\"\n\n\"Move on?\" Goose asks. \"Like she can go back to school? And get a foster family?\"\n\n\"Well, she has to move, of course. Violet thinks she's dead. She can't just show back up at school. Violet would still be her guardian. She'd find out. I'll take Celine someplace far away and exotic, like France or Italy, or maybe Ohio.\" She touches my cheek. \"I've decided it would be safer if you live with me, like my daughter.\"\n\n\"Wow. France?\" Goose says.\n\nI look at Goose. I know he's thinking the same thing I am: We'll never see each another again. I'll miss him.\n\n\"It will probably be several weeks still,\" Kendra says. \"Don't get too excited yet.\"\n\nGoose looks down. \"No, not too excited.\" He turns to Kendra. \"Hey, you want a smoothie? We have all these mangoes.\"\n\nShe shakes her head. \"Can't. Allergies. But thanks.\"\n\nAnd, before I can say _Witches have allergies?_ she's gone.\n\nGoose looks up at me. \"I guess you can go to summer school now, to catch up.\"\n\nI nod and try to smile. \"Yup. In France.\"\n\n\"Maybe you could talk her into Ohio. At least they speak English.\"\n\n\"It's still really far from Florida.\"\n\nHe turns away and starts feeding mangoes into the blender. \"Yeah. Really far.\"\n\nWe make smoothies. They don't taste the same, though. Mangoes are usually sweet. These were so pretty, but they taste like turpentine. Then, we try to go into the family room like nothing is wrong. After all, nothing is. This is what I wanted, to be away from Violet forever, to be free. It's not like Stacey and Jorge were planning on keeping me forever. It's not like they need another kid to add to the five they already have. It's not like they'll miss me the same way I'll miss them. They have each other. It's not like\u2014\n\n\"Sit by me!\" Isabella shoves her mother over to make room.\n\nStacey and Isabella are watching a reality show _._ Jorge is on his laptop, and the boys have disappeared into their rooms. Since Isabella is taking ballet-tap, we've all gotten completely addicted to this show about dancers and their crazy stage moms. Now, one of the moms is threatening to quit because she doesn't like her daughter's costume.\n\n\"She quits every week,\" Stacey says.\n\nTwo grown women are screaming and stomping their feet. It's like a traffic accident. You can't stop watching. But I say, \"This is so nice.\"\n\n\"What is?\" Goose says. \" _Dance Moms_?\" The dance teacher is screaming at all of them.\n\n\"Just . . . this. Watching TV together. My family never did that. You're so lucky.\" Where will I be a year from now? With Kendra in Ohio? Or France? But I don't want to watch _Dance Moms_ with Kendra. I want to stay here and help Isabella do her hair every morning, help Goose with chemistry, learn to play something a little harder on the piano.\n\nStacey laughs. \"Well, you've come to the right place. That's all we do together around here, watch TV. Can't get anyone out for some exercise.\"\n\n\"You know, they've got power yoga on every day at six. I was thinking we could do it together.\" Maybe if I pretend I'm not leaving, I won't have to. Yeah, that'll work.\n\n\"That'd be cool,\" Stacey says. \"Maybe DVR it for Jeron's naptime.\"\n\nAfter _Dance Moms,_ the rest of the family goes to bed. Goose says, \" _Bueller_ time.\"\n\n\"You should go to bed too, Goose,\" Stacey says. \"Don't you have a test tomorrow in chem?\"\n\n\"Day after tomorrow,\" he says.\n\n\"Still, you need to sleep. Your grades are important to you. You want to get into a good college.\"\n\n\"We'll just watch half,\" he says. \"Please. Celine's alone here all day.\"\n\n\"Alone?\" Stacey laughs.\n\n\"You know what I mean. I just want to spend some time with my friend.\"\n\nStacey frowns. \"Okay. But just half the movie.\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\" Goose waits until she turns the corner into the hallway before he whispers, \"Nah, we're watching the whole thing.\"\n\n\"She's right, you know. You shouldn't ruin your GPA. Junior year is the most important for college.\"\n\nHe rolls his eyes. \"What you're not understanding is that I'm a genius. I get As without studying.\"\n\nI remember what Willow said about him not handing stuff in. \"Can you get them without sleep?\"\n\n\"Sleep's for babies. Sit down, and stop acting like my mother.\" He sits and pats the seat beside him. \"You're going to love this.\"\n\nI do. It's a funny movie about this cool guy, Ferris, who skips school with his girlfriend and his very reluctant best friend, Cameron. They outsmart his parents and the principal and go to a fancy restaurant, a baseball game, and an art museum.\n\nGoose says, \"It's true what Ferris said in the movie. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.\"\n\nI notice he's wearing that cologne again, the lemony one. Probably, whenever I smell lemons for the rest of my life, I'll think of him.\n\nI want to stay with him.\n\nI say, \"That is true. I probably haven't looked around much lately. Maybe once I stop hiding out in your house I could do that. Except I'll miss you.\"\n\nHe looks sad, then suddenly smiles like he's trying hard to. \"We should run away for the summer, go backpacking or something.\"\n\n\"My stepmother . . .\"\n\n\"We'll go someplace she'd never look, like the Grand Canyon.\"\n\n\"I'd like that. It's supposed to be beautiful.\"\n\nGoose glances at the TV. \"Oh, wait\u2014this is my favorite part. Ferris is in a parade.\"\n\nAnd then, in a second, he jumps up onto the coffee table, imitating Ferris. \"'And I'd like to dedicate it to a young man who doesn't think he's seen anything good today,'\" he lip-synchs with Ferris. \"Give me Izzy's hairbrush.\"\n\nI give him a look like WTF, but hand him the hairbrush. So when Ferris starts singing \"Danke Schoen,\" __ Goose does too. Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen. Thank you for all the joy and pain.\n\nI can see the actor, Matthew Broderick, on the television, and Goose doing a perfect imitation of his every expression, every gesture.\n\n\"You've obviously seen this movie a lot,\" I say, laughing.\n\nHe ignores me, still singing, \" _Danke schoen_ . . .\" and dancing. Then, he holds out his hand. I take it, and I dance with him. It's fun, and for a while, I forget that my life is a mess, that my family is gone, and I'm never going to go to school again. Goose is good at making me forget the bad stuff.\n\nHow will I live without him?\n\nBut that night, when I go to bed, I have another nightmare. Again, I'm picking apples with my parents. This time, when I pick the ripe, green apple, it turns black, then melts to molasses. The molasses spreads up my hand and turns my arm black. Then, my whole body. It consumes me until I am gone.\n\nI wake, remembering something: Violet's maiden name. Appel.\n\nViolet is the apples. They destroyed my family, and they will destroy me.\n\nThe dreams mean I will never be safe. She'll find me sooner or later.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nEven though I can sleep all day, I never get enough rest because my dreams keep me up all night, worrying, not just worrying about Violet and Kendra but worrying about the Guzmans, what they're risking, keeping me. Despite Jorge's assurances that they want me, I can't help but think they'd be better off if I just disappeared.\n\nOf course, if what Kendra says is true, I'll be disappearing soon anyway, and that worries me even more. Where will I go? Who will I live with? Will I ever have any friends? And what if Violet finds me anyway? I can put these questions out of my head in the day, but at night, they dance in my head like sugarplums on acid, keeping me awake for hours.\n\nBut, the night after _Ferris Bueller_ , __ I decide to turn in early, to read until my eyes shut without my help. I know Goose has that chem test the next day, and I want him to study. But when I get to our room, Isabella is still coloring.\n\n\"You should put that away,\" I say. \"Your mom's going to tell you to soon.\"\n\nIsabella has been very cutely obedient. Doing everything I say. Goose says, jokingly, it's because she looks up to me. I think it's just because I'm new.\n\nBut, apparently, the novelty has worn off because she says, \"I'll wait until Mommy tells me.\"\n\n\"And then, about ten minutes more, I bet. And then, she'll be mad and take away TV tomorrow. Don't you want to watch _Liv and Maddie_ together? It's our favorite show. Come on, I'll help you clean up.\" I start gathering her crayons. It's a big box with a hundred twenty, and I know she likes when I put them in rainbow order, so I start with the reds. \"You get the oranges.\"\n\nShe does. It takes forever because she's just a little kid and some crayons are in the middle between red and orange, like mango tango. Finally, she hands me the ten oranges, and I fit them next to the reds. \"Now, start on yellows, and I'll do greens.\"\n\nShe picks up a lemon-yellow crayon and holds it aloft.\n\n\"Do you love my brother?\" she asks.\n\nThe question startles me for a second, and the magic mint crayon slips from my fingers. Once I catch it, I consider her question. I know any answer I give will be trumpeted not only to her brothers but to the neighbors and everyone at her school. I also know that five-year-olds only define love one way: a boy and a girl K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Neither yes nor no will yield a good result.\n\nI think of Goose at the piano, playing music like falling water.\n\nFinally, I say, \"Of course I love all your brothers. And your mommy and daddy and you too.\" I pick up the screamin' green.\n\n\"I meant my brother Goose. Are you his girlfriend?\" she says.\n\n\"Silly!\" I laugh. \"We've never even been on a date. We're friends.\"\n\n_Blue violet, red violet, violet blue . . ._\n\nIsabella rolls her eyes. \"I mean\u2014\"\n\n\"Izzy! Time for bed!\" Stacey's voice mercifully interrupts us.\n\n\"In a minute!\" Isabella says.\n\n\"Now. Brush your teeth. I think I saw something crawling around between them earlier. I'm checking your toothbrush.\"\n\nIsabella thrusts the various yellows into my hand and walks out, huffing.\n\nAfter she leaves, I quickly gather the blues and violets and purples, then the neutrals. I'm in bed with my eyes closed and the pillow over my face by the time she comes back, safe from questions I can't safely answer.\n\nFortunately, she doesn't revisit the subject the next day. I feign sleep in the morning until she's gone. In the afternoon, I'm listening to Jonah when she gets home. She shares my Jonah obsession to a major degree now.\n\n\"He's soooo cute!\" she says.\n\nI laugh. \"You're, like, five years old.\"\n\n\"Six. You know I had my birthday last week.\"\n\n\"Okay, six. Sorry. You're not supposed to be obsessing over rock stars.\"\n\n\"Why not? You do.\" She turns away, singing \"Yes, Baby, Yes,\" and shakes her hair to indicate she wants me to braid it again. I oblige. I saw a style with a braid across the forehead, and I've been wanting to try it. I get her hairbrush and start brushing out her golden waves.\n\n\"Well, I'm older than you,\" I say. \"I've been obsessed with Jonah for, like, a year, and I'm getting less obsessed.\" It's true. Without Laurel's influence, it's less fun. \"Do you know I was supposed to go see him in concert?\"\n\n\"You were? Like, see him in person? Wow.\"\n\n\"I know. My friend Laurel and I got tickets the first day they went on sale. We had floor seats right near the stage where he could see us if he looked down, and we were going to make posters so he'd notice us.\"\n\n\"What were the posters going to say?\"\n\nI can't tell her about _Dare to eat a peach._ Not only will she not get it, but it also sounds completely stupid when I say it out loud. So I say, \"But now, Laurel's going with this other girl, Britney. It makes me so mad. I really wanted to go.\" I want to cry, not about Jonah. That was a complete fantasy. But about Laurel, being trapped inside, basically losing my life.\n\n\"That's what you're upset about? A stupid concert?\"\n\nIt's Goose. He was late coming home from school today, and I've been waiting for him. I finally mastered _F\u00fcr Elise,_ and I've waited to play it for him, my only audience. Now, he's standing in the doorway, staring at me with something like disdain.\n\n\"Jonah Prince, really?\" he says. \"You're stuck here all the time. You've had to quit school. My parents are taking risks having you here. I never go anywhere anymore, just so I can entertain you, and you're upset because you can't go see Jonah Stinking Prince and his diaper pants?\"\n\nHis words are like a bee sting, or a hundred. I turn on him.\n\n\"It's not the only thing I'm upset about, and you know it.\" Even more, I want to cry. Why is he being such a douche? Can't he see that Jonah is a _symbol_ of all those other things? Like having to go to Ohio or _France_ with Kendra. Like maybe never seeing him again? \"You don't have to stay home for me. No one told you to. Go out with your other friends if they're so great.\"\n\nHe looks at me, sucking in a breath. \"Maybe I will. And maybe if you'd stop playing his insipid music night and day, I could actually think straight and study.\"\n\nThe chorus of \"Yes, Baby, Yes\" is playing. Those are pretty much the only lyrics. It is insipid. Still, I say, \"You said you liked it. Were you just playing me?\"\n\n\"Yes. I mean, no.\" He rolls his eyes. \"I was being nice.\"\n\n\"Yeah, well, maybe you should keep _trying_ to be nice.\"\n\nHe stalks over and pulls the plug on the speaker. Isabella starts screaming that he's in her room. Finally, he leaves. I scramble up the ladder to my bed to cry, but not before I rip down the photo. I don't want to throw it out, though. It's from the book Goose got me. Even though Goose hates me, it has meaning. Instead, I hide it under my pillow. Isabella turns the sound back up as soon as Goose leaves, louder than before, so Jonah is screaming, \"Yes, baby, yes!\" but when I close my eyes, I can't picture Jonah's face, only Goose's face, disappointed and angry at me.\n\nStacey calls us for dinner, but I say I feel sick. I'm mostly embarrassed. When Isabella comes back to the room, I pretend I've gone to bed early, even though it's only seven and still light out. Eventually, she leaves.\n\nA little later, there's a knock on the door. I ignore it, even when I hear Goose's voice, saying, \"Celine? Come on, Celine. I didn't mean it. Come play the piano with me. Or just talk to me. Anything.\"\n\nI bury my head deeper under the pillow, ignoring him, even though I know I'm being a brat.\n\n\"Celine?\"\n\nI don't answer, and finally, he goes away.\n\nBut I don't sleep. I can't. I stay awake, listening to the muffled noise of the television, the whirr of the blender making more smoothies, the boys fighting and flushing toilets. Goose knocks two more times, and I want to talk to him, but now, I've pretended so long that I can't. Of course he was totally right. It's dumb to fantasize about a rock star I'll never meet. I know that. Eventually, Isabella goes to bed and all the noise gives way to the wind chimes on the patio and the stop-start of the air conditioner. I'm lying there, wide-awake.\n\nHours later, I hear a knock on the window.\n\n\"Celine?\" The voice seems to be coming from inside my head. Kendra.\n\nI slide down to the floor and pad toward the window in my bare feet. When I get there, I have to look down. She is disguised as Stacey. But her voice is still Kendra's.\n\n\"Celine? May I come in?\"\n\n\"Come in, then,\" I whisper. And immediately, she is there beside me.\n\n\"It's, like, midnight. What is it?\"\n\nShe melts into her own face and grows about a foot. \"I'm sorry, Celine. I think I was wrong last week. About Violet. She's not leaving.\"\n\n_What else is new?_\n\n\"And I think she might be onto me. That's why she lied. She may know I helped you.\"\n\nThis is worse news. \"So she knows I'm alive?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure. But you should definitely lay low.\"\n\n\"How much lower can I lay? I'm in total hiding.\" I have another horrible thought. \"Does she know I'm here? Are the Guzmans in danger?\"\n\nShe shakes her head. \"I don't think so.\"\n\n\"You don't _think so_?\" I glance at Isabella, sweet Isabella asleep in her bed, her French braids still intact. \"How about you _know_ instead of thinking? I can't put them at risk.\"\n\n\"I'll find somewhere else for you to stay, another place, another town. Just don't talk to anyone right now. Don't even trust me if I come to your window.\"\n\nI'm thinking maybe I shouldn't have trusted her in the first place, but I don't say it. She's trying to help. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't even know about Violet's intentions. I'd probably be dead. My head is awhirl with jumbled feelings, but mostly regret, regret that I have to leave here, leave the people I love, people who have protected me. Goose, whom I adore despite his recent meanness. Yet I don't see any other way.\n\n\"How will I hear from you?\" I ask.\n\n\"Through the mirror, only the mirror,\" Kendra says.\n\nAnd then, she's gone.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nI stumble back to bed and find the mirror under my pillow, as I knew it would be. But now I can't sleep at all. I have to go away. I have to leave to protect the Guzmans. It's not fair to them. I should rest up, then sneak away in the morning. It's hours before I sleep again, and then, I am awakened too soon, by a hand in the darkness.\n\n\"Celine?\"\n\nGoose. He's climbed up the ladder even though he's afraid of heights. He nudges my shoulder. I smell that citrus cologne he's been wearing.\n\nI have never been good at giving people the silent treatment. When Laurel and I would fight, we'd say we were never speaking again. That would last an hour. I can never handle someone I love being mad at me. One of the most heartbreaking things about my father's death is that I was so mean to him. I would have broken\u2014if he hadn't died. I don't want to leave on bad terms with Goose. I may never see him again.\n\nSo I say, \"What, Goose?\" not even sounding mad.\n\n\"I'm so sorry. I . . . it wasn't you. I had a crap day. I got a D on a pre-calc quiz.\"\n\n\"A D?\" He's good at math, usually. At least, he understands the chem math a lot better than I do. \"Ask if you can do extra credit, maybe.\"\n\n\"Yeah, maybe. That's not the point. The point is, I was a douche, and I'm sorry. I'm upset that you're leaving, mainly.\" He doesn't know how soon I'm leaving, and I decide not to tell him. He'll just try to get me to stay.\n\n\"Okay,\" I say. \"But listen. You can do stuff with your other friends, you know. Just leave me home playing ponies with Isabella. I like it, and I'm not going anywhere.\" A total lie.\n\nHe tries to brace himself on the rail of the bed. \"I know. I want to hang with you. Can't you tell that I . . . ?\" He stops, then drops down to the floor.\n\n\"Tell what?\"\n\n\"Nothing. I don't remember what I was going to say. But we have fun together, don't we?\"\n\n\"So much fun I ruined your grades?\" I know the D is because he was hanging out with me too much.\n\n\"That's my fault, not yours,\" he says. \"I know you're lonely, no matter what you say. I'm sorry you can't go to the concert. I know it was important to you.\"\n\n\"It's not that big a deal. I know the Jonah thing is stupid.\" He must think I'm such an idiot. \"I was more upset about Laurel. Laurel's going with someone else. It feels like she forgot all about me.\"\n\n\"No, she misses you.\" He kicks the floor. \"Shit. I forgot to tell you. I saw her the other day, and she said she misses you so much. She doesn't understand why she hasn't heard from you.\"\n\n\"Oh, wow.\" Now, I feel worse because she probably thinks I forgot all about her, and I can never tell her otherwise, tell her I miss her.\n\nFrom below me, Isabella yells, \"Would you guys be quiet! I'm trying to sleep. I'm going to tell Mom you were in my room.\"\n\n\"Okay, I'm sorry.\" Big talk from a kid whose hair I do three times a day. To Goose, I say, \"I'll come down.\"\n\nWe go to the kitchen, and over Cheerios, Goose says, \"Maybe they'll do one of those 3D concert movies next year, and I can take you to it.\"\n\nI smile. \"You're so sweet.\" Even though a 3D movie isn't the same as actually being in the room with Jonah. But I think of what Kendra said. By this time next year, I will be in some other place, far away from everyone I know.\n\nOr I could be dead.\n\n\"Listen, you'll get out. You'll come back here, or I'll go to Ohio. Or even France. We'll do stuff together. You heard what Kendra said. Violet will move on. No one's that crazy.\"\n\n_You don't know Violet._ \"You're probably right.\" I don't want him to worry any more than he already has.\n\n\"Of course I am. What are you doing today?\"\n\n_Leaving._ Suddenly, I just know it. I have to leave, have to protect them from Violet. That's more important than anything else, even than seeing him again. \"I don't know. I guess I'll practice the piano a lot. Your mom has a PTA meeting, and then, she's taking Jeron for a checkup, so I'll be all alone.\"\n\n\"I wish I could stay home with you, so you won't be lonely.\"\n\n\"I'm fine. Really. You should go suck up to your math teacher.\" _Forget me._\n\n\"I will.\"\n\nI watch him trying to catch a stray Cheerio that's floating away like a little life ring. This is probably the last time I'll ever see him. I stare at him, memorizing his eyes, his dimple, everything about him. I don't want to go. Yet, what choice do I have? A lock of hair falls into his face, and I reach to move it. He looks up at me, raising an eyebrow.\n\n\"Violet always told me people treat you better if your hair is neat,\" I say. \"Besides, it covers your beautiful eyes.\"\n\nI remember what Dorothy said to the Scarecrow: _I think I'll miss you most of all._\n\nHe smiles halfway. Our eyes meet, and for a second, we just stare at each other. He smiles big. \"Yeah. My hair should be more of a priority, I guess. I should get going.\"\n\nBut he stands there, still staring. Suddenly, I want to tell him lots of things, that I don't really care about Jonah, for one. That no one in my entire life has ever been as nice as he is, for another. It's weird that you can just meet someone, and right away, they mean so much to you. But if I say that to Goose, he'll know something's up, that I'm running away, and I don't want him to know. I don't want him to stop me. I don't want to leave, but I have no choice.\n\nI wish I could stay here. With him. Forever.\n\nSo I wait until he's picked up the cereal bowls and is on his way out before I say, \"I really appreciate everything you and your family have done.\"\n\nHe shoulders his backpack. \"Please stop thanking me. Anyone would do this, anyone decent.\"\n\n\"Guess I don't know many decent people.\"\n\n\"Why don't you get some more sleep?\" he says. \"I'll see you later.\"\n\nIt's just barely light out. I say, \"Okay.\" I want to hug him, feel his arms around me one last time. But, instead, I wait until he closes the door, then go back to my room.\n\nI watch him out the window, feeling like my bones may crumble, as he runs to his car in the morning rain. Then, I watch the car's taillights get smaller and smaller until they disappear entirely.\n\nI lie in bed, tears running down both cheeks, my fist in my mouth so as not to wake Isabella with my sobs. I will never see him again.\n\nAnd he is the only one who ever rescued me, truly rescued me when I really needed it.\n\nI sleep, fitfully, dreaming of apples, exploding like the bomb at Hiroshima, taking me up in a mushroom cloud to the top of the world. The dreams make me sure that leaving is the only way. I'm not safe. Nothing will make me safe. At least, if I leave, I won't endanger others. I can't put the family I've come to love in danger.\n\nWhen I wake, Isabella is gone, Stacey and Jeron and the boys too. I'm sorry I can't say good-bye to them, but I can't. I stuff my few possessions back into my backpack. I take the songbook Goose bought me, not as a souvenir of Jonah, but as a souvenir of Goose, of our time here.\n\nI go to the bathroom to brush my teeth.\n\nOn the counter, I find a sheet of paper.\n\nIt's a poem, the poem Goose said he'd leave for me someday. I see the title, \"Going to Target With Her.\" I smile and feel like I'm about to cry at the same time. It's about that day at Target, with Willow. I'm a little surprised that he would write a poem about Willow, or leave it for me, when he said he wasn't in love with her, when she dumped him. Then, I read it.\n\nGoing to Target With Her\n\nGoing to Target with her\n\nDriving the ass-backward long way to Target to spend more time with her\n\nRather than cramming for the test I need to ace\n\nTime I couldn't have gotten otherwise\n\nAt Target with her\n\nTrying on cheap, stupid, beautiful red and purple Target hats,\n\nTrying to make her laugh and pose for pictures I take\n\nTelling her we're there for a different reason\n\nLying that we're there for a different reason\n\nWhen really, I just want to be with her\n\nAt Target with her\n\nHoping her tiny, white butterfly hand will brush against mine across the displays of socks and gloves,\n\nAnd she'll see me differently.\n\nDifferently than everybody else.\n\nBut she doesn't.\n\nTaking pictures of her trying on stupid hats\n\nTaking selfies, but really, training my phone on only her\n\nAt Target with her\n\nGoofing around in frozen foods\n\nAt Target with her\n\nHer and another girl, the girl I was supposed to be at Target with\n\nThe girl I used to think I maybe liked until the first day I met her, the first time I heard her voice, the first time I talked to her\n\nAnd I knew\n\nThat she was the arrow that hit the target that was my heart.\n\nThe paper smells like his cologne, just a little. Underneath the poem is a photo, a selfie Goose took that day. He'd taken it of all three of us, but in the photo, you can only see part of Willow's arm.\n\n_Training my phone on only her._\n\nI stare at it a second, realizing that I, not Willow, am the \"her\" of the poem. The poem is about me, about that day at Target. _Driving the ass-backward long way._ I remember how long it took to get there and, especially, back, how Goose made a wrong turn on the way from Willow's house to mine. Stupid. He asked me to go because he liked me.\n\nMaybe loved me.\n\n_Loves me._\n\nI remember what he said about showing me his poetry: \"Okay, how about this? Someday, I might leave a poem lying somewhere, where you can find it. Just don't ever tell me you read it, okay?\"\n\nBut how could he expect me to say nothing?\n\nI sink to the floor, reading it over and over to see if I could be wrong, yet I know I'm not.\n\nI wanted to leave today, right now, to protect him, his family, from Violet. I love them and need to protect them. This makes it worse. He endangered himself because of how he feels about me. Yet how can I leave without talking to Goose? If I leave, he'll think I ran away because of the poem. But that's not it at all. Not at all.\n\nThe doorbell rings. My pulse quickens. Is it him? I know he skips sometimes, or takes \"personal days.\" But he wouldn't ring the doorbell, unless he forgot his key. I want to see him again, so much. Maybe he did forget his key. I'll check. I start for the door, then go into the bathroom to put the poem back where I found it, facedown on the pink tiled counter. Maybe he changed his mind about showing me. Maybe he came home because he wants to get it back. I sprint for the door.\n\nBut when I bend to look out the peephole, I see only an old woman holding a Publix grocery bag of mangoes, standing in the rain.\n\nKendra.\n\nI have to get her to help me leave tonight, after I talk to Goose. I open the door.\n\nShe looks confused. \"Who are you?\"\n\nNot Kendra.\n\n_Through the mirror, only the mirror._ That's what Kendra said. But this isn't Kendra. She must be the neighbor, the nice lady with the mangoes. I make up a name. \"I'm, um, Mary, the Guzmans' cousin. I'm staying with them awhile.\"\n\n\"Pretty girl.\" With her free hand, she reaches out to touch me. She is old, with wrinkles atop her wrinkles, white hair piled on her head. I back away. Stupid. She's just an old woman, a _nice_ old woman. I step forward, letting her touch me. The rain is falling, but she doesn't seem to care.\n\n\"Thank you, ma'am. Stacey's not home.\"\n\n\"I came to bring her these.\" With great effort, she lifts the bag of mangoes. \"Do you like mangoes?\"\n\n\"I do.\" They smell overripe, rotten. \"We've been making smoothies from them.\" I start to take the bag from her, but she pulls it away.\n\n\"Have one plain.\" She reaches into the bag and takes out one that is mostly scarlet, about the size of her clawed hand, perfectly firm with no brown spots. \"Nothing like a mango, fresh from the tree, juicy . . . succulent.\"\n\n\"Thanks. I'll have it later.\"\n\n\"Oh. Okay, if you don't like them.\" But she keeps holding it out in her veiny, spotted-brown hand. \"I always save the nicest ones for my neighbors, and this is the best one of all. Isn't it pretty?\"\n\nI nod. It is beautiful, so red it almost glows. The most beautiful mango I've ever seen.\n\nThe old woman is looking down. She drops the hand holding the mango, slowly. \"It's just, they don't last very long.\"\n\nIt's so ruby red.\n\n\"I . . . okay. I'll try it.\" I hate to hurt her feelings. She seems like a nice old lady.\n\n\"Just one bite. You've never had one fresh picked, I'll bet. Why, when I was a little girl, we used to put a straw right into them and drink the nectar. You should try that.\"\n\n\"I don't think we have a straw, but another time.\" I reach for the mango. It is hot, probably from the sun, though it's morning, and the light isn't too bright yet. I examine its surface, looking for the perfect place to bite. It is smooth as porcelain, red and yellow as flame, no green, every part as perfect as the next. \"Looks yummy.\"\n\n\"Try it then. It won't make you fat, if that's what you're worried about.\" She laughs.\n\nHer lips are so wrinkled, and there are hairs sprouting atop them. Suddenly, I don't want to bite it, but what else can I do? Throw it back into an old woman's face? Just a small bite. I choose a red part and sink my teeth into the thick flesh. The bite mark shows a crescent of yellow, like the sun.\n\nOnly after I've bitten it does the old woman look up at me. I notice her eyes. They're not old at all, and they're familiar, so familiar.\n\nIt's the color. They're not blue.\n\nThey're violet.\n\nThe bite of mango catches in my throat. I choke as I fall to the ground.\n\nI hear her laughter.\n\n# PART 3\n\n# _Goose_\n\n#\n\n#\n\nI decided yesterday in chem that I was going to stop being in love with Celine.\n\nOkay, that sounds a little arbitrary, but life is arbitrary. It was arbitrary life that put her in my path, that made her audition for that play, that let me fall in love with someone so completely unattainable.\n\nAnd I need to butch up. My grades are sucking wind. I'm getting a C in pre-calc because I can't stay awake in class. Every day, I sleepwalk through school, just waiting for the time when I can go home, when I can see her, talk to her, stay up all night watching John Freaking Hughes movies with her, hoping our hands will meet across a bowl of cut-up mangoes or teaching her piano just so I can sit next to her on the bench.\n\nAnd every night, I crawl into bed an hour before I have to be up for school, wondering why I haven't told her how I feel.\n\nBut really, I know.\n\nI'm afraid. Who wouldn't be? What guy wouldn't be scared to declare his love to the most beautiful girl on the planet\u2014a girl who could have anybody, even a rock star? Why would she want _me_?\n\nBut maybe she could. Maybe she appreciates my intelligence, my talent, my sense of humor, my low center of gravity. Maybe she's special enough to see who I really am.\n\nSo, yesterday, I made my plan. I would walk in there, find her, and say, \"Celine, I love you.\" No. Too bold. Maybe I'd say, \"Celine, I was thinking I'd like to make you dinner. No, not mac and cheese, but something special, a special dinner for the two of us, like spaghetti with crumbled-up hamburger in the sauce, like my mom makes. Okay, maybe my mom will just _make_ it for us, but then, she'll leave us alone so we can have dinner together. Like a date? Yes, like a date. Actually, a date.\" I could say that, couldn't I?\n\nMaybe.\n\nYes. Yes, I could ask her out. Or in. I've asked girls out before. That wasn't scary. And they've accepted. I didn't have to declare my love for her and ask her to marry me. In fact, that would be creepy since I'm only seventeen, and it's not 1940. I could just ask her on a date. What was there to lose? I was, after all, saving her life by hiding her from her wack job stepmother. That had to be a point in my favor, a way out of the friend zone and into the end zone. And, if I asked her out, and she laughed at me, I could just pretend I was kidding. I'm a super-big kidder.\n\nI decided that's what I would do.\n\nThe experiment about acids and bases, the pre-calc class, and the reading of _The Kite Runner_ all sort of ran together after that because I was contemplating the possibility, the impossibility that she might actually love me. It wasn't so crazy, was it? I was a great guy. And she had said herself that she thought that Andie should have ended up with Duckie. I was confident that I was at least as good-looking as Duckie.\n\nI mean, if Duckie was four foot five inches tall.\n\nBut, except for that, I was actually better looking than Duckie. I didn't have that 1980s bouffant hairdo that you could tell had been weird even then because the cool guys in the movie didn't have it. And hadn't Celine herself said I had beautiful eyes? I do have beautiful eyes.\n\nA year after _Pretty in Pink_ , John Hughes did another movie, _Some Kind of Wonderful,_ about a guy who falls in love with the popular girl, ignoring his tomboyish female friend, who adores him (and who was actually hotter than the popular girl, but I digress . . .). But in the end, he realizes it's the nerdy friend he wants. _Some Kind of Wonderful_ ends the way _Pretty in Pink_ should have, with the hero, Keith, running after Watts and giving her \"a kiss that kills.\"\n\nThat's how I wanted my story to end too.\n\nI was actually semi-confident, but when I went in to talk to her, she was babbling about how much she loved Jonah Prince, how she wanted to go to the concert so she could meet him. I pictured his eyes (under one of his stupid backward baseball caps), meeting hers across a crowded stadium, and I remembered one universal truth:\n\nGirls like hot guys.\n\nAnd a second truth:\n\nI'm not one.\n\nSo I sort of freaked out on her, which was stupid because it wasn't her fault. But we made up this morning, and everything is fine. But then, I had to leave that stupid poem in the bathroom. I thought it would be easier than telling her how I felt, but now, I realize it's worse. Because, if she doesn't feel the same way, there's no way I can back out, no way I can laugh it off and say I didn't mean it. It's there, in black-and-white. I wrote a _poem._ About her. And if she thinks I'm a pathetic loser, I can never go back.\n\nSo the question is, what kind of drugs was I on when I thought leaving that poem was a good idea? Like, did Stacey spike my cereal milk with absinthe? What other explanation could there be?\n\nSo, even though I _need_ to go to school to keep from actually failing math, I turn around and head back home. I consider calling my mom. I could ask her to find the poem, to rip it up before Celine sees it. But I don't want her to read it either, don't want her to know about it and think, _Isn't he cute_. So I wait at McDonald's until it's time for her to take my brothers and sister to school, and then, I head home. Hopefully, I can pick up the poem before Celine wakes up.\n\nAnd then, I'll tell her in person or maybe just walk up to her and kiss her, which somehow works for guys on sitcoms.\n\nSure, maybe. Ten years from now.\n\nBut, when I get to the house, something is different. The front door is open. It's raining and the rain has come in. There are mangoes, red and gold, scattered down the steps.\n\nThen, I see Celine.\n\nShe's spread out across the entranceway, her feet against one wall, her body slumped against the other, like she's just asleep. But no one sleeps getting rained on.\n\n\"Celine!\" I run toward her through the driving Miami rain. \"Celine!\"\n\nShe doesn't move.\n\nI grab her wrist and, at the same time, put my head against her chest, hearing her heartbeat, feeling her pulse. She isn't dead. She isn't dead!\n\nYet, she isn't moving.\n\n\"Celine!\" I start to shake her hand, furiously. I get closer to her ear. \"Celine, wake up! Wake up!\"\n\nShe doesn't move. I have to call my mother, or maybe 911. I take out my phone. My hands are shaking as I dial it. I look around as it rings.\n\nA shiny red-gold mango lies by Celine's bare feet. It has one crescent-shaped yellow bite missing, just one. How did it even get there? She must have opened the door to someone. Why did she open the door? She knew not to!\n\n\"You have to help me,\" I tell the 911 lady. \"I think she's been poisoned!\"\n\n\"Who's been poisoned?\"\n\n\"My . . . friend. She was lying on the floor when I got home. Send someone quick.\" I can barely remember my own address. It's like everything that's happened before this moment has been a dream.\n\n\"Okay. Is she breathing?\"\n\n\"Yes! Yes, but she's not conscious. She's lying on the floor. Send someone quick!\"\n\n\"Someone is coming, sir. Did she hit her head?\"\n\n\"I told you. I think she's been poisoned. Hurry!\"\n\n\"What do you think she ingested?\"\n\nI look at the mango. It's crazy to say I think she had eaten a poisoned mango, but what else could it have been?\n\n\"This is going to sound crazy, but there's a mango here, and I think it might have been poisoned.\"\n\n\"A mango?\" the lady says, like it's the most normal thing in the world. \"Does she have allergies?\"\n\nI hadn't thought of that, but I say, \"She eats them.\"\n\n\"Is it stuck in her throat? Did you attempt to remove the obstruction?\"\n\n\"No. I mean, I don't know if there's an obstruction.\"\n\nShe tells me to sweep my finger through Celine's throat to see if there's something stuck in there. I slide Celine's head onto my lap, then ease my index finger between her lips and into her throat. _Shit, please don't die._ She gurgles a little, but there's nothing there. \"Please hurry!\"\n\n\"They're coming, sir. They're on their way. Don't hang up.\"\n\n\"No, there's nothing there. I'm sorry.\" I hold Celine tight.\n\n\"It's okay. They're coming. She's still breathing?\"\n\n\"Yes. Yes.\"\n\nShe asks me some other stupid questions, who Celine is, who I am. Finally, I hear the siren in the driveway. I watch as they take over, then take her away.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nAccidental overdose. That's what the paramedics and, later, the doctors at the hospital, think it was, and that's how they treat it. I know it was neither, but they won't listen to a kid. They do all the stuff I already did. They check her vital signs and hook her up to a bunch of tubes, then take her to the hospital. They pump her stomach, give her charcoal. The whole time, I feel like it's _me_ they're hooking up to all these machines, me who can't speak or move, who's clinging to life. They ask me questions I can't answer. They want to know what I think she OD'd on. Nothing, I tell them. I tell them to test the mango. I brought it with me. They act like that's crazy.\n\nThey also want to know where her parents are. \"She doesn't have any,\" I tell a nurse for the fourth time. He's a burly Cuban guy twice my size. They've wheeled Celine out, away from me, into some curtained-off area where I can't see her anymore. I wonder what they're doing to her. \"Her parents are dead. She lived with her stepmother, but she was abusive. She took her out of school. If she came to my house, she was probably running away.\"\n\n\"Do you know where she lives?\" the nurse asks.\n\n\"No, um . . . I was at her house once, but I don't really remember.\" Not that I drove by there twenty or a hundred times or anything. But I'm buying time. If Violet comes, maybe she'll finish her off. She could tell them to unhook her oxygen. Or unhook it herself. Or put something in Celine's tube. Or use magic to kill her and make it look like an accident. I'm hoping maybe if I say she was abusive, they won't let her in. And it's not a lie anyway.\n\nThe nurse turns over the clipboard he had all ready to write the information. \"Okay, let me know if you remember. The police will probably want to talk to you too.\"\n\nThe police? Maybe they are taking this seriously. \"Then I should probably wait until my parents get here.\"\n\nMy mom shows up soon after, then Dad. Dad says they can try to file papers to become Celine's guardians. He says I did good, even though I was skipping school and what's that about. He also says we probably have to tell them about Violet.\n\n\"But she'll kill her, Dad.\" I picture Celine, before they took her away, so white and still. \"She already almost died.\"\n\n\"We won't let her,\" he promises.\n\nI give them Violet's name and address. I actually don't know if they have a landline, or any phone number. Celine would know, but she's suspended in some still, white place with too-little air. \"She's a really bad person, though. Celine was afraid of her.\"\n\nThat's completely true. I remember something Celine showed me once, that first day we played the piano.\n\n\"Violet burned her. Celine showed me the scar. It's on her ring finger.\"\n\nAnd that's when Violet walks into the emergency room.\n\nAnd starts crying.\n\nAnd begs to see \"my darling, darling Celine.\"\n\nI try to follow her when they take her out, but the nurse stops me. \"Family only,\" he says.\n\nBut Violet says, \"It's all right. He saved her, didn't he? He was like a brother to her.\"\n\nI stare at her. She knows why, and she stares back. As she does, her eyes turn from blue to brown, then back again.\n\nKendra.\n\nKendra with Violet's ID and insurance cards . . . and her face.\n\nI breathe in, a shaky breath, and follow her into the curtained area where Celine lies. \"We're going to admit her to the ICU,\" the nurse says. \"We don't know what she ingested.\"\n\n\"Try everything,\" Violet\/Kendra says. \"It might be something you don't suspect. May I speak to a doctor?\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am. Just a moment.\" He excuses himself and is gone.\n\nI stare at Celine. Her face is white as her pillowcase, and she doesn't look sick, only sleeping. She is so beautiful, her dark hair fanned out beneath her, a frame for her doll-like face. Celine hates being called beautiful. She says people judge her for it as much as they'd judge someone else for ugliness. But her beauty is so undeniably . . . there. Of course, it's the first thing you see. But, gradually, as I've gotten to know her better, I've forgotten it, forgotten how frightening that beauty is. She's become just Celine, a girl I know, the girl I love, Celine in motion, talking, singing, playing with my sister, lusting after Jonah Prince.\n\nNow, a motionless shell, the outer beauty is all that's left. It crashes over me like a wave, taking me down into it. I'm choking, drowning.\n\nCeline's beauty isn't what I love about her. It's what I hate about her because it's what makes her so unattainable. I love the girl inside, but I'll never have her.\n\nNow, it's more than her beauty that makes her unattainable. What if she never wakes up?\n\nWhen I first noticed her, it wasn't because of her looks. Well, not _just_ because. It was because she was really brave, really fierce. She stood up to a roomful of sophomores who were picking on this stuttering substitute. She shamed us all, including me. I should have done what she did, but I didn't want to stand up to my friends. From that day on, I wanted to know Celine Columbo. It took a year, but when I finally did, she was everything I'd imagined. She was beautiful on the inside, like those ABC Family shows say you're supposed to be.\n\nAnd now, she's dying. I reach out my finger and touch a little peach-colored freckle on her arm right above where the tube goes in.\n\n\"Ahem.\" Violet\/Kendra interrupts my drooling reverie. I look up at her.\n\n\"Why is she like this? I thought Violet wanted to kill her. I mean, not that I want her dead, but this . . .\" I jut my hand toward Celine.\n\nI hate that Kendra looks like Violet.\n\n\"Violet did try to kill her. She didn't die because I used enchantments to protect her as best I could. But I couldn't defend her completely, and I can't wake her.\"\n\n\"What can?\"\n\n\"Violet, of course, but that isn't going to happen.\"\n\nNo, it's not. \"Anyone else?\"\n\nViolet\/Kendra shakes her head. \"I don't know. Usually, with spells, there are hoops to jump through. The feather of a golden bird, the scale of a dragon, but until someone tells you . . .\"\n\n\"You don't know.\" I look back at Celine. Her chest rises and falls with her breathing. She's still breathing, but for how long? \"Is there a time limit? How long will she stay like this?\"\n\n\"Indefinitely, as long as she's nourished and hydrated. I assume they'll feed her intravenously.\"\n\n\"So someone could just tell them to disconnect it.\"\n\n\"Someone could.\"\n\nWe exchange a look. We both know who that someone is.\n\nEarlier this week, I was playing the piano with Celine, sitting beside her on the bench, our hips touching, her hand so close to mine. Why didn't I take her hand? Why didn't I beg her to run away with me, someplace where no one would find us?\n\n_Because I'm just a kid. I can't do anything._\n\n_I have to do something._\n\n\"I have to talk to her,\" I say.\n\n\"Talk to . . . ?\"\n\n\"Violet. The real Violet.\"\n\nViolet\/Kendra shakes her head. For a moment, I see a glimpse of her real self. \"You're getting overconfident, talking to me disguised as Violet. The real Violet won't speak to you, much less do what you ask.\"\n\n\"Maybe she will.\"\n\n\"Maybe all the world's children will join hands and sing 'Kumbaya,' but it's unlikely,\" Kendra says. \"I've been trying to talk to her for weeks. You see where that's gotten me. And she likes me.\"\n\n\"What do you think I should do then? Just leave Celine here to die? Or stay in a coma for the next fifty years?\"\n\nI look at Celine again. I remember that day she came over, right after her father died. She fell asleep almost in my arms. I'd watched her sleep for over an hour, and it gave me hope. She felt that comfortable around me. Maybe I'll never have what I want, but just knowing that Celine is alive on the planet makes the world better. At least my world.\n\nKendra's smile is sad. \"No, I guess not. You love her very much, don't you?\"\n\n\"Is it that obvious?\"\n\n\"I saw it that first day at Target. That's how I knew you would help her.\"\n\n\"I'd do anything for her. I mean, I'd prefer not to die for her, but if that's the risk in talking to Violet, I'll take the risk.\"\n\n\"Don't take unnecessary risks, though,\" Kendra says. \"Talk to her in a public place, her office building or the train station.\"\n\nI hate the Metrorail station. It's an elevated train with views of the city, and I can't stand on the platform without holding on to a wall the whole time. Even then, it's terrifying. \"Where does she work?\"\n\n\"I'll show you. And take this with you.\"\n\nFrom nowhere, she produces a silver mirror with a handle. It's about a foot long, and when she hands it to me, it weighs maybe ten pounds.\n\n\"What's this for?\" I ask.\n\n\"If you look into it, you can see whoever you want. We can stay in touch that way.\"\n\n\"You don't have, I don't know, a phone?\" I turn the crazy thing over. It looks like Marie Antoinette might have owned it, all curlicued and fancy. And I'm supposed to talk into it?\n\n\"Sorry. I can't make that kind of technology. Mirrors are easier. If you get in trouble, let me know. Otherwise, try not to let Violet see it.\"\n\n\"Why? What will happen if she does?\"\n\n\"Bad things.\"\n\nShe doesn't elaborate any more than that. I probably don't want to know.\n\nI take Celine's hand. It's tiny and white, with little pink nails like shells. And it's cold. I clutch at it, warming it up. Finally, the orderlies come to wheel her to the ICU.\n\n\"What's your plan?\" Kendra says as she leaves.\n\nI laugh. \"I wish I had one.\"\n\nBut it's really not funny because my whole plan is just to talk to Violet. What else can I do?\n\nAnd yeah, I'm terrified. But I'm more terrified of what will happen if I do nothing.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nViolet's office building turns out to be a skyscraper with balconies, way worse than the train station. Until I change my mind and go to the train station. Then, that's worse. The escalator going up is three stories high with soaring views of the surrounding tall buildings. And by \"soaring,\" I mean sickening. My stomach feels like I swallowed a wad of chewing gum. A quarter of the way up, I picture myself plummeting from the height, tumbling over and over to the ground, then farther, down to hell. Halfway up, I picture myself jumping. I close my eyes, remembering a news story I saw once about a guy who fell twenty-three stories through what was supposed to be a stable glass floor at a hotel.\n\nAbout me and heights: I avoid them. Florida is a flat place, so it's not that hard, but there have been moments. My earliest memory of being afraid of heights was being about five years old and going to Tom Sawyer Island at Disney World. Tom Sawyer Island is one of the lamest attractions in the parks. Only little kids go on it. To reach the island, you have to cross this skinny, rickety bridge, supported by barrels floating in the water. I got halfway across, and I couldn't go on. I was sure I was going to die, and I stood in the middle of the swaying bridge, screaming like a girl, while the people bottlenecked behind me yelling in a very un-\"Happiest Place on Earth\" manner for me to get out of the way. Finally, my dad and a Disney employee dressed as Huck Finn picked me up and carried me off, to the cheers of the assembled guests.\n\nThis turned me off to theme parks. Obviously. I tell people it's because I'm not tall enough for the rides, but I actually can go on all the rides at Disney. You only have to be three foot eight to go on Space Mountain. I just don't want to. Other things I avoid include rock-climbing walls, rope courses, skyscrapers, hotels with high balconies, and\u2014oh, yeah\u2014the Metrorail.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" Kendra has decided to accompany me, at least this far, probably in hopes of talking me out of it. Which she never will. I wanted her to stay with Celine. My mother is at the hospital, but Kendra would be better protection. We rehearsed things for me to say to Violet, but now, they're out of my head.\n\n\"You're turning green,\" she says.\n\n\"It's not easy being green,\" I try to joke. I feel the hospital cafeteria tacos in my throat.\n\n\"I didn't realize you were this big a chicken.\"\n\n\"I'm no chicken.\" But I still don't open my eyes, preferring to stare at the red and black shadows behind them. \"I have a problem with heights, but I'm here. I'm in this. I'm brave. Brave\u2014whoot! A chicken would say, 'Oh, well,' and go home.\"\n\n\"Yes, he would.\" Kendra touches my arm. \"You're going to want to open your eyes now and step forward, brave boy. You're at the top. You've arrived.\"\n\nI open them just as my left foot hits the metal at the top of the escalator. I made it. The first half of my journey seemed to take as long as a drive to Fort Lauderdale with my brothers fighting. The second, with the distraction of my annoyance with Kendra, took seconds. For an instant, the floor swims below me, and I stumble. But Kendra takes my arm and points to the turnstiles. \"Wait for Violet inside. No scary heights, and she comes through here most days around 5:10. And be careful.\"\n\nMy watch says 5:07. We cut it close. When I turn to thank Kendra, she is gone. I hurry to buy a ticket. Then, I notice I have one in my hand. It wasn't there before. Thanks, Kendra.\n\nHer \"be careful\" rings in my head.\n\nI go inside, and wait where Kendra told me. I don't know what I'll say when Violet gets here, but I have to try.\n\nIf I feel like the climb was the scary part, that all changes when Violet shows up.\n\nI've only seen the real Violet twice, once for a brief second as she rushed into the hospital, the other time at the funeral. Both times, she was frantic and messed up, miserable about her husband's accident. She still looked inhumanly beautiful.\n\nNow, her beauty is something else.\n\nKendra spoke of Celine's beauty as being from within, a light of kindness and innocence. Celine and I joked about it, because, who talks like that. But it was true. Celine has the face of an Old Master's _Madonna_.\n\nViolet is a comic book super-villainess. Catwoman? Harley Quinn? Elektra? No, she's Poison Ivy, Batman's nemesis, live and in person in the Metrorail station with long, bright auburn hair and a body you can't help noticing, hugged by a bright blue suit that shows off her curves\u2014and her eyes.\n\nThose eyes. They're blue, almost purple, and huge. And evil. I can see them even through the mobs of commuters. In high-heeled boots, she sticks out above the crowd and way over me. Every guy in the place pivots to stare at her, and more than a few women.\n\nShe is the most intimidating person I have ever beheld. I practically expect to see vines sprout from her hands. A girl in front of me smacks her boyfriend, who's staring.\n\nAnd I have to confront her. Now. Preferably before she goes out to the scary trains.\n\nI pursue her. \"Violet!\"\n\nShe looks around, hearing her name but, at first, not seeing me. I shove through all the legs. Some guy calls me an asshole. It's rude, but this is life-and-death. No time to apologize.\n\n\"Violet, wait!\"\n\nShe turns and stares. She looks at me like I'm a mangy dog or a leper. Maybe I am.\n\n\"May I help you?\"\n\n\"Violet.\" I'm panting. \"I'm Goose, Goose Guzman. I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"I know who you are. You're my stepdaughter's little friend.\" She emphasizes _little_. Her eyes bore into me, and I see something like revulsion at my appearance. \"You brought her home once, and to the hospital, when Greg . . . but Celine is gone now. She's living with her aunt in . . . Tennessee.\"\n\nPeople are stopping to stare, and I realize we must look like characters in some fantasy movie. Their eyes give me courage. Violet can't do anything to me in front of all these witnesses.\n\nNothing except _not_ help Celine.\n\n\"You know that's a lie,\" I say. \"You didn't send her to Tennessee. You sent Kendra to kill her. But Kendra didn't. You know that too, because you saw Celine this morning.\"\n\nViolet looks away. \"I don't have to listen to your babbling, dwarf.\" She turns on her heel and walks toward the glass-brick escalator, the one that will carry her\u2014and me\u2014even higher to the train platform.\n\n\"Wait!\" I run after her, trying to get in front of her, or grab her hand. But she eludes me, striding through the crowds so I have no choice but to pursue her up a second scary escalator. I want to take the elevator, but I can't risk losing her.\n\nI'm shaking when my foot hits the bottom step. By the top, I can't breathe, much less speak. I stumble after her.\n\n\"Why?\" I gasp out. Everyone's staring at me, but I don't care. I follow Violet. The train station is laid out with a platform in the middle, north and southbound tracks on either side. She stands on the southbound side, too near the edge, away from the crowds of people.\n\nThe train station overlooks the city. How great if it was underground, like the New York subway, where the only drop is onto the tracks themselves. Instead, I can see for miles and miles, practically to my house. I hang back, or try to, but Violet seems to realize my fear for she steps closer to the edge, her beauty silhouetted against the blue and silver skyline, teetering on four-inch heels. I could push her over. It wouldn't help Celine, though.\n\n\"Why do you hate her so much?\" I'm shivering, though the day is hot and windless, a June day in Miami.\n\nShe smiles, then laughs. \"Come closer, and I'll tell you.\" With her hand, she beckons me. Yep, she definitely knows I'm afraid.\n\nI edge closer. When I'm near a high place, I always picture myself plunging, flying at first, then diving down, dropping like a . . . well, dropping like a guy falling off a train platform. Must concentrate. I look into Violet's eyes, but they're almost as scary as the height.\n\nI will myself forward. When I'm five feet away, far enough that, if I fell, I wouldn't go over, I stop. I try again.\n\n\"Celine loved you,\" I say. \"When she first met you, she did. She told me how wonderful you were. You got her a kitten. You did her hair, and then . . .\"\n\n\"And then, she turned into her mother. I hated that bitch.\" Violet's voice is a knife in the noisy station. \"She was cruel and heartless. She never loved Greg. She only took him because I wanted him. You can't imagine how she bullied me. And Celine is the same.\"\n\nI hear the wind down the tracks. \"I think I can imagine being bullied. But Celine isn't like that. She's not a bully. I've seen her stand up for people, not bully them.\"\n\n\"Please. She's exactly like her mother.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't be friends with her if she was like that.\"\n\nViolet smiles and gets a little gleam in her eye. \"Is that what you are, dwarf? Friends? Because that's not what I see.\"\n\n\"What do you see?\" But I think I know. And I guess she's just going to keep calling me \"dwarf\" like she's some evil sorceress.\n\nWhich, I guess, she sort of is.\n\nShe throws back her head so her orange hair streams down her back. \"I see a beautiful girl, using some loser who's in love with her. I see Jennifer all over again.\"\n\nI shake my head. \"She's not like that.\" But I wonder. Violet is half right. I am in love with Celine. Is she _all_ right? Am I just deluding myself about Celine?\n\nNo. That's not true. Celine was nice before she knew me, definitely before she needed me. If anything, I was using her, pretending to be her friend in the hope of being something more.\n\n\"Believe what you want.\" Violet takes a step backward. \"I've seen the look on your face when you're beside her on the piano bench, holding her hand, trying to edge closer. Or when you watch TV together at all hours of the night. It's the same look I used to have with Greg, sad, longing. Pathetic.\"\n\n\"How did you . . . ?\" But I know. Magic. All those things happened in the past few weeks, after Celine had moved out. Violet had watched us the whole time. She'd known Celine was alive, waited until she could harm her. I take a half step toward her, saying, \"What did Celine do to you? What did she do that was so awful that you want her dead?\"\n\nViolet thinks for a moment. \"She is a constant reminder that her father preferred someone else to me. Even when we were married, he never really loved me. He was enthralled, but his love was all for Jennifer.\"\n\n\"But her father's gone. Either way, he's gone. Couldn't you, in his memory, just be the bigger person? Just let his daughter live?\" In the distance, I see the train coming. What if I fell onto the track, if I was swallowed up in it? I feel dizzy, like my head is an escaped balloon, floating in the fluorescent lights above me.\n\nViolet chuckles. \"You're really afraid, aren't you?\" When I don't answer, she says, \"With a blink of my eye, I could send you hurtling over that track, then crash! Down onto the sidewalk. They wouldn't even recognize you.\"\n\nI feel her words as if she did it. But I say, \"Why don't you?\" Trying to keep my voice steady, though I hear it shaking.\n\nViolet smiles. \"I know that, whatever I can do, Celine can hurt you more, hurt you the way Greg hurt me. That's better, my little friend.\" The train is pulling into the station now, brakes squealing, covering the treacherous view. \"My train is here. I have to go. I'll do you a favor, dwarf. I won't kill your darling.\"\n\nI feel my knees start to give way, but I catch myself. \"Really?\" Sensing a trick.\n\n\"Really. But I won't revive her either. She will sleep forever. As long as you both shall live, you can fantasize that she might have loved you, if only Evil Violet hadn't taken her away. You can worship her shell of a body, wrap your little tiny arms around her, and dream that she is yours instead of knowing the cruel reality, as I did with Greg.\"\n\nHer eyes are mesmerizing, like Christmas lights.\n\n\"And what reality is that?\" I barely whisper it.\n\n\"That someone beautiful like her could never love a little freak like you.\"\n\nHer words snap me out of my trance. I stumble forward, wanting to hurt her. The train screeches to a stop, but I barely notice it, the people, the height. My heart is banging like crazy, and I advance toward her, remembering every kid who ever made fun of me in elementary school, every fear I had about Celine, every doubt I had about myself, sinking that anger into Violet.\n\n\"You know, Violet, I may be a freak, but I have a family that loves me, unlike you. I have tons of friends, unlike you.\" _I'm saying this to a witch?_ But I don't care. I can't stop myself. The words just come out, like vomit all over the yellow, rubber barrier that separates the train from the station. \"You're a beautiful woman, and it hasn't helped you. Your beauty is nothing, worthless.\"\n\nI take a shaky breath. I look up at Violet, and she's smiling.\n\nShe laughs. \"Anything else?\"\n\n\"Yeah. You're evil, and you've paid the price. You have no one. Greg is gone, and everyone else hates you.\"\n\nI look up to see if I've hurt her. I want to hurt her. But her face is immobile, unreal.\n\nI add, \"So, sometime, you may want to ask yourself which one of us is really the freak.\"\n\nAnd, before she can change me into a toad, I turn and walk toward the elevator. When I look back at her, the train doors are just opening. Yet, she is gone.\n\nI'm sweating when the elevator comes. I take it down, then sit in the train station for half an hour, trying not to hyperventilate, wanting my mother. Finally, I summon Kendra with the mirror. She walks with me back to the hospital.\n\n\"I'm sorry, but not surprised. If a good talking to was all it took, I would have done it. It is, alas, her nature to be cruel.\" She touches my shoulder. \"I am sorry.\"\n\n\"I'll find another way.\"\n\nCeline is still in the ICU, beautiful and dead-looking. I think of what Violet said about her being a shell. It's not true. I want to take her into my arms, give some of my own life to her. I could give her ten years, twenty, half the time I have left. I would if I could. Was Violet right? Would I rather Celine be like this forever than face her rejection?\n\nNo. I love Celine, and part of loving someone is wanting the best for them, even if the best for them isn't being with you. I'm not Violet. Even if Celine will only ever be my friend, I want her alive.\n\nBut how can I make that happen?\n\nI gaze at Celine's pale white face, and I feel the weight of utter hopelessness upon me.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nIt's Sunday now. Celine is still in the ICU, stable, but no different. The doctor assured Violet\/Kendra that Celine has a good chance for recovery. Of course, the doctor doesn't know about the magic.\n\nFriday and Saturday, day and night, I sat in a hard, metal chair by Celine's bed, holding her limp hand, squeezing it, willing her to squeeze back. The nurses didn't even try to kick me out. Kendra said it was okay, and I guess they felt sorry for me. Maybe they realize I can barely move. I feel petrified, not like when people say they're petrified meaning scared, but actually petrified like wood, like parts of me have turned to stone, and if Celine doesn't come out of this, maybe I'll just turn to stone beside her. Of course, I can't help but think of what Violet said about worshiping Celine's shell of a body. How long can I go on, waiting for someone who may never awaken?\n\n___Forever._\n\nViolet has been true to her word. She hasn't been here. Still, I won't leave Celine alone.\n\nWhen I went home to get my clothes Friday afternoon, the poem I left for Celine was still on the bathroom counter, facedown, exactly where I'd left it. She never saw it. And that was when I realized, I wanted her to. Even if I was going to be totally crushed by her reaction. When you love someone, you have to tell her.\n\nI lean close and whisper in her ear, \"Please wake up.\"\n\nBut she doesn't. I squeeze her hand. I have my American history exam tomorrow, and I've been reading aloud to her from the book. In between World War One and World War Two, I tell her all the things we can do together if she wakes up. After Korea, I beg her to wake up. Vietnam, the Cold War, \"I miss you so much.\" Now, I've studied all I can, so I just watch her.\n\nStacey's texted me about a dozen time, telling me I have to sleep at home tonight, long texts about how she understands I'm upset, but I have to finish out the year. Finally, I text back that I'll be home by nine.\n\nIt's a little before eight when Kendra shows up. She's disguised as Violet, and I shudder. As soon as she closes the curtain, she changes into herself, red hair melting to purple-streaked black, her clothing turning to a long, black dress.\n\nShe looks excited. \"I've figured out what will help Celine.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I clutch Celine's hand, hopeful.\n\nUntil the next words out of Kendra's mouth.\n\n\"Yes. A handsome prince! I remember once, there was a girl who slept for over a hundred years. It was a curse like this one, except a fairy placed it. The girl pricked her finger on a spindle and fell down as if dead. A century passed\u2014they didn't even have feeding tubes then\u2014and everyone forgot her until, one day, a prince came riding by on his horse. He kissed the girl. She woke and they lived happily ever after.\"\n\nI try to keep my voice even. \"So what year was this?\"\n\nKendra thinks about it. \"The kiss happened in 1675, but the princess went to sleep a century before.\"\n\n\"And this was in Europe? England?\" I feel suddenly tired, like I could just put my head down on Celine's bed and go to sleep.\n\n\"Or Germany, maybe. One of those countries.\"\n\n\"One of those countries with princes riding around on horses?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" She finally gets my meaning. \"Oh.\"\n\n\"This is America, Kendra. No princes here.\"\n\n\"There could be. It probably doesn't have to be from a reigning family. One of the Romanovs was mayor of Palm Beach for a while\u2014the great-grandson of the tsar of Russia.\"\n\nPalm Beach is about two hours' drive from here. \"Do you know him?\" I ask.\n\n\"He died in 2004.\"\n\nNot helpful. I shake my head. \"Could there be another way?\" But, even as I say it, I remember her saying the other princess slept for a hundred years. A hundred years before they found a way to wake her. Celine might live a hundred years in a state of suspended animation.\n\nBut I won't.\n\nI take a long look at Celine, the shell of Celine. Is this all I'll have of her, ever? I want to shake her, slap her, do anything to wake her, but it won't work. No, that's not what I want. I want to take her in my arms and kiss her. But I'm no prince, just some poor slob who loves her. She's not mine to kiss.\n\nSuddenly I have to go. I can't look at her anymore today.\n\n\"You'll stay?\" I ask Kendra.\n\nKendra smiles sadly. \"Don't worry. I won't leave her.\"\n\nI turn toward the door.\n\n\"You know, Goose, the prince was also her true love.\"\n\nI shrug. No help there.\n\nWhen I get home, I can't sleep. Even though I've already spent the whole day studying, I lie in bed, reading the flash cards I made, because it gets my mind off Celine. After a while, I guess I drift off.\n\nAt three, I wake up. The lights are on. There are three-by-five cards all around me and only one thought in my head.\n\n_Jonah Prince._\n\n#\n\n#\n\n\"He is, technically, a prince,\" I tell Kendra. \"And Celine's not-so-technically completely hot for him, so maybe he's her true love. There's no royalty in Florida, unless you count Disney World. I know it's a crazy idea. . . .\"\n\n\"No,\" Kendra says. \"It might work.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I'm impressed with myself. We're in Celine's hospital room, where Kendra guards her motionless body. I try not to look at Celine. It makes me sad that she looks like a beautiful doll that should be displayed in a plastic bubble.\n\n\"Sure,\" Kendra says. \"I've seen people get off on technicalities before. But how are you going to get Jonah Prince here? Isn't he, like, a rock star?\"\n\n\"I figure that's where you come in. You could use your magic powers to just . . . zap him here so he can kiss her.\"\n\nKendra rubs her forehead, the way my mom does to smooth out wrinkles, except Kendra doesn't have any wrinkles. \"I can't do that with people. Even if I could, I wouldn't.\"\n\n\"Why the hell not? What kind of lame powers do you have?\"\n\nKendra huffs a bit at that. \"What if Jonah Prince was onstage, or just sitting down for dinner with his family, and he suddenly disappeared. People would freak. It would be in all the papers . . . and everyone would know that witches are real.\"\n\n\"And that would be bad?\"\n\nKendra nods. \"You've heard of Salem, witch burnings in Europe?\"\n\n\"That was a long time ago.\"\n\n\"Women are being burned as witches in New Guinea to this day. I can't take the chance. And it isn't the right way. He must come of his own free will.\"\n\n\"Wow.\" I reach over and run my hand across Celine's. It feels cold, but I warm it. \"Okay, but you can still help me, right? If I get him to come?\"\n\nKendra nods. \"I can help you.\"\n\nUnder my hand, I can feel Celine's pulse. Touching her makes me feel better, knowing she's still alive, warm, real. I turn toward her. In the elevated bed, her face is close to mine, so close I could kiss her, close enough to hear her breathing.\n\nInstead, I lean my head against her shoulder and close my eyes.\n\nI remember something, the argument Celine and I had about Jonah. I raise my head.\n\n\"There's a concert coming up. He's going to be in Florida.\"\n\nAn hour later, between Kendra's mirror and my phone, I know everything I need to know about that concert. It's next Tuesday night in Orlando. I can't tell where he's staying, but Kendra promises to spy on him with her mirror and let me know as soon as he checks in.\n\nKendra is pacing back and forth in Celine's room. \"Okay! So all you have to do is go to Orlando, locate Jonah Prince, and ask him to come back here and kiss Celine.\" She counts these things off on her fingers like they're done. \"Easy-peasy!\"\n\nI can't believe she just said _easy-peasy._ I mean, aside from how annoying that phrase is, it won't be. \"You get that he'll have tons of bodyguards, right? Big bodyguards, possibly with guns.\"\n\n\"I have confidence in your ability.\"\n\n_Glad one of us does._\n\n\"And you get that he's a serious asshole?\" I say. My research about Jonah also revealed an uncomfortable number of accounts of him urinating in public, sideswiping bicyclists with his Maserati, spitting on people, wearing diaper pants to meet the president\u2014the list of douchery goes on and on. What did Celine see in this guy? \"He's not necessarily going to be helpful.\"\n\nShe shrugs. \"If you don't want to do it, I'm sure I can keep Celine comfortable here.\"\n\n\"It's not that I don't want to.\" I look at Celine, noticing for the hundredth time the two little freckles on one side of her nose. I have always been a person who pushed myself, someone who tried to ignore limits and strived not to give in if someone said I couldn't do something, whether it was playing the piano or climbing the jungle gym or being the Artful Dodger. But this sounds . . . really hard. And if it does work, I'll lose her to Jonah.\n\nAnd yet, if I don't do it, Celine could die. Who's to say Violet\u2014the real Violet\u2014won't sneak in and put some real-world poison in Celine's feeding tube. At best, she might live in a vegetative state. I have to try, at least.\n\n\"No,\" I say. \"I will do anything for Celine. And that means overcoming any obstacle.\"\n\nThe main obstacle turns out to be my mommy.\n\n\"No. Are you crazy?\" She's tenderizing meat with a mallet. With it in hand, she is four feet of scary. \"Of course you can't do that.\" _Whap!_ \"You can't drive to Orlando on your own.\" _Whap!_ \"You can't sneak into a rock star's hotel room.\" _Whap!_ \"What if you were arrested?\" _Whap! Whap! Whap!_ \"You'd never get into college.\" _Whap!_ \"You could get shot.\" _Whap!_ \"I won't let you put yourself at risk in that way. Let Kendra do it.\"\n\nFunny how you never get over fearing the wrath of Mom.\n\nI tell her, \"Kendra needs to stay here with Celine. What if Violet comes back?\"\n\nAnother series of _whaps!_ I jump at each one. She keeps pounding as she says, \"What if Violet does come back? What if she comes after you? Or our family? No!\" _Whap! Whap! Whap!_\n\n\"But I love her!\"\n\nIt's the first time I've said it to anyone. I've only just started admitting it to myself.\n\nI feel naked.\n\nAt least Stacey stops pounding.\n\n\"I love her,\" I repeat.\n\nStacey sucks in a deep breath. \"I know you do. We love her too. And we've done a lot for her. She's a sweet girl. But, don't you see? We have to think of you first.\" Stacey puts down the mallet and holds out her arms like she's about to hug me. But, when she walks toward me, I dodge her.\n\n\"If she dies, I will never forgive you.\"\n\nI turn and leave. There is silence. Then, the pounding starts again, louder.\n\nIn the dwindling days of classes, I contact Jonah Prince's agent, publicist, producer, the Florida Citrus Bowl, where the concert is being held, and the local news, all with the same sad story. My friend is dying. Maybe a visit from Jonah Prince will help. No one bites. The guy's a total douche, and everyone who works for him knows it.\n\nI give Stacey begging looks every time I pass her. When that doesn't work, I stop looking at her completely.\n\nOn Sunday morning, two days before the concert, I make the decision I always knew I'd make.\n\nI'm going to Orlando with or without my parents' permission. Stacey hid my car keys. I hate her for that. Hate. But I will find another way.\n\nI have never wanted anything the way I want this.\n\nHow can my parents not understand that it's like my heart is trapped inside her?\n\n#\n\n#\n\nA few years ago, I heard about the show _Game of Thrones,_ starring Peter Dinklage, a guy about my size (and my personal hero), as Tyrion Lannister, the sometimes heroic, sometimes not, son of a lord. I begged my mom to let me watch it. She protested that the show was TV-MA, with tons of nudity and violence in it. She suggested _Little People, Big World_ as a substitute.\n\nBecause what any normal, red-blooded teenage guy really wants to see is a show about a bunch of little people, operating a wedding farm.\n\nBut I gave it a shot. Also, I read the book, _A Game of Thrones,_ which is over eight hundred pages long. Then, I started on _A Clash of Kings._ And I begged my mom again. I pointed out that, if I wanted to see boobs, I could find them on my phone, just by Googling _boobs._ It wasn't about boobs.\n\nIt was _mostly_ not about boobs.\n\nThat time, she let me. She'd watched the show herself by then, and she said okay\u2014if I promised not to be influenced by the characters' drinking and whoring. I swore I wouldn't hire any prostitutes without asking her first.\n\nThen, I marathon-watched the whole series in a single weekend.\n\nBest. Show. Ever. For a lot of reasons. But, especially because of Dinklage. That's not just my opinion. If you look at any poll about people's favorite characters, Tyrion is the hands-down winner, besting even the hot blond dragon chick who gets naked a lot (okay, I like her too). Whether that's because people love to champion the underdog or because of the character's quick wit, I don't know.\n\nBut I sort of lied to Stacey. Tyrion's character had a huge influence on me. Here was a guy who looked like me (only old), using military tactics, wearing armor, and marching into battle with an ax. A hero . . . even if he usually got injured. And the legions of _GoT_ fans found that believable. It made me see that a hero had nothing to do with size, made me want to be a hero too, realize I could be.\n\nBut how many battles do you get to fight in the twenty-first century? How many fair maidens are there to rescue from the cruel king?\n\nCeline is my true love, even if I'll never be hers.\n\nIt's time to be a hero. And a hero must have a quest.\n\nI have one.\n\nAnd I'm starting on the freaking Metrorail.\n\nThe train to Orlando leaves at 8:10 a.m. I've never taken a real train, the kind that goes to other cities, instead of the lame commuter trains. The pictures on the Amtrak website make their trains look like the ones that go to Hogwarts.\n\nAnd the best thing is, they stay firmly on the ground.\n\nThe worst thing? I have to take the Metrorail to get to the Amtrak train.\n\nHave I mentioned I hate the Metrorail?\n\nOh, and lying to my parents. That's another bad thing. But I'm so pissed at them, so pissed that they won't let me go, that I don't care that much.\n\nWhen I was a kid, I was a really bad liar. My mom said she trusted me completely because I was so bad at covering my tracks. Like once, when I was eleven, I took the leftover Fourth of July fireworks from the garage (in November). I was going to set them off with my friends, but I left such a trail of matchbooks and wrappers that I got caught red-handed before the first crackle. Dad said he was concerned that I lacked the logic skills to be a more proficient liar (yeah, he talks like that; he's a lawyer). Since then, I've improved a little, but I still don't lie much. It sounds nerdy to say, but I'm close to my parents, or I was. When I lie, it weighs on me. Besides, everything always comes out.\n\nThis definitely will. Sneaking out and training it to Orlando to stalk a rock star\u2014hard to hide. It might even make the paper, and not in that good way parents like, like when you earn your Eagle Scout or sing at a charity concert or have perfect attendance for thirteen straight years. No, this would be more like the stories you see on the \"Florida Man\" Twitter feed, the guy who collects all the stupidest, craziest things done by folks in the Sunshine State: There was \"Florida Man tries to remove face tattoos with welding grinder,\" and \"Florida Man caught with sushi sampler stuffed down pants,\" not to mention the classic, \"High school graduation canceled after Florida Man etches massive penis on football field.\" I can be, \"Florida Man arrested in former boy band star's dressing room.\" The humiliation. It has never been my ambition to be a Florida Man.\n\nBut it's worth it if I can save Celine.\n\nThat's what I try to remember when I go to my dad\u2014to _lie_ to my dad\u2014before he leaves for work.\n\n\"Hey, can you drive me to the train station? I want to go to Jackson to see Celine.\"\n\nHe looks at his watch. \"It's awfully early.\"\n\nIt is. It's 6:30. Dad usually leaves at 6:45. I'm counting on that to be able to make the 8:10 train.\n\nI say, \"I got up early so I could get a ride. So I don't have to bother Mom since she took away my car keys.\" I swallow. Angrily.\n\nHe shifts from foot to foot. \"You have to understand\u2014\"\n\n\"I will _never_ understand. Never.\" He frowns, but doesn't say anything. I add, \"Look, all I want is a ride to the train. It's on your way. But if you can't help me with this one little thing, I guess I'll figure out the bus.\"\n\nI can't. I would never make it on time if I took the bus. But I try to sound casual anyway.\n\nHe shakes his head. \"It's okay. I can take you. Be ready in ten minutes.\"\n\nI don't take much with me. I don't want to arouse suspicion. With any luck, I'll be talking to Jonah before people notice I'm gone.\n\nI put Kendra's mirror, a book, and my sweatshirt in my backpack from school, enough to look normal, not enough to look like I'm running away. I take all the money I saved from my jobs tutoring kids on their monologues for drama auditions, close to five hundred dollars. I cashed out my bank account.\n\nI turn off my phone and leave it on my desk. If anyone tries to use it to find me, they'll get nowhere.\n\nI wish I didn't have to lie. But nothing else worked.\n\nAt 6:42, I'm in the car with Dad.\n\n\"How's she doing?\" He's trying to make conversation.\n\n\"No difference.\"\n\n\"She could still recover,\" he says.\n\nI know he doesn't believe it. Still, I say, \"I know.\"\n\nWe drive in silence. The streets are pretty empty without people going to school. Even the joggers and dog walkers slept late. It's cloudy, and I hope I can get to Amtrak before it starts to pour.\n\nWe reach the Metrorail's \"kiss-and-ride\" lot. There's a huge escalator leading up, just like at the downtown station I went to with Kendra. Dad eyes it dubiously. \"You're going up that? I remember Tom Sawyer Island.\"\n\nYeah, thanks for reminding me. But I say, \"I love her. If the only way I can see her is this train, I'll do it. I don't give in to fear like some people.\"\n\nHe starts to say something, then stops. I hope he's not going to offer to drive me to Jackson, but he just gives me sort of a pitying look and rubs his forehead with two fingers. \"Let me know if you need a ride home.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" I get out of the car.\n\nI'd asked Kendra if she could transport me magically to Orlando, but again, she'd been unhelpful. \"The only thing I could do is turn you into a crow to fly there.\"\n\nI declined, but now, as I head upstairs once again, I wonder if it would have been easier. A bird is in control of itself, its wings, its destiny. As it is, I'm at the mercy of stairs and tracks I didn't build, putting myself at risk.\n\nBut, as I told my father, I can't give in to those fears.\n\nSo, as the escalator bears me up, instead of closing my eyes, I concentrate on the sky.\n\n\"Where's your mom?\" the lady at the Amtrak ticket counter asks me.\n\n\"My dad dropped me off. I'm seventeen.\"\n\nIt's one of those high counters I can barely see over. The woman stares down at me. \"I can't sell you a ticket without your parents.\"\n\n\"Actually, you can. I . . . I mean, my parents and I looked this all up on your website. Minors who are sixteen or seventeen can travel without restriction.\" I look at my watch. Seven forty-five. The train leaves soon. \"I'm seventeen. Look, here's my driver's license. I'm visiting my grandma in Orlando. If I don't get off that train, she'll worry about me.\"\n\nI've experienced this before, the disconnect between my size and my age. Adults don't like to sell tickets to an R-rated movie to someone who's as tall as their eleven-year-old. I don't mind getting in places cheap, but they'll be handing me kids' menus when I'm fifty. Maybe I'll grow a mustache.\n\n\"I'll have to get my supervisor.\"\n\n\"No. You don't.\" I'm trying hard not to lose it because yelling will make me seem younger. I tap my driver's license on the counter, which is above my head. \"What you need to do is look at my license and check my age. Then, sell me a ticket so I can go see my grandma. Please.\"\n\nShe doesn't answer.\n\nI say, \"Please. She's an old lady, and she misses me. The train leaves in twenty minutes, and the next one isn't until twelve.\"\n\nFinally, the woman relents and takes the license from me. She compares my face to the photo, checks the birth date, counts on her fingers. \"Oh, you are seventeen. I'm sorry. You look much younger.\"\n\n\"What can I say? I have a great moisturizer.\"\n\n\"I could use some of that.\"\n\nHuh. She doesn't get that I'm kidding. How cute. Just print the ticket.\n\n\"Okay, will that be one way or round trip?\"\n\n\"One way.\" Part of me says I should buy round trip to avoid this problem when I come back, but I'm really hoping to come back in Jonah's private jet. Why be pessimistic? \"I may stay the whole summer.\"\n\nI get to my seat right before the door closes. There's a bunch of Boy Scouts in the same car, probably going to Disney. They're running around like someone gave them too much sugar. In fact, someone did give them too much sugar. There's a box of donuts open on one seat and a mom is offering around another. Wish I could take one. I forgot breakfast.\n\n\"Would you like a donut?\"\n\n\"Uh . . .\" I look around, realizing the Boy Scouts are all wearing matching navy blue T-shirts and matching baseball caps. I'm wearing a navy blue polo. I could make this work.\n\n\"Yes, please.\" I take a jelly, not looking up. I know from my siblings that little kids hate jelly. It would've been left anyway.\n\n\"Aren't you polite!\" The lady musses my hair.\n\nAs soon as she walks away, I scarf down the donut and head for the bathroom. I take out Kendra's mirror. \"Show me Kendra.\"\n\nShe appears. I can tell she's at the hospital. \"How's Celine?\"\n\n\"The same.\"\n\nI want to ask to see her, but first I say, \"Any updates on where Jonah's staying?\"\n\n\"He's still on the plane. You could keep an eye on him in the mirror too.\"\n\n\"I will. Can I see Celine first?\"\n\n\"It won't make you happy.\" But Kendra turns the mirror away anyway. She's wrong. Just seeing Celine's peaceful face, knowing I'm helping her, at least trying to, helps. Maybe it won't work. In that case, I'll have plenty of time to be miserable. But, for now, I'm hopeful.\n\n\"Thanks,\" I tell Kendra.\n\nBefore I leave the bathroom, I ask the mirror, \"Show me Jonah Prince.\"\n\nIt does, as if it's a television. Dude's in an airplane seat, first class. No\u2014a private jet. He takes his gum out of his mouth and sticks it underneath the shiny walnut trim on the wall beside him. Gross. Even though he can't hear me, I say, \"Please, guy, please be everything she thinks you are, everything she wants you to be. It's crazy, but you're her only hope.\"\n\nI take my seat, which is next to one of the moms from the scout troop.\n\n\"I think you have the wrong seat,\" she says. \"Where's your mom?\"\n\nI look up at her. \"Back in Miami.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" She starts a bit. \"Sorry. I thought you were from my troop. I had an empty seat next to me.\" There's an edge to her voice.\n\n\"I bought my ticket at the last minute. I'll be quiet, though, at least quieter than this group.\"\n\n\"You'd kind of have to be.\" She eyes a group of boys who are playing soccer with a squashed Bavarian cream donut.\n\n\"Where are you headed?\"\n\n\"Happiest place on earth. I need a drink.\"\n\nIt's eight-thirty in the morning.\n\n\"Kidding.\" She must see my rising eyebrows.\n\nI can tell she wasn't. \"Sure. Where are you staying? I mean . . .\" I realize this sounds stalkerish. \"Are you camping? Because you'd really need a drink then.\"\n\n\"No, thank God. We're staying at the All-Star.\"\n\nThe All-Stars are the cheaper Disney hotels, which are still pretty expensive, but nowhere Jonah would stay.\n\nI nod. \"So you have a bus picking you up?\" I'm forming a plan in my head.\n\n\"I certainly hope so.\" The donut sails past us at eye level. \"Guess I should do something about that, huh?\"\n\nMy mom wouldn't put up with that crap for one second, but I say, \"They'll get tired soon.\"\n\n\"They never get tired.\"\n\nFinally, one of the other moms takes the boys to the lounge car. The mom by me follows her, probably to get that drink. I take out the mirror and set it up between me and the window.\n\n\"Show me Jonah Prince.\"\n\nThey're off the airplane now. Jonah's surrounded by people, bodyguards, an older, balding guy I think is his agent, and a girl I recognize from TV, Allegra Kendall. She used to be on this show Isabella likes, _What a Girl Needs_ , and she looks, basically, like every other teen star, the Demi Lovato model, with long, dark, wavy hair, brown eyes, and a ton of lipstick _._ She teeters on high-heeled boots and waves at a group of people inside the terminal as they walk across the tarmac.\n\n\"Can you be a little polite?\" she says to Jonah. \"Like, look up at them.\"\n\n\"I'm dead tired,\" he says. __\n\n\"It's that pill you took on the plane. Live in the now, Jonah. They're your fans.\" She says it through her teeth, still smiling and waving.\n\n\"I have a concert tonight. I shouldn't get stressed out.\" He tugs at his pants, which are so low in the crotch he looks like he shit his pants. \"You don't know what it's like to have all these people demanding things of you.\"\n\n\"I don't know?\" She blinks at him and puts her hand on her hip. \"Of course I know. But it's really important to them. They camped out waiting for you. Can't you at least look up?\"\n\nHe rolls his eyes and looks up. Through the windows, I can see girls jumping up and down and screaming. Allegra gives him a kiss on the cheek.\n\n\"Quit it,\" he whispers. He tugs at his pants again. I remember reading about this rock star who actually lost his pants onstage because they were so loose.\n\n\"Don't be such a grump.\" Allegra tries to smile as they walk inside the airport. Fans scream.\n\nJonah puts on a big, fake grin. \"I'm not being a grump. You're being annoying.\"\n\nThis conversation is painful. I'm just listening because I'm waiting for Jonah or someone to say the name of their hotel. I know his concert's at seven, and then, he'll go back to the hotel. I just need to sneak into his room before then and beg him to go with me.\n\n_Just._\n\nJust need to sneak into a rock star's room.\n\nJust need to get this jerkwad with pants down to his knees to do something out of the goodness of his heart.\n\nThey're in the airport now. Girls are thronging to meet Jonah. His bodyguards and the airport police are trying to hold them back. I wonder if they purchased tickets just to get through security, or if this many random fans are just wherever he is. Allegra is trying to interact with them, but most want nothing of her, only him. And he's ignoring them, talking to the balding guy, one hand firmly on his pants.\n\n_Please just say where you're staying before Drunk Mom comes back and I have to put away the mirror._\n\n\"Will the hotel be like this too, Harry? 'Cause I'm planning on breaking up with . . .\" He nudges his head toward Allegra, who is hugging a little girl. \". . . so it would be nice to have some privacy in case she screams her head off.\"\n\nThe guy\u2014Harry\u2014shrugs. \"I don't think there are any leaks, but these girls tend to find out.\"\n\n\"They'd better not,\" Jonah says. \"Get extra security.\"\n\n\"I'll alert the Cornwallis.\"\n\nBingo. The Cornwallis is a fancy non-Disney hotel on Disney property.\n\n\"The Cornwallis?\" Jonah shoves past the fans. \"Nice British name. Will it be private?\"\n\n\"We have a floor all to ourselves, you, Allegra, your staff.\"\n\n_What floor? What floor?_\n\n\"What floor?\" Jonah asks.\n\n\"The top floor,\" Harry says. \"The floor below is a health club. People make all sorts of noise. She can scream as much as she likes.\"\n\n\"Good. I need to be rid of her. The stress is affecting my voice.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't want that,\" Harry says just as a fan breaks through and touches Jonah. His bodyguard pushes her away.\n\nA few of the kids who didn't go to the lounge run past me. A blond boy is holding a handheld game, and a redhead tries to get it back. Just as they get to me, the redhead tackles the blond, barreling into my legs and almost knocking the mirror from my hands.\n\n\"Hey, watch it,\" I say.\n\n\"Sorry.\" The redhead stares at me. \"Hey, how old are you?\"\n\n\"Seventeen?\" I say. \"You?\"\n\nHe ignores my question. \"So you're, like . . . ?\"\n\n\"A smaller-sized adult? Yes.\"\n\n\"Cool. I thought maybe you were from one of the other troops.\"\n\n\"How many troops are there?\"\n\n\"Three, I think.\"\n\n\"Come on,\" the blond kid says.\n\n\"Okay.\" And they run off.\n\nI notice a blue baseball cap lying under my feet. I pick it up and start to call after the redhead who lost it. But they're gone.\n\nI have an idea.\n\nIt's one when the train pulls into the Orlando station ahead of schedule. Thirty little boys in thirty blue T-shirts and twenty-nine blue hats are herded as neatly as you'd expect out of the car. I follow them to their bus and put on the thirtieth hat. I make sure to move around, not stand by anyone in particular. I pull the hat low. I'm guessing no mom here knows all thirty kids.\n\n\"Hey, you!\" One of the moms grabs my shoulder.\n\nI freeze.\n\n\"Stay with the group.\" She pushes me forward into the line.\n\nI follow the others onto the bus and sit in back. I keep my head down.\n\nIt's not a short ride, but I know if I make it, I'll be on Disney property. I can use their transportation to get to the Cornwallis.\n\nOf course, getting to Jonah himself will be another story.\n\nWhen we reach the All-Star Sports Resort, I find the red-haired kid and hand him his hat. \"Hey, you dropped this.\"\n\nThen, I run in the opposite direction.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nAn hour later, through a maze of transportation, I have gone from the All-Star to the Magic Kingdom, the Magic Kingdom to the Cornwallis Hotel's own shuttle. I let myself close my eyes on this one. I picture Celine, the way she looked that day we went to Target, smiling at me. I want her to smile again, even if it's not at me.\n\n\"That boy fell asleep,\" the kid next to me says.\n\n\"He must have had a fun day,\" his mother replies.\n\n_And it's not over._ I open my eyes, and we're pulling into the Cornwallis Hotel. Parking attendants dressed like Cinderella's footmen, with powdered wigs and purple hats with giant plumes greet the shuttle. I step out, and they bow with a flourish.\n\nI glance at my watch. Two-thirty.\n\nSo far this was easy, too easy.\n\nI'm sure it will get harder.\n\nI take the elevator to the twentieth floor. There's no lock, no restriction. But when I get off, a guy who looks like an extra on _Game of Thrones\u2014_ two feet taller than I am with a scar on his cheek that looks like it was made by a sword\u2014comes at me.\n\n\"What are you doing here?\" he growls.\n\n\"Just heading for my room. Twenty-fifteen.\" That's Harry's room. I heard them discussing it one of the ten times I checked the mirror while on the bus.\n\n\"Wrong!\" the guy growls. \"No one on this floor but Jonah Prince's people.\"\n\n\"I know. I'm with him. Harry, his manager's my dad.\" I start forward. One good thing about being my size. You can get away with stuff because you look nonthreatening.\n\n\"Hey, Otto,\" the guy holding me says. \"You remember Harry having a kid who looks like this?\"\n\nHe grabs my waistband and drags me over to another, even bigger guy. The disrespect is mind-boggling. He lifts me up. I almost have a clear shot at kicking the guy in the nose, but I'm thinking that might not be a wise choice. Instead, I yell, \"Put me down!\"\n\n\"Pretty sure I'd remember him,\" the bruiser says.\n\nOf course, the bad thing about being my size is, I'm also very memorable. I had one shot to walk off the elevator, and I blew it.\n\nThe guy turns around and shoves me into the elevator. \"Bye-bye, little guy.\"\n\nSighing, I press the button to go down to the eighteenth floor.\n\nTime for another plan. Or a plan at all. Since I didn't know which hotel he'd be at, I hadn't been able to research the layout or anything. I'd thought maybe luck would be on my side. Like I could go up with a housekeeper. But even the minute I spent on Jonah's floor let me know there was no housekeeper there. They probably cleaned his floor first, so he could check in early.\n\nThe housekeeper on this floor is still working. A door stands open. I hear vacuuming. I wonder if I can talk her into sneaking me upstairs. Doubtful. I try the stairs, but the door to the twentieth floor is locked, so I come back down. The hallway is empty.\n\nI pull out the mirror.\n\n\"Show me Jonah,\" I say.\n\nThe mirror does. He's in a fancy room, talking on his phone, alone.\n\n\"I'm seventeen, and I have a hundred million dollars. I don't need you telling me what to do.\" He holds the phone away from his ear to avoid what I'm sure are her shrieks. \"Yes, I suppose I do want to break up. After tonight. Let's just get this tour over with. You're still coming to the concert, right? What? What?\"\n\nHe paces back and forth, tugging at his pants even though no one's there to see him. \"Is that a threat?\" He nods. \"All right, then. Call my mum. She's in New York, and she won't care, but go ahead and call her. Oh, stop crying. You know you never really liked me. It was all a publicity stunt. What?\" Again, he pulls the phone away. \"Just come to the concert tonight. We leave at six-thirty.\"\n\nHe hangs up. Then, he walks to the window and stares out, shaking his head. \"Call a guy's mum, why don't you?\" He must notice a crowd outside because he backs away and flops down onto the bed.\n\n\"Show me Allegra,\" I tell the mirror.\n\nIt does, switching to a similar-looking room. Allegra is collapsed on the bed, phone in hand, crying, saying, \"He broke up with me. He's so out of control! He's not the guy I used to know. I had to stop him from giving these little girls the finger.\" She stops talking and sobs. \"I know. You're right. Thanks.\"\n\nShe puts down the phone and sobs some more. I feel bad, watching something so private. Still, I don't know what else to do. Also, I feel like I know this girl, having watched a gazillion hours of _What a Girl Needs_ with Isabella.\n\n\"You're better off without him, sweetheart,\" I say aloud but, of course, she doesn't hear me. A minute later, she sits up and looks at the phone on her nightstand. She crawls across the bed and looks at it, reading the instructions, then picks it up and dials.\n\n\"Hey.\" She sniffles. \"How do I get room service?\"\n\nA few seconds later, she says, \"Hello, this is, um, Mrs. Kendall, room 2016. Can you send up, um, a bottle of wine . . . white wine . . . what _kind_? Um, I don't know. Whatever you recommend. Oh, and a hot fudge sundae.\"\n\nThis gives me an idea. I tell the mirror, \"Show me the room service person she's talking to.\"\n\nAs the mirror melds into the person she's talking to, I start toward the elevator.\n\n\"Yes.\" It's a girl with dyed-black hair and a white apron over black shirt and pants. She rolls her eyes. \"I understand it's an emergency. I'll send up the 2008 Didier Dagueneau Silex right away . . . and the sundae . . . my name. It's Kasey. With a K. Yes, I understand. It will be there in twenty minutes.\"\n\nTwenty minutes. I have twenty minutes to work if I'm going to be part of Allegra's room service order.\n\n\"Isn't that a clich\u00e9,\" Kasey says when she gets off the phone. \"Little teenybopper star wants to get drunk. And stupid room service is going to buy that it's her 'mother' calling.\"\n\nThe second the elevator hits the ground floor, I'm off and running toward the restaurant. I figure the kitchen's probably behind there. It's a dead time of day, after lunch, but way before dinner. When I stroll in, there's only one woman manning the ma\u00eetre d' station. \"May I help you?\"\n\n\"I'm looking for my sister. She works here. Kasey? The kitchen's through there?\"\n\nShe nods and goes back to the game she was playing on her phone.\n\nI keep my back against the wall as I enter the kitchen. The room has an island with high, stainless steel counters. I hide under one near a wheeled room service trolley that is already topped with a bottle of white wine. Kasey's standing by it. A tall red-haired girl is bringing over wineglasses. \"How many?\"\n\n\"Just one, I suppose.\" Kasey makes a tsk-ing sound with her tongue. \"Poor little Allegra, drinking alone.\"\n\n\"And ice cream,\" says the second girl. \"She got dumped for sure.\"\n\nI peek over the counter. Kasey snaps a photo of the wine bottle. \"Got dumped, and now, she'll get drunk.\" She takes a business card from her apron pocket. \"This guy, he's a paparazzi . . . paparazzo . . . photographer; he told me to call with any tips. Said he'd make it worth my while. He'll love hearing about Allegra getting faced.\"\n\nI feel a twinge for this girl I don't know. Well, like I said, Isabella loves her. I notice the trolley's about the width of the TV in my parents' bedroom, with a tablecloth over it. I could fit under it if I could get there. Then, if they pushed me up to Allegra's room, I'd at least be on Jonah's floor. Maybe they even have adjoining rooms. But right now, both girls are standing by the trolley. If only one would move.\n\n\"That's really mean,\" the tall one says. \"Kick her when she's down.\"\n\n\"You have such a soft heart, Caitlin. How 'down' can she be, spoiled little starlet.\"\n\n\"My kid sister loves her. She'll be so disappointed. Why do they always turn out to be crazy, drunks, or sluts?\"\n\nKasey shrugs. \"Not my fault. Hey, make that sundae. Her majesty said she needed it quick.\"\n\nCaitlin moves away. Kasey takes out her phone, starts to call someone. I make my move, sliding under the counter, which requires some knee bending, even for me. I get into the trolley, which requires more. It's tight. I'm short, but I have shoulders, and I'm not a contortionist who can dislocate them. At one point, the trolley starts to move. I hear the wineglass rattle against the cooler. Kasey doesn't notice. She's too busy talking.\n\n\". . . leaving in a couple hours. She should be stumbling drunk by then.\"\n\nFinally, I stuff myself in, sitting on my feet, shoulders gathered around my ears. My left side aches bad, and I wonder if I dislocated my shoulder after all. In any case, I can't move except to give the tablecloth a tug. I hope Caitlin will hurry.\n\n\"There we go.\" I feel the thunk of a huge sundae above my head. \"With extra whipped cream. I'm sort of excited to see her. Wonder if she'd let me take a picture.\"\n\n\"They'll kill you if you ask. Have some dignity.\"\n\nCaitlin pushes the trolley. It barely budges. \"Wow, I need to start working out.\" She gives it a big shove, and we're on our way.\n\nShe drives me through the kitchen, where Caitlin manages to ram into every possible counter, and into the dining room, which is carpeted, so the thing will barely roll with my weight on it. Each bump and thump makes my shoulder ache worse, and I grit my teeth to keep from crying out. Finally, finally, we hit a marble floor.\n\nIt's smooth skating for about twenty feet. Then, we reach the elevator, which is another death struggle as we get over the gap.\n\nAnd off to the top floor. So I have a solid minute to sit and think about how much my shoulder hurts, how both feet are already asleep, how I'd love to clear my throat, scratch my head, burp, fart, or all four.\n\nI try to remember that tomorrow, this will all be over. I'll have succeeded or failed, but hopefully succeeded.\n\nAnd, if I succeed, Jonah will wake Celine. Jonah Prince is as close to a prince as we have, and she loves him.\n\nSo they can fall in love, and she can live happily ever after.\n\nWith that asshole.\n\nI really need to scratch my nose. Why am I doing this again? Oh, yeah. Love. True love. Unselfish love.\n\nAnd a fascinating topic for college essays about an obstacle I've overcome.\n\nIf I don't get arrested and can still apply to college.\n\nFinally, finally, the elevator reaches the top floor.\n\nI breathe out, though I have no idea why I'm relieved. It's not like I can get out and walk around now. Rather, I'm going to have to wait until Allegra passes out or leaves or, at least gets drunk enough not to notice a guy walking around her room. Depending on her drinking habits, that could take awhile.\n\nI could come out of this experience a hunchback. Another good college essay topic.\n\nI really want to crack my neck.\n\nCaitlin wheels the trolley down the hall. I hear her explaining to the bodyguards who she is. They let her through. Finally, she knocks on the door.\n\n\"Room service!\"\n\nThe door opens. \"Thank God you're here.\" Allegra's voice.\n\nSilence.\n\n\"Well, aren't you going to bring it in?\" Allegra asks.\n\n\"Oh! Sorry.\" Caitlin pushes against the trolley. \"I was just sort of . . .\"\n\n\"Slow?\" Allegra says.\n\n\"Awestruck. My little sister watches your show all the time. She won't believe I met you.\"\n\nAllegra seems to gather herself. \"I'm sorry. That's great! Can you bring the tray in now?\"\n\n\"Oh!\" Caitlin gives the trolley a shove, and I have to grip the bottom to keep from falling out. \"Of course. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"It's okay. Maybe set it by the bed.\"\n\nBy the bed. That's good because maybe I could sneak out and get under the bed.\n\nIn an hour or so.\n\nCaitlin pushes the trolley across the marble floor for a long time, turning to get through a door or something. Finally, it crashes into the bed.\n\n\"Really, I'm sorry,\" Allegra says. \"That's sweet that your little sister likes the show so much. Would you like a picture so she'll believe you met me?\"\n\n\"Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! Really? That would be so awesome. I can get a selfie of us together. Thank you sooo much!\"\n\n\"No problem.\" Allegra sounds happier. \"It's great to meet a fan.\"\n\n\"You have so many fans,\" Caitlin gushes.\n\n\"Obviously not enough for Jonah,\" Allegra mutters.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing,\" Allegra says. \"Do you have a phone with you? Okay.\"\n\nI wish Caitlin would leave so there'd be one less person to notice if I tumble out of this thing. My legs ache, and so does my stomach. I had a burger on the train. Obviously, a mistake. What if I . . . experience gastric distress? Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt worse. Actually, there's no part of my body that doesn't ache. My arms, shoulders, even my head are pulsing, pulsing, pulsing.\n\nI think of Celine, comatose, feeling nothing. I have to hold it together.\n\nLast night, I printed out some photos of Celine, the one I took at Target, one from the house, and one of her in the hospital. I did it since I wouldn't have my phone, so I could prove her existence to Jonah. They're still in my backpack, flattened against my back. I wish I could look at them, see her face. Maybe it would inspire me. I close my eyes and visualize her. I don't need the photo. Her blue eyes stare into my soul, and I see every detail, every eyelash, every freckle, every blush. Every time she smiled at me.\n\nIt works. I relax and can sit there on my sleeping foot while Caitlin snaps a dozen selfies and Allegra coos about Caitlin's sister, asking how old she is and if she wants an autographed eight by ten. It takes at least ten minutes before Caitlin says, \"Omigod! Your ice cream's melting! I'm sooo sorry. Should I bring you a new one?\"\n\n\"That's okay.\" Allegra's feeling better, it seems. \"But I guess I should eat it now.\"\n\n\"Of course. Sorry. Thank you. I'll get going. You're the best!\" She stumbles toward the door, and Allegra is left alone.\n\nAlmost alone.\n\nI hear her taking the cover off her ice cream, then clinking the spoon. The trolley shakes as she digs into her sundae. Then, she bursts into tears.\n\n\"I hate you!\" she screams. \"I hate you, Jonah Prince! I hate you!\"\n\nWith my unique view of the floor, I see her remove first one strappy sandal, then the other. I hear her hurl them against the wall.\n\nI try not to move, to be very Zen-like, meditative, enlightened, planning my course of action. I'm in Allegra's room. After Allegra either leaves or passes out, I'll take out the mirror and contact Kendra. Hopefully, she'll have figured out the relation between Allegra's room and Jonah's. Hopefully. Hopefully, they're adjoining with a connecting door. If so, I can simply walk into Jonah's room and talk to him when he gets back.\n\nAnd hopefully, he won't be a complete douche.\n\nMy neck hurts so much. So much. I try to adjust it.\n\nAnd tumble to the floor.\n\nFor a second, time stops. I lie there, dazed, thinking\u2014I don't know\u2014thinking maybe if I don't move at all, Allegra won't notice a guy lying on her floor.\n\nBut no, I can see her eyes. She knows I'm here.\n\nAnd she's winding up for a good scream.\n\n#\n\n#\n\n\"No, please!\" I stumble to my feet. \"Please don't be scared!\"\n\nIt's hard to stand with both feet asleep, and for a second, I think I'll fall. Allegra gapes at me, mouth open but no words coming from it.\n\nI say, \"I am your _biggest_ fan. I just had to see you in person. I'd never hurt you.\" I stare at her like I'm starstruck. \"Wow, you're so beautiful!\"\n\nShe really is. I see her decide not to scream. She closes her mouth, then opens it right back up again.\n\n\"You're . . . little.\"\n\n_You're . . . observant._\n\nBut I say, \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Sorry. My brother's about your size, my older brother. He's away at college.\"\n\nSomewhere in the far recesses of my mind, I think I knew this, the way you just know things about famous people without actually knowing where you know it from. Probably Isabella. Kid is a storehouse of completely worthless information.\n\nOr maybe not that worthless.\n\nI say, \"Do you miss him?\"\n\nAnd her face sort of breaks. She starts to cry, dark hair falling over her face. \"I miss him so much. Caleb's his name. He goes to school in Louisiana, and he's always saying I should just . . . chuck this and come home. I miss him and my mom and dad. I miss everyone. I want to go home!\"\n\nOn shaky legs, I approach her. What is it about me that makes women burst into tears in my presence? Still, better than screaming. Being from Miami, I'm a hugger. But that's out of the question. I keep my distance as much as possible, holding out my hand.\n\nShe reaches for it. \"What's your name?\"\n\n\"People call me Goose.\"\n\nShe shakes her hair away from her face. Her eyelashes are moist, with a bit of mascara under her eyes. \"I'm Allegra. I guess you knew that. I'm so lonely I kept that room service girl here until my ice cream melted. I have no one to talk to, no one but Jonah, and he h-hates me.\"\n\n\"I'll talk to you.\" She still hasn't let go of my hand, so I squeeze hers. \"Talking's my superpower.\"\n\nShe smiles. \"My brother's like that too.\" Finally, she drops my hand. \"You're positively not going to kill me, right?\"\n\nI shake my head. \"If I was, wouldn't I have done it already?\"\n\n\"I guess.\" She inhales a huge load of snot. \"I could use a tissue.\"\n\nI wonder if she usually has someone wipe her nose for her. \"Let me get one. Which way's the bathroom?\" Her room is huge, and it connects to another room, a living room, which is why it took Caitlin so long to push the trolley through. There's a balcony on one end of the room, but no connecting door. I glance into the living room. There's another balcony, an entry door, and yes, a closed door\u2014maybe it connects to Jonah's room. I head into the bathroom and grab a wad of tissues. I hand them to Allegra. \"Cry away, milady,\" I say in my Cockney accent. \"Sorry, I was in the school play, _Oliver!_ , and we talked like that.\"\n\nAllegra sniffles into a second and third tissue. Her face is red and puffy. \"I'd love to be in a school play. It sounds so . . . normal.\"\n\n\"Most people in my school play would love to be on a TV series.\"\n\n\"That's because they don't know what it's like to have your career be over at seventeen.\"\n\n\"You mean just because your show went off the air? You'll get another.\"\n\n\"No, I won't. People hate me.\" She picks up tissue number four.\n\n\"The girl who delivered your room service didn't hate you. She said she was a fan.\"\n\n\"No, she said her little sister's a fan. People watched my show when they were younger, but then they outgrew it, so they hate me. Do you know there are 'I hate Allegra Kendall' Facebooks, Twitters, Instagrams, and Tumblrs? One of the Twitters is called DieAllegraDie. People post about what a whore I am, or how I can't act. If I wear a bikini, someone takes a picture and says I'm a slut. If I wear a big sweatshirt, they say I'm getting fat. I optioned this book I liked, because I wanted to make it into a movie, and people said I was doing it because I had to pay to get roles. They hate that I date Jonah, so it should make them happy that he dumped me.\"\n\n\"He's kind of a jerk, isn't he?\"\n\n\"Yes!\" Her eyes widen, and she nods. \"He's a total jerk. Cute only gets you so far. He's rude. He loogeyed on his fans once. More than once. But they love him and hate me. They're all just waiting for me to get drunk and do a sex tape. My agent thinks that wouldn't be a bad thing, prove I'm not a baby anymore.\"\n\nI eye the bottle of wine which, I notice, is open but still full. \"Is that what you think too?\"\n\n\"Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I don't know why I ordered it. I guess because my boyfriend broke up with me, and you're supposed to get drunk. But I don't really like drinking. I like being in control of myself.\" She looks at me, like she wants my opinion.\n\n\"I think that's smart.\" This goes against my plan to wait until she passed out. But I guess that went out the window when she saw me anyway. Besides, I feel bad for her. I remember the room service girl, Kasey. If Allegra gets drunk to go out with Jonah, the paparazzi will take pictures and make her look bad. I can sneak into Jonah's room after Allegra leaves\u2014if she trusts me.\n\nAnd I'm trustworthy. I say, \"If you get drunk and the press gets photos, won't it hurt your chances of getting into college?\" She stares at me like I'm crazy. \"Sorry. My mom's always worried about college.\"\n\nShe laughs. \"Yeah, college. What a joke. I could never go to college.\" She takes the last tissue.\n\n\"Why not? Lots of kid stars go to college. Jodie Foster was a kid star, and she went to Yale. Natalie Portman went to Harvard. Emma Watson started at Brown, but she quit because she was working too much.\" More stuff I know without knowing _how_ I know.\n\n\"High-class problems.\" She sniffles deeply.\n\n\"Let me get you more tissues.\" I go back to the bathroom and, this time, remove the whole Kleenex box from its holder and hand it to her.\n\n\"Thanks. You are so nice.\" She blows her nose. \"I could never get into a college like that. I'm not smart enough.\" She starts picking up the pile of used tissues.\n\n\"I bet you are. Or just go to a normal college. Where's your brother go?\"\n\n\"Loyola.\" She sighs and tries to stuff the tissues into her pocket. \"Back home. God, I'd love to go to school with Caleb. I miss him so much.\"\n\n\"You should go. I bet you have a ton of money saved up. Then, if you still wanted to act, you could come back afterward, when you don't have to get drunk or pose nude to prove you're a grown-up.\"\n\n\"I would never pose nude,\" she says. \"But you're right.\"\n\nWe talk like that for maybe an hour, maybe more. I tell her about the classes I take in school and how it's my ambition to play Boq in _Wicked_ on Broadway. She tells me about her family, the TV show, and how everyone pushed her to date Jonah, to be part of Jollegra. But then, the teen girls hated her even more because she \"took him\" from them. \"I really barely know him. We never once talked the way I'm talking to you right now. I have no friends. This is the longest conversation I've had in a year, and you're some guy who snuck into my hotel room.\"\n\nI shrug. \"Yeah, sorry about that.\"\n\n\"No, no. Don't be. I'm glad you did. You kept me from doing something really stupid.\" She glances at the clock. \"Oh, gosh, I have to get out of here soon. Command performance with his highness. I bet I'm a mess.\"\n\n\"No, you're beautiful. Your eye shadow's just smeared. Here, let me help you.\"\n\nI get the makeup I saw in the bathroom and help her clean up. Then, we tackle what to do with the wine, and with me. She's worried that, if someone knows about the wine, they'll think she drank it, and if they know she has a guy in her room, they'll say she's a slut. \"I haven't done one slutty thing ever,\" she says. \"They don't care.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about me. I'll sneak out after you leave.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"I snuck in. And maybe you can give the wine to the maid, like a tip.\"\n\nSo we write a note to the maid and put it on the wine. Allegra takes a picture of the bottle with her phone, to prove it.\n\n\"Do you want a picture of us?\" she asks me.\n\n\"Huh?\" Then, I remember, I'm supposed to be her biggest fan. Also, if my parents don't murder me, I could show it to Isabella. \"I forgot my phone. Can you take one with yours and send it to me?\"\n\n\"Good idea. Then, I'd have your phone number, and you'd have mine. We could talk sometimes. You could tell me about high school.\" She crouches down beside me to snap the photo.\n\n\"And you could tell _me_ about college, when you go back to Louisiana.\"\n\nShe squeezes my shoulder and takes another shot. \"I think I might actually do that. I mean, yeah, the press will assume I'm pregnant, but I'll know the truth.\"\n\n\"So will I.\"\n\nShe looks at the photos. \"It would be so cool to be friends with you.\"\n\n\"That's me, every girl's BFF.\"\n\n_And no one's true love._\n\nShe sends the photo to the number I give her. Just as she does, there's a knock on the door.\n\n\"That's Jonah. Gotta go.\" She looks at me. \"Are you sure you're okay?\"\n\nI nod. \"I'll think of a way out.\" I already have.\n\nShe leans and kisses me on the cheek. \"You're an incredible person, Goose. You've really opened my eyes.\"\n\n\"I'm glad.\"\n\nI hide behind the curtains as she opens the door. I hear Jonah's voice. \"So, I suppose we're doing this,\" he says in his British accent.\n\n\"I suppose we are,\" Allegra says. \"Look, I'm sorry about before.\"\n\n\"I don't want to get back together.\"\n\n\"No, neither do I.\" Her voice is calm, even happy. \"I just want to get along and stop fighting and everything.\"\n\nA pause. \"Sounds good. Shall we?\"\n\n\"We shall.\"\n\nI hear the door close behind Allegra. I wait a minute, then two, before I move from my spot, in case anyone comes back. No one does, so I check out the living room.\n\nThe connecting door is locked from the other side. If Jonah's room is on either side of Allegra's, there's only one way to get to it.\n\nClimb over the balcony.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nDid I mention I'm afraid of heights?\n\nAfter Allegra leaves, I contact Kendra through the mirror.\n\n\"You're still in Allegra's room?\" She's wearing a black lace mantilla, but otherwise, she looks like Violet.\n\n\"Yeah, how did you know?\"\n\n\"Hmm, magic. That's how I know you're in room 2016, and Jonah was next door in 2014, so you only have to get one room over.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Only.\" I look out the glass doors. It's so high, I can see Cinderella's castle in the Magic Kingdom. \"And you still can't magically zap me there?\"\n\n\"Still, no.\"\n\n\"Really? What's the good of having magic powers?\"\n\nKendra grimaces. \"I often wonder that myself.\"\n\nI hang up or sign off or whatever you do when you talk to someone in a magic mirror. I ask the mirror to show me Jonah.\n\nHe's in a limo, sitting with Allegra, but pretty far apart. She's trying to talk to him. \"I was thinking about going back to Louisiana.\"\n\nHe says, \"That's nice.\" He smiles at his phone, takes a selfie, then stares at it. He picks his teeth with his pinky.\n\nTerrific. They are well and truly broken up. That means when he meets Celine, if she does wake up, they can fall in love. He'll be available. And he's such a douche. I'm going through all this so a girl I like can ride into the sunset with a douche.\n\nMaybe he won't like her.\n\nAny guy with eyes would like her.\n\nI visualize Celine's smile. Of course he'll like her.\n\nI decide to wait in Allegra's room for a while. The concert's at seven, so Jonah won't be back until at least nine. Maybe if I climb over the balcony after dark, I won't be able to see the ground below.\n\nI look in the mirror. \"Show me Celine.\"\n\nIn the mirror, I see her, dark hair fanned out over the crisp, white pillow, her heart-shaped mouth curled into a tiny smile. Is she dreaming? Does she know I'm gone?\n\nI remember what Violet said about letting her live forever, comatose. Would I rather not know if she could never love me than lose her?\n\nNo. I want her to be happy. She's been through so much, losing her mother, her dad. She deserves to be happy, even if it's not with me.\n\n\"I love you,\" I tell the mirror.\n\nCeline doesn't respond. Of course, she couldn't hear me even if she was awake.\n\nI stare at her another minute.\n\nI decide to check out\u2014just check out\u2014the situation on the balcony. I pick up my backpack, open the sliding glass door, and head outside.\n\nThe balcony is a large one, spanning both the living and bedroom areas of Allegra's suite. At its front is a white aluminum railing. I don't know much about construction, but it seems pretty flimsy, with vertical rails about six inches apart and some ornamental scrollwork on top. I edge out, remembering the part in season one of _Game of Thrones_ where Tyrion's imprisoned in the sky cells, these dungeons on the side of a sheer cliff with no wall on one side and an abrupt thousand-foot drop. At least I have a railing. At least I'll only fall into the pool area and have the remote possibility of just being a quadriplegic.\n\nExcept\u2014oh, right\u2014Tyrion was _fictional._\n\nStill, I have to look. I walk to the side of the balcony closest to Jonah's room. It's not a balcony that bumps out. I won't have to scale a wall. Allegra's balcony and Jonah's are only inches apart.\n\nFor an average-height guy, it would be a no-brainer, just lift himself over the railing (which reaches my chest but would reach someone else's hip at least), swing his leg over the other railing, and drop down.\n\nDown.\n\nI picture myself, swan-diving off the railing, splattering on the pavement.\n\n_Florida Man plummets from hotel balcony._\n\nMy parents will hear about it on the news.\n\nMy mother will know she was right.\n\nAnd Celine will stay in a coma.\n\nI look across again, aware of my breathing, which is crazy-hard, hard enough that it sounds like a car with a busted muffler, and my teeth feel like they're buzzing.\n\nOkay, I need to go back inside, just for a while, a second. Slowly, carefully, like Tyrion in the sky cells, I edge toward the door.\n\nShit, there's someone in Allegra's room. The maid.\n\nI rush to the corner of the balcony, sit down, and hide.\n\nThe good thing about being my size is it's easy to hide.\n\nThe bad thing is, I feel like I could fit through the railings.\n\nI can't. They made it so kids can't fit through. Isabella couldn't. I'm bigger than a kid.\n\nThat doesn't change my racing thoughts and heart. If I could just be reasonable, I wouldn't have this fear. But that's not how it works.\n\nI close my eyes and picture myself, over and over, splattering to the ground. Even the solid stucco wall behind me doesn't help.\n\nI want my mother.\n\nNo. No. I don't. I'm here. I want to do this. Put on your big boy pants, Guzman. You can do this.\n\nOnce again, I take out the mirror.\n\n\"Show me Celine.\"\n\nThe mirror shows me her room again, her face. Kendra, disguised as Violet, sits in the visitor's chair while an elderly nurse checks Celine's chart. I watch until the nurse walks out.\n\nDesperate _not_ to look down, I ask the mirror to show me Stacey.\n\nShe's at home, in our kitchen. God, I wish I was in our kitchen. She's cleaning up dinner dishes. She hasn't noticed I'm gone yet. At least, she hasn't started worrying. I check my watch. Seven-thirty. Half an hour into the concert.\n\n\"Show me Jonah.\"\n\nHe's in his dressing room. I can hear the opening band in the background. He looks stoned, and he's meeting some fans who are posing for cell phone pictures.\n\n\"Show me Violet.\"\n\nThe mirror shows me the same elderly nurse who was in Celine's room.\n\n\"No, show me Violet.\"\n\nStill, the nurse.\n\nI get it. The nurse is Violet. But Violet promised to leave Celine alone.\n\nViolet lied.\n\nOf course Violet lied. Violet is at the hospital, disguised as a nurse. With access to drugs, access to needles.\n\nAnd access to Celine.\n\nI look at her name tag as she walks out. It says, _Lavinia Barnes, RN_.\n\n\"Show me Kendra.\"\n\n\"I still can't zap you into Jonah's room.\" Kendra still looks like Violet. This is really confusing.\n\n\"Listen! Violet's in the hospital.\" I tell her about Nurse Barnes, what I saw. \"Please don't let her hurt Celine, and maybe . . .\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Maybe get my parents, my dad. See if there's something they can do to protect her.\"\n\nHer face, Violet's beautiful, horrible face, shows confusion. \"But if I go to your parents, I can't stay with Celine.\"\n\n\"I was thinking maybe you could use the phone.\"\n\nShe rolls her eyes. \"Ohhh, the phone. Of course.\" She turns and looks at the old-fashioned beige phone on the bedside table. \"How does it work?\"\n\nGeez. I walk her through it. Several times. Finally, she gets it. She says she'll call.\n\nI've been trying not to look around too much, not to look _down._ Instead, I look out. It's after eight now. The sun is sinking into the orange pool of the sky. The mirror shows me Jonah, singing onstage. It's almost time.\n\nI stare through the glass door. The maid is still in Allegra's room. She's drinking the wine Allegra left. What if she sees me? I walk to the edge of the balcony. Even though it's June and hot, I suddenly feel chilled to the bone. My legs, my arms, my hands are shaking, teeth chattering.\n\nAs I reach the very edge of the balcony, my hands shake harder. The mirror slips from my grip.\n\nI hear it shatter to the ground, twenty floors below.\n\nShit.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nShit. Shit. Shit.\n\nI dive to the floor in case someone below saw the mirror (how could they not?), guessed where it came from.\n\nI look through the bars, down, twenty floors below. The ground swims up to my eyes, and I feel like a cartoon coyote.\n\nOn the floor as I am, I'm not worried about falling. That won't happen. I won't fall off the balcony. Even I know I can't fall from the floor.\n\nI'm worried about the entire balcony falling, detaching from the building and crashing to the ground\u2014but only after it hits every single balcony in between. How is it even attached to the building? Screws? Concrete? Who put it up there? Were they drunk? Disgruntled? Insane? I was able to push these thoughts from my head when I could look at the mirror or talk to Kendra. Now, with nothing to drown out the noise in my head, all I can think of is the screws that hold the railing up and when was the last time they were inspected?\n\nProbably never.\n\nI have no idea whether Celine is safe from Violet or when Jonah will be back. I know nothing.\n\nThe good news is, I hear nothing from below. Hopefully, they'll think some kid at the pool broke the mirror.\n\nBecause kids are always running around with antique sterling silver mirrors.\n\nThe bad news is, it's almost dark.\n\nOr maybe that's the good news.\n\nI reach for my backpack with a shaking hand. I fumble for the one distraction I have left. Celine's picture. I take it out and stare at it in the waning light.\n\nThe day it was taken was the first day I'd told myself, screw it, I'm never going to _not_ love this girl, the day I knew it would never work with Willow or any other girl because I would never stop thinking about Celine.\n\nShe'd been so beautiful that day, in a sweater the color of iceberg lettuce that perfectly set off her pale skin and dark hair. They'd been practicing the scene before Oliver and Dodger meet, the scene where Oliver is bullied by Noah Claypool. This guy, Tedder Strasky, was playing Noah, which was perfect casting because Tedder's a serious bully, like the kind that puts guys' heads into toilets (not mine, but still . . .). Celine had been playing Oliver halfheartedly. Acting wasn't really her thing. But when Strasky said his line about Oliver's mother being \"a real bad 'un,\" everything changed.\n\nOliver's supposed to attack Noah, and considering Strasky is about twice Celine's size it should have taken an impressive amount of stage combat to make it work. But as soon as Strasky said his line, Celine stood, launched herself at him, and practically pushed him off the stage. For a second, it was so real. I knew.\n\nI knew, whatever happened, I wanted that girl on my side. She was a fighter.\n\nJust like that day in biology class.\n\nNow, she's in bed, maybe dying.\n\nI know if our positions were reversed and it was Celine in a situation where she could save me, she would not be cowering on the floor. She would not be worrying about how the balcony was screwed in.\n\nShe'd be fighting her way into Jonah's room.\n\nAnd that's what I'm going to do.\n\nWhat I am doing.\n\nI pull myself up on the railing. I feel it wobble a little, hear it creak. I drop back down.\n\nNo, it didn't wobble. It's solid.\n\nI'm solid.\n\nI take a deep breath. Okay, I take five. I'm doing this. I don't look down. I can barely see.\n\nThe distance between the two balconies is less than a foot. All I have to do is climb up on one, then down the other. All I have to do.\n\nAnd if it falls off and crashes to the ground, I will just die. That's all.\n\nI read a book once, about auditioning. It said that you could combat nerves by imagining the worst-case scenario. Like, you don't get the part, so you have no money so you starve and die. Death is the worst-case scenario. Some comfort.\n\nBut the worst-case scenario right now is that I _don't_ do it and Celine stays in that cold, gray place for the next fifty years.\n\nWorse than death.\n\nDeath, I'll risk.\n\nI stuff the photo into my backpack, zip it, and throw it onto Jonah's balcony.\n\nI take one last breath and hold it.\n\nI pull myself up on the railing and over.\n\nMaybe it's adrenaline rush that lets mothers lift cars off their infants. I pull up first one leg, then the other. I'm on top of the railing like I'm Spider-Man.\n\nOkay, not exactly like Spider-Man, but pretty good. It holds. It's not crashing to the ground. But the whole thing is like slow motion, like I've been here for an hour, and just as my foot is searching for the other balcony, the sky lights up with an explosion of red and gold.\n\nFireworks. Disney fireworks, which means there are a lot of them. Fifteen minutes at least.\n\nI freeze. The balcony, the building, the entire city is shaking with explosions, first from one side, then another.\n\n_Think of Celine. Be brave like Celine. For Celine._\n\nMy foot finds the other rail. I don't want to move. I want to stay, hug the railing forever.\n\nNo. I want to land on the other side, save Celine.\n\nThe fireworks explode like bombs bursting in air all around me. I wonder if this is how it feels to be in a war, like in the 1940s in London or Berlin.\n\nThe balcony's trembling, and I'm trembling with it. I picture Celine on the other side, arms outstretched, beckoning to me, telling me that loving her isn't a crazy idea.\n\nMy feet hit the ground.\n\nI crumple to the floor.\n\n\"Hey, what are you doing here?\"\n\n#\n\n#\n\nOkay, so I know I'm small. And being small sort of skews your perspective. So, possibly, you might see someone who's just a little tall and think they look like Fezzik, the giant in _The Princess Bride._ Especially if you were already completely freaked out from hanging from a balcony two hundred feet up, during a fireworks display.\n\nBut really, I think this guy is literally eight feet tall.\n\nAnd there are two of him.\n\nWait, the second guy is the one I talked to at the elevator, the one with the cut. He's only seven feet tall. My bad. And I get a good view of the cut on his face because the first guy is lifting me by the shirt collar. It's a festering, weirdly swollen, open wound.\n\n\"You really should get that looked at,\" I gasp as Fezzik strangles me with my own shirt because, even in stress situations, I can never just shut up. My mom says, no matter what happens, I always have my mouth to keep me company.\n\nThese guys aren't talking much, though, unless you count cursing. Fezzik carries me into the room and swings me like a pendulum against the wall, then drops me. He starts to pick me up again.\n\n\"Stop!\" I yell, because that seems like a reasonable thing to say.\n\nAnd, weirdly, they both do stop. They stop and stare at me like they think I'm going to say something brilliant. I try.\n\n\"I'm not here to hurt Jonah. I mean, how could I? Look at me.\" I stare at the guy with the cut. \"Does that thing feel hot when you touch it?\"\n\nThe guy holds his monster-hand up to his face. \"Yeah, really hot. Is that bad?\"\n\n\"I'm not sure.\" I'm glad no one's picking me up, and I'm trying to prolong that. As I said to Allegra, talking is my superpower, my only superpower. \"It gets a little warm just because it's healing. But if it's really hot, it might be infected. I knew a guy with a wound like that, and he was seriously ill.\"\n\nActually, I don't \"know a guy.\" It was a character from a movie _._ And he died. But I keep that information on a need-to-know basis. \"Anyway, you should have it looked at.\"\n\nThe behemoth puts his hand to his face. \"Thanks, man.\" He turns to his friend. \"Otto, do you think it looks infected?\"\n\nOtto squints at it. \"Could be. He's right. You should get it looked at.\" He turns back to me. \"We need to get him out of here. He'll be back soon.\" He starts to pick me up again.\n\n\"Wait!\" I scream. \"Wait! Wait!\"\n\nHe drops me again. Hard. My head is ringing. \"What?\"\n\n\"Please,\" I say, channeling Westley from the same movie. I'm on my knees, more because I'm already down there than because I'm begging. But partly because of begging. \"I have to talk to Jonah. I came all the way from Miami and climbed over a balcony.\"\n\n\"What are you, in love with him? 'Cause he likes girls, lots of girls.\"\n\n\"I know. That's what I need to talk to him about, a girl. She's my friend. And she's dying.\"\n\n\"Haven't heard that one in a week.\" The scarred guy is still touching his cut.\n\n\"No, it's true. If you let me get my backpack, I could show you pictures of her. You could see.\" I wish I had the mirror. With that, I could prove lots of things, including the existence of magic. I could check on Celine too. I push aside my worries about Violet. Kendra's taking care of it.\n\nBut the mirror's gone. I have, as usual, nothing but my big mouth.\n\nSo I start talking, telling them the whole story, about how beautiful Celine is, and how nice, all the things that happened to her, her parents dying and everything. At some point, the scarred guy (whose name, I find out, is Sherman) does get my backpack. He takes out the photos and shows them to Otto. I've got one of Celine, lying still on the bed. When he gets to that one, I'm practically crying. And so are Otto and Sherman.\n\n\"So you see,\" I say, \"it's really important that I find Jonah. Only he can help.\"\n\nOtto looks at Sherman and shakes his head. \"That little prick's never going to help. He'll probably fire us for letting him stay.\"\n\n\"Tell him it would look bad in the papers if Jonah's bodyguards beat up a shorter statured individual like myself.\" They look at me, confused. \"A little person, a dwarf. If a big guy beats up someone smaller, that's . . . frowned upon.\" This has gotten me out of many a fight (when my mouth has gotten me into one), questioning the guy's manhood for hitting someone smaller.\n\n\"How would the press find out?\" Otto asks.\n\n\"I'd tell them, of course. It would be right there on the cover of the _Enquirer_. I'm an actor. I love publicity. And then, it would be all your fault.\"\n\n\"He makes an interesting point,\" Sherman says.\n\n\"And, meanwhile,\" I say, \"it would be really _good_ publicity if he visited a sick girl in the hospital. And couldn't he use some of that after the thing with the bicycle last week? After his breakup with Allegra.\"\n\n\"He didn't break up with Allegra,\" Sherman says.\n\n\"Oh, I think you'll find he did. He was a total jerk and broke her heart. Even if my friend doesn't wake up, he could take pictures, prove Jonah visited. We could call _Extra_. It would be a lot better than another story about him getting drunk and doing something stupid.\"\n\n\"He's right,\" Sherman says. \"We could ask Harry. That's his manager. And you seem like a really nice guy, um . . .\"\n\n\"Goose,\" I say.\n\n\"Goose. We should try to help Goose, Otto.\"\n\nBut, just at that moment, the door opens. And Otto picks me up and drops me again.\n\n#\n\n#\n\nYou know in old cartoons, when someone gets beat up and they see stars going around their head? That's how it is. I literally see stars. Then, I realize it's the last of the Disney fireworks out the window. Still, my head really hurts.\n\nOtto starts to pick me up again. Why did they turn on me?\n\n\"Man, stop!\" I scream. \"Dwarf tossing's been illegal in Florida since 1989!\"\n\nAn aside: This is actually true. In 1989, the Florida legislature voted to ban the \"bar sport\" of throwing little people against mattresses. This may be one of the best and least-stupid laws Florida has ever passed. Makes me proud to be a Floridian. It's still legal other places. But there are actually people campaigning to bring it back, to \"create jobs.\" If that's ever my job, just kill me.\n\nSherman's yelling at Otto to stop too. \"Don't go crazy, man! Dude's tiny. God, this is gonna look really bad if the papers get wind of it.\"\n\nAnd then, I understand.\n\nWhen Otto picks me up the second time, he whispers, \"When I drop you, stay down and act hurt.\"\n\n\"Shouldn't be hard.\" It comes out a grunt.\n\nHe drops me, and every bone in my body aches. But I get it now. It's a show for Jonah.\n\n\"I just wanted him to visit my sick friend!\" I yell.\n\n\"What's going on?\" A British accent. Jonah. Wearing purple diaper pants and a backward baseball cap. \"You're beating up a . . . a midget in my room?\"\n\n\"Actually,\" Sherman says, \"that word is considered offensive. I believe the preferred term is 'little person.'\"\n\n\"Right,\" I grunt.\n\n\"But you're beating one up. In my room. That's my point, really.\"\n\n\"Otto is,\" Sherman says. \"I tried to stop him. I told him it would be absolutely horrific publicity if this guy went to the press.\"\n\n_Horrific?_\n\n\"He snuck into your room,\" Otto says. \"On the balcony.\"\n\n\"Ouch!\" I yell, partly for show but partly because it really does hurt.\n\n\"Stop it,\" Jonah says.\n\nThe guys back off. Behind Jonah's back, Otto winks at me.\n\n\"Who are you, and why are you in my room?\" Jonah demands.\n\n\"My name is Goose. Goose Guzman, and I want you to visit the most beautiful girl in the world in the hospital.\"\n\n\"Oh, brother.\" Jonah sighs.\n\nI pick up Celine's picture, which has fallen on the floor. \"That's her. She's in Miami. She's in a coma. And I think meeting you might be the only thing that will wake her up.\"\n\nAnd then, I tell him everything else about Celine, how great she is. \"I know you have a ton of fans, but this girl is special. And, what's more, she's an orphan.\"\n\n\"An orphan?\" Jonah smirks. \"Like Oliver Twist?\"\n\n\"Exactly like Oliver Twist,\" I say, glomming on to the fact that he's British and has actually heard of Oliver Twist. \"In fact, that's how we met, in a school play, _Oliver!_ She sang, 'Where Is Love?' and that was how I knew.\"\n\n\"Knew?\"\n\n\"What a great person she was. Like no one else. And you have the opportunity to help someone like that. And, frankly, it would help you too.\"\n\n\"What? How would it help me? Why do I need help?\"\n\nIs this guy for real? Does he have no idea that everyone thinks he's a complete turd?\n\n\"Well, after the pictures of you peeing on your neighbors' lawn last week and practically running over that kid in your Maserati, not to mention your big breakup with . . .\" I stop, realizing I'm probably not supposed to know about the breakup. \"Don't you think it would be nice to have some good publicity?\"\n\n\"Now listen here,\" Jonah says. \"It's not my fault the press follows me about and reports on my every move\u2014normal teenage stuff like\u2014\"\n\n\"Like mooning a group of Catholic schoolchildren out the window of your limo?\" I ask.\n\n\"Nuns are so funny!\" He giggles. \"They look like penguins!\"\n\n\"Or when your monkey bit that waitress?\"\n\n\"She shouldn't have tried to pet it.\"\n\n\"So you don't care that you're perceived as the biggest douche in the universe?\"\n\n\"Girls don't think so.\" He glances in the mirror and adjusts his hat.\n\nIt's true. Celine liked him a lot. I always figured it was a blind spot on her part, that she somehow didn't see what he was like. It's like on _The Simpsons,_ how Lisa reads _Non-Threatening Boys Magazine,_ that girls like unattainable, girlish-looking boys because they're scared of real ones.\n\nMy head hurts. In fact, my whole body hurts. My brain hurts, and I just want a ride to the train station so I can go home\u2014after calling my mom to assure her I'm fine and apologize.\n\n\"Fine,\" I say. \"I'm sorry I thought you'd want to help this girl, who's a really big fan\u2014and, incidentally, a really cool human being. My bad.\" I turn and start for the door.\n\n\"Actually, I think it's a fabulous idea.\"\n\nBefore me stands the biggest, blondest woman I've ever seen. She's wearing a pink suit and a matching hat with huge white roses all over.\n\nI turn to stare. Jonah turns too. \"Mum, what are you doing here?\"\n\n\"Allegra phoned. I've come to check on the mess you've made of your life.\" She looks him up and down. \"Pull up your trousers.\"\n\n\"Mess? I'm an international sensation.\" But he does pull up his pants, which fall back down as soon as he lets go.\n\n\"An international sensation with no soul.\" She grabs his baseball cap. \"Take that off. It's disrespectful.\"\n\nJonah tugs at his pants and the cap at the same time. \"Mum, what have I done?\"\n\n\"You spit at that crowd of fans last week. You wore those horrible trousers to sing the national anthem at a ball game. The whole country saw your crack, the whole world, maybe.\" She gives them another tug.\n\n\"Mum, quit it.\"\n\n\"When you visited the Washington Monument, you said you were sure Washington would have told a lie to get to one of your concerts.\" The roses on her hat tremble with each word.\n\n\"He might've.\"\n\n\"And you haven't been inside a church in a year. This is not how I raised you, Joshbekesha!\"\n\n\"Josh\u2014what?\" I say.\n\n\"That's not my name!\" Jonah snaps. \"I'm having it legally changed when I'm eighteen.\"\n\n\"But you're seventeen now, and you do as I say. And I say you should do one nice thing for every ten rotten things you do.\"\n\nJonah nods. \"Yes, Mum.\" He looks at me. \"Perhaps I can help you out after all.\"\n\nJonah's Amazonian mother smiles at me. \"Now, this looks like a nice boy who listens to his mum.\"\n\nI feel my ears get hot, which literally has never happened. Between my olive complexion and my high threshold for embarrassment, I'm not a blusher. But I assume that's what's happening now. I say, \"Usually, you're right. I am a great son with a great mum\u2014uh, mom. But I'm afraid today has been an exception. If you'd let me use the phone, I could make it up to her, though.\"\n\nTwo hours later, I am\u2014as hoped\u2014on Jonah's private plane. We had to drive through what looked like a cornfield of teenage girls to get out of the hotel. I don't know how they knew he was leaving, or maybe they just live in the parking lot. I called my mother on Josh's mom's cell phone, and she only slightly freaked out. I guess she figured out where I was and was happy I wasn't dead or arrested.\n\n\"Can you check with Kendra?\" I ask. I'm trying to figure out what to say not to get her more worried. But I'm worried, so it's hard. \"Can you just . . . make sure Celine's okay?\" I don't want to tell her about the evil nurse.\n\n\"Okay,\" Stacey says. \"Just get home safe.\"\n\nJonah's sitting in the seat across from mine. He has on khaki pants and a blue button-down his mother brought him and sort of looks like a waiter at TGI Fridays. He's saying, \"Yes, mum\" a lot.\n\n\"Yes, Mum, I did notice how Goose called his mum so she wouldn't worry,\" he says.\n\n\"You're right, Mum. It probably wouldn't kill me to volunteer at a soup kitchen.\"\n\n\"Yes, I'll get a haircut. It would look nicer.\"\n\n\"Of course I'm not on drugs.\"\n\nHis speaking voice, like his music, is sort of . . . soothing. It's after 1:00 a.m., which means it's been almost a full day since I've slept. And, even then, I barely did because I was so worried about Celine.\n\nI feel like closing my eyes.\n\nMaybe I will.\n\nYes, maybe I will . . .\n\nI will . . .\n\nI feel a bump beneath me. I start awake. It takes me a moment to realize where I am. Across from me, someone is saying, \"Of course, Mum. Of course I realize it should be about the music.\"\n\nJonah. Jonah's plane. I've actually succeeded. He's going to go to the hospital and kiss Celine.\n\n_Kiss Celine._\n\nI push back all the feelings that causes. I can't think about how much it's going to suck to see him kiss her right now. Or ever. Celine is my friend, and I should want what's best for her. And if this . . .\n\n\"Really, Mum, how was I supposed to know I shouldn't text at a funeral?\"\n\n. . . if this idiot is what's best for her, then that's what I should want. At least he has a nice mom.\n\nI look out the window. The night outside is black. At least, since it's 2:30 a.m., there shouldn't be too many girls waiting in the terminal.\n\nOkay, I spoke too soon. As soon as we leave the secure area, there are _hundreds_ of girls, crushing together, craning to see Jonah.\n\n\"Is that him?\" one yells.\n\n\"Couldn't be, in that nerdy outfit.\"\n\n\"It's a disguise! It's a disguise!\"\n\n\"Omigod! That's his mom!\"\n\n\"I love his mum!\"\n\n\"Who's the little guy?\"\n\n\"Are you famous too?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" I can't resist telling them, \"but I'm going to be.\"\n\nOtto and Sherman and a bunch of other bodyguards I don't know fight against the surging mob. How did they even know he was going to be here? Don't they have mothers to tell them not to go to the airport at two in the morning?\n\nOh, yeah. They probably blew off their mothers like I did.\n\nFinally, we make it to Jonah's limo, one of three limos that peel off in separate directions. Ours goes to the hospital.\n\nWhen we get there, it's blissfully quiet. It never occurred to anyone that Jonah would go to a hospital instead of a club or a South Beach restaurant where you eat dinner in bed. We head for the entrance.\n\n\"Where's the photog?\" Jonah's manager, Harry, is griping. \"The photog was supposed to meet us outside. Damn, there's always paparazzi around when he's pissing on a monument, but never when he's doing something nice.\"\n\n\"Perhaps it's because he's so seldom doing anything nice,\" Jonah's mom says. \"Go on, love.\"\n\n\"Maybe he could go up now and the photographer can come when he gets there, when Celine wakes up.\"\n\n_Oh, please, let Celine wake up._\n\n\"I think we should wait for the photographer,\" Jonah says. \"After all, it's the whole reason we're\u2014\" He's interrupted by the mother of all nudges from his mum. \"I mean, of course I'd love to go up and meet the gi . . . young lady right now.\"\n\nHe looks to his mother for approval, and she pats his shoulder.\n\n\"Come on, then.\" I gesture for Jonah to follow me to the elevator. \"It's probably better if it's just the two of us.\"\n\nThe elevator is one of those big ones that can accommodate a gurney. We stand far apart and don't talk. Jonah's probably tired from the tongue-lashing, and me, I don't have anything to say. I don't have anything to think. At least, nothing I _want_ to think. If I was thinking\u2014which I'm really trying not to do\u2014I'd be thinking this is _it._ End of the line. If Jonah's kiss doesn't wake Celine up, maybe nothing will. Maybe Celine is really and truly gone forever.\n\nThe hospital is so silent, which is bad because it allows me to be alone with my thoughts but good because it's quick. Only one nurse gets on the elevator. She doesn't seem to notice Jonah, and she's going to the same floor we are, twelve.\n\nI watch the numbers. I don't want to talk to Jonah. Celine thinks he's so profound, but really, he's an idiot. She'll be disappointed.\n\nShe'll be disappointed _if_ she wakes up.\n\n_Five._\n\nThis has to work.\n\n_Six._\n\nIt will work.\n\n_Seven._\n\nWhat if it doesn't?\n\n_Eight._\n\nNo point thinking about it.\n\n___Nine._\n\nBut what if it doesn't?\n\n_Ten._\n\nStop it. Stop it!\n\n_Eleven._\n\nI'll know in five minutes. Two if we run. Almost there. At least the wondering will be over.\n\nThe elevator jolts to a stop.\n\n\"I'm afraid I can't let you boys off,\" the nurse says.\n\n#\n\n#\n\n\"What the\u2014?\" Jonah yells.\n\nBut I know. Of course it's Violet. She looks different than the nurse I saw before, but I know her by the expression on her face. And, um, the fact that she's not letting us move.\n\nThe first thought that flashes through my head is that I must be right about Jonah. I must be close. Violet hasn't bothered Celine until now. If she's suddenly trying to stop me, she must know that Jonah is the handsome prince who can wake Celine.\n\nI lunge for the alarm button. It starts ringing. Jonah's screaming, \"Help! Help! I'm being kidnapped! I'm a rock star!\" But then, just as suddenly, my arm, my whole body freezes. Jonah's screams stop. I can see that he, too, is frozen, stone-like, like Medusa's victims. I can only move my eyes, and with them, I see Violet push the button for the roof.\n\n\"I'll drag you up and throw you off. Falling from a great height is your destiny, dwarf.\"\n\nI feel the elevator start up again. I can't do anything about it.\n\nAnd then, there's another person in the elevator. She looks like Violet. My eyes take in blazing red hair and high-heeled boots. \"What are you doing here?\" the nurse-Violet screams.\n\n\"Saving them!\" the other Violet screams, so I know it's Kendra. \"It's too late to save you. Violet, you disappoint me.\"\n\nThe elevator again jolts to a stop.\n\n\"Disappoint you? I always disappoint you,\" Nurse Violet mocks. \"I disappoint everyone.\"\n\n\"That's not true. I thought you were the daughter I never had. It breaks my heart to have to stop you, to have to use tough love.\"\n\n\"Then don't!\" Nurse Violet screams.\n\nAnd suddenly, a ball of fire flies right at Kendra and me. I can move, and I duck to avoid it. Kendra somehow quashes the flame, but there is another, and another. Jonah is shrieking. The doors open, and Kendra screams at us to run, even as she uses a fireball of her own to hold Nurse Violet at bay.\n\n\"How?\" I look out the door. The elevator is several feet above where it's supposed to be, hovering above the floor. The white linoleum floor looks slick and hard as ice.\n\n\"Just jump!\" Kendra says.\n\nAnd, amazingly, tugging Jonah behind me, I do.\n\nI fall hard, but I don't die. Jonah lands neatly, and I yell, \"Come on!\" I don't look back. I hear the door close. I think, hope, we're on the right floor, Celine's floor. I check the numbers on the doors, 1201, 1202. Yes! We skid around a corner and almost hit an oncoming nurse.\n\n\"Slow down!\" she yells.\n\nAt least it's not Violet. We slow. Jonah's been making frightened, incredulous sounds, combined with lots of cursing. Once we pass the nurse, he says, \"What the hell was that?\"\n\n\"A witch.\" I don't look at him. \"I didn't tell you because you'd have thought I was lying. Or crazy. But now you know. A witch put a spell on Celine to make her go to sleep. I want you to kiss her, so you can wake her up.\" I keep walking fast, not looking at him. Eyes on the prize. Celine.\n\nPresumably because of what he's seen, Jonah doesn't seem to think I'm crazy. \"You think I can break the spell?\"\n\n\"You're a handsome prince, aren't you? Or as close as we have.\" We reach a corner. I grab the wall to stop myself, then check around it.\n\n\"Oh, yeah.\" He's panting, but he grins. \"Guess I am.\"\n\nWe round the corner at a fast walk, me working hard to keep up with Jonah's longer legs. I say, \"So you'll do it?\"\n\n\"Sure. Why not?\"\n\n_Why not? Because you might be putting yourself in a witch's path._ But I don't say it. Why would I? If he's too dumb to realize it, I'm not going to enlighten him. I just need him to wake Celine. He can leave right after. In fact, I'd prefer it.\n\nWe fast-walk around a last corner, then to Celine's door.\n\nI open it.\n\nShe is so beautiful. It's been a day since I've seen her, and I am stunned by her like it's the first time. She lies there, so pale against the white sheets. Her black hair is fanned out behind her on the pillow, and her full, red lips are exactly the ones I've always wanted to kiss.\n\n_Please let this work. Please come back to me._\n\nI jut my hand toward her, in case Jonah doesn't get _which_ comatose girl exactly I meant. \"That's her.\" It's hard to form words. \"Celine.\" Something's wedged in my throat, making it hard to talk. The idea that, if this doesn't work, maybe nothing will. She might never awaken, she might die, and with her, the possibility\u2014however slight\u2014that I keep with me every night as I drift off to sleep, the possibility that she could someday love me.\n\nOf course, if it works, if Jonah's kiss wakes her, that possibility will be gone anyway. He doesn't know her, but once he sees how pretty and sweet and funny she is, he'll fall in love with her. Even a douche like him would know she's special. They'll walk off into the night together, like Andie and Blane, and I'll be left all alone\u2014well, alone with a houseful of people, but without her. So, alone.\n\nStill, I have to try it. I love her. She needs to be alive on this planet, even if it's not with me. That's what love is, after all, wanting the best for the other person, not yourself. I learned that the hard way.\n\nJonah looks at her, and smiles. \"She's lovely.\" His admiration is genuine, of course. With his accent, it comes out all _loff-lee_ , which is probably why girls think he's so hot. Maybe someday, I can move to another town where nobody knows me, pretend to be a Brit, and get all sorts of girls, short girls, tall girls, lots of girls. Just not Celine.\n\n\"She is,\" I say. \"Loff-lee. She's nice too, and funny, and talented and . . . good with kids. She's like no one I ever met before, which is why I need you to help her.\"\n\n\"And you think my kissing her . . . ?\"\n\n\"I hope so.\" _Do I hope so? I do._ \"I can be straight with you now that you've seen the witches, seen what they can do. This is her only chance.\"\n\nHe shrugs. \"Guess we can try.\" And then, without another word, he leans down toward her and . . .\n\nI can't look. I turn away. This is what I wanted, dammit. This is what I wanted, the reason I traveled so far, lied to my parents, hid in the room service cart, and hung from a balcony. I want this. I just want her to wake up, no matter what.\n\nThe room is silent. God, are they still kissing, all this time? I want to look, but I don't want to see if she's, you know, enjoying it too much.\n\nFinally, Jonah's voice says, \"I don't think it worked, man.\"\n\nMy chest is a deflating balloon. My eyes ache like I just came out of salt water. I squeeze them together. I wanted it to work. I did. Now what?\n\nI turn back, opening them. Jonah's staring down at Celine. \"I was really hoping it would, and not just because I wanted the reputation of having my magic lips raise someone from the dead. I knew if you were willing to go to all that trouble for her, she must have been pretty special.\"\n\nIt's a really coherent thing for him to say. Still, the past tense about kills me. My eyes are damp, but I'm not going to wipe them, not in front of him. \"She was. She is.\"\n\nHe tosses his hair a little girlishly. \"So this spell, the spell the witch put on her, it said _I_ had to kiss her?\"\n\nI shrug. \"I don't know. In all the fairy tales, the girl gets awakened by a handsome prince. I was going with that idea.\"\n\nHe chuckles. \"Perhaps not handsome or princely enough.\" He looks down, thinking. \"My mum used to read me those storybooks. It was nice. I was a shit to my mum, wasn't I?\"\n\n\"Yeah, sort of.\" I was a shit to mine too, and it didn't even help.\n\n\"You know,\" Jonah says, \"most of my books talked about true love as well. Perhaps that's a factor. Perhaps that's what's missing, the love part. Beautiful as she is, I don't love her.\"\n\nThat must be it. Still, I say, \"She loves you, though. She listens to all your songs, has posters of you all over the place, writes your initials on her notebook in pink highlighter . . .\"\n\nHe throws back his head then and laughs. \"But that describes half the teenaged girls in the world, these idiots who camp out in the airport. Do you think I can resuscitate all of them too?\"\n\n\"They probably don't all need it.\" Celine's not an idiot, but he does have a point.\n\n\"Still, I think your definition of love may be a little thin.\"\n\n\"My definition of love isn't thin at all.\" I take Celine's hand and squeeze it in the silent room. It's so soft, and I remember teaching her to play the piano, one finger over the other. I love her fingers.\n\nJonah sees me and nods. \"Surely there must be someone who actually loves her, who _knows_ and loves her. She's quite pretty.\" He looks back at her, and now, I hate him looking at her, since it didn't work. He turns back toward me.\n\n\"She's very pretty,\" I say. \"Nice too, and talented and fun. But she doesn't have a boyfriend, if that's what you mean.\" When you think about it, it's crazy that someone as cool as Celine doesn't have hundreds of guys in love with her. She once told me she didn't like guys who think they're hot. That describes most guys at our school.\n\nJonah tugs at his pants, then seems to realize they aren't falling down, since they're the geeky pants his mom got him. \"Well, maybe not a boyfriend, but it strikes me that someone who went to all this trouble for her\u2014I mean, someone who could have been arrested dozens of times. Someone who did get beaten up by my bodyguards\u2014that, perhaps, that person may in fact be her true love.\"\n\nOh. Duh. He means me. Am I that easy to see through? Is he smarter than I thought? \"Yeah, well, of course I love her. But that doesn't mean she loves me back. I mean, look at her, and then look at me.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" he says, and I sort of want to hit him for agreeing so quickly, but then, he says, \"Ahem. I mean, of course, we don't know what she thinks, and she isn't awake to tell us. She could love you. You have rather a charming personality.\"\n\n\"Gee, thanks.\" This guy's getting less charming by the minute.\n\n\"But even assuming you're right, does it have to be mutual? If you are truly in love with her, might that not be enough love?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I hadn't thought of that.\" I hadn't.\n\n\"Should you not, perhaps, try?\"\n\nI think about it. I've wanted to kiss her since forever, or at least a few months. But the thing that stopped me was her reaction, what she'd think of me. If I didn't kiss her, we could be friends. I could be with her all the time, like buddies, see her every day. But if I kissed her, it would get all awkward if she didn't love me back. I didn't want to upset things.\n\nNow, she's in a coma. She wouldn't need to know I kissed her. In fact, I'll take it to the grave. Is that pervy? Maybe. Perhaps, as Jonah would say. But does that matter? The fact is, she holds my heart in her body, and if she doesn't awaken, I may die.\n\nI nod. I step up to Celine. Her lips are so full in her heart-shaped face. I wish she'd open her eyes so I could see those too, so I don't feel like I'm taking advantage. But, of course, that defeats the purpose of kissing her. I touch a lock of the shiny, black hair on the white pillowcase. It feels soft like the satiny ribbons my mother uses on packages at Christmas or on my sister's hair. Celine used to do Isabella's hair in ribbons. I can hear her breathing, smell the sweetness of her breath. I imagine for a moment that she loves me. It's not so impossible, is it? I'm a great guy. I picture us sitting at the piano that one night, me playing \"Clair de Lune,\" trying to impress her _._ She could have loved me then. I reach forward and adjust her face so it's leaning toward me. I feel like there's no air in the room.\n\nIt's not like I've never kissed a girl before. Just not this girl, the one that matters. And there's the part about her being asleep. I inhale through my nose. Then, my lips meet hers.\n\n_God._\n\nI mean to give her a small kiss, a polite kiss, not be like one of those guys who waits until a girl passes out, then mauls her. I love this girl. I love this girl, but I don't want her like that, not by fraud. In my fantasies, she wants me too. And yet, when our lips meet, I feel a flash of something\u2014call it electricity, call it magnetism, call it magic\u2014binding us together, and I can't let go, I can't let go, and I'm kissing her like I've always imagined.\n\nFinally, I back off. I more than back off. I pull my lips off her like a plunger getting yanked out of a toilet. I run behind Jonah, then out the door.\n\nIt didn't work. I knew it wouldn't. A regular guy like me couldn't possibly be the true love of the most beautiful girl in maybe the whole world. I'm not Blane. Heck, I'm not even Duckie. Still, I hoped it would work. I hoped it would because now, I'm out of ideas, and Celine's still in a coma and I am there with her. Maybe she'll die or just stay there, suspended, forever, and I will never have anyone to teach piano to or watch John Hughes movies with, no one to tell me I don't have to be funny for people to like me.\n\nAnd, at that moment, with no one there to see except the nurses (who are probably used to it), I give way to the tears that had been threatening to seep out of my eyes for the past week. I bury my face in my hands and sob. _Celine._\n\n\"You're here. You?\"\n\n_What?_ A voice from inside the room. Not Jonah's voice. A girl's voice. Celine's voice! But how?\n\n\"I am here,\" Jonah's voice says back. \"Was it . . . Celine?\"\n\n\"Yes. I had a dream about you. You were in it. In my dream, you kissed me. I thought it was only a dream because it sounded so crazy. I mean, why would Jonah Prince be here with me? It's so incredible.\"\n\n_She's talking to Jonah. She's so happy to see him._\n\n\"Why indeed,\" he says. \"A little friend of yours came to see me, to tell me about you.\"\n\n_No. No. Don't tell her I kissed her. It will ruin everything._\n\n\"A little . . . oh, you must mean\u2014Goose! In my dream, you weren't the only one who kissed me. In my dream, Goose kissed me, and that's what woke me up.\"\n\n_What?_\n\n\"Goose!\" She's calling me. \"Where is he?\" Her voice holds a note of panic I can't help but imagine is from missing me. Could it be? I wipe away the embarrassing tears. My face hurts.\n\n\"Celine?\" I step from behind the door frame before I have time to chicken out. \"I'm . . . I'm here.\" Is she mad? Will she laugh at me?\n\nShe's half sitting up on the bed, leaning on her hands, her blue eyes wide open. When she sees me, her face breaks into this huge smile that wasn't there before, not even for meeting Jonah.\n\n\"Goose! You are here! You went away, and I missed you so much!\" She adjusts herself on the bed, then reaches out her hand.\n\nI run to take it. God. It's not like I haven't touched her hand before, but this is so . . . intentional. Almost like kissing her, but almost kind of better than kissing her because she knows I'm doing it. Is it possible? Could my kiss have awakened her?\n\n\"You . . . missed me?\" I ask. \"You knew I was gone?\"\n\n\"Of course. Everyone thinks that people in comas don't hear anything, don't know anything. But we do hear or at least _I_ did, and we have a lot of time to think, too, about . . . everything. I knew you were here all that time. And then, I knew you left. Why did you leave? I missed you, even when I was asleep.\"\n\n_She missed me._ I get more daring. I squeeze her hand. I see the little burn scar I noticed that day. It's really her hand I'm holding. \"I left to find Jonah, to get him to kiss you.\"\n\n\"Why did you want him to kiss me?\" She squeezes back, only instead of just a little squeeze, she clings to my hand.\n\n\"Kendra said a handsome prince might break the spell. I thought . . . Jonah Prince. Prince. I thought he was your handsome prince, your true love.\"\n\nShe laughs, shaking her head. The light from overhead makes her hair sparkle like those black stones goth girls have in jewelry. \"He's not my true love. I just like his music.\" She looks at Jonah. \"No offense.\"\n\n\"None taken,\" he says. \"You seem quite a pleasant girl, but I don't love you either.\"\n\n\"I do love your music,\" she says politely.\n\n\"But you woke up,\" I say. \"How?\" Because, even though the thought has been forming in my head, I want her to say it. After all, maybe it's just that I love her. That's what Jonah said. Maybe me loving her is enough.\n\n\"You silly goose! How could you have awakened me without knowing the answer?\" I guess I'm still staring at her blankly because she says, \"True love, right?\"\n\n\"True love?\" Obsidian. That's what those black stones are called. They're supposed to be magic. Her hair is like obsidian. \"What? Who?\"\n\nShe's still clutching my hand. With the other, I gesture to myself. \"Me?\"\n\n\"You.\" She loosens her grip. \"I mean, if you feel the same way. Maybe you don't.\"\n\n\"If I feel . . . ?\" And suddenly, my mouth is stretching so far, my face smiling so hard it hurts. \"You mean you and me? You don't mean you love me as a friend, or . . . any of those other things girls say?\"\n\nShe's just staring at me weird, and she says, \"Nuh-uh. None of that. That first day at auditions, I was like, 'This guy is awesome.' You were so bold. And I agreed to be Oliver partly so I could know you better. And then, when I did, you were sweet and funny and smart. And brave. You protected me. You _saved_ me, like a hero.\" It's like in my dreams, every dream I'd had. Her voice, saying she wants me, and it's finally dawning on me, what she's saying. \"You're the one who woke me up after all.\"\n\n\"I did, but . . .\" I step closer, wanting to take her in my arms now. \"You really . . . ?\"\n\n\"Perhaps I'll go get a nurse,\" Jonah says, \"let her immortalize this moment on film to tweet to my fans and make my agent happy.\"\n\nI guess he leaves. I'm not really paying attention.\n\n\"I read the poem,\" she says, \"the one you wrote.\"\n\n\"You did? It's really . . . embarrassing.\" I'm still not completely wrapping my head around the idea that this is happening.\n\nShe shakes her head. \"I loved it.\" Celine holds her other hand out, wiggling her fingers until I come closer. Then, she touches my face. Her hand is so soft. \"It let me know you felt the same way I did. I hadn't admitted it to myself before then, even when Izzy flat out asked me.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I wonder how long she felt this way, how long I was wondering when I didn't have to.\n\nShe nods. \"God, you're so adorable.\"\n\n\"Really? Adorable? That's the adjective you're choosing? Like I'm a kid or a teddy bear?\" But I'm thinking, _She thinks I'm adorable_.\n\n\"Oh, don't be stupid. People call big guys cute all the time. Adorable as in, I _adore_ you. I adore you G . . . what's your first name? It's strange to love a guy called Goose. When I was sleeping, I tried to remember if I'd seen it in the program for _Oliver!_ , but I couldn't envision it.\"\n\nI laugh not because it's really funny but just because I'm happy. \"Nope. It wasn't there. They listed me as Goose Guzman. That's what I told Connors to do.\" Now, I want to stop talking and kiss her again.\n\n\"But that's not what's on your birth certificate. At least, I hope it's not. I mean, when you graduate, your diploma won't say Goose Guzman, will it?\"\n\nI laugh again, all stupid-happy like our neighbor's shih tzu, who practically turns himself inside out from ecstasy when you pet him. \"Nah. My father wanted me to have a big name since I was a little guy. His name's only one syllable, Jorge; two if you pronounce it the Spanish way, Hor-hey. They gave all of us big names, Antonio, Isabella, and me, Mauricio. It's a dumb name.\"\n\n_I'm talking too much. Less talking, more kissing._\n\nShe smiles. \"Mauricio. I like it.\" She rolls closer to the edge of the bed. \"Aren't you going to kiss me again, Mauricio?\"\n\nI do. I do, and the sparks and the magic and the fireworks are all there just like before.\n\nSuddenly there are people in the room, and there's music, a guitar, and a voice, singing.\n\nSometimes when I see your face,\n\nIt takes me to a better place.\n\nWhen I look into your eyes,\n\nWalls fall down and curtains rise . . .\n\nAnd I'm kissing Celine, holding, crushing her to me like I always wanted to and never dreamed possible. She loves me and I love her, and she's alive and safe, and we're together.\n\nFinally, though, we break apart, and I say, \"What is that music?\"\n\n\"Oh, sorry.\" It's Jonah. \"I was feeling a bit of the third wheel here, so I thought that, if this was a movie, there would be music. I do love a happy ending. Harry brought up the guitar, but perhaps it is a bit\u2014\"\n\n\"No.\" I grin. \"There would be music.\"\n\n\"There definitely would be,\" Celine agrees.\n\nThe other people in the room are nurses, and then a doctor shows up too. And Kendra, who _looks_ like Kendra and a little worse for wear too. I know I'll hear what happened later. They're all pretty shocked to see that Celine is, in fact, not dead, but I resist the urge to gloat. What are doctors supposed to know about magic spells? So we let them think they cured her. After some debate, they unhook Celine's feeding tube and everything, and after about six hours of tests and my dad (who filed an emergency petition to become her legal guardian, after Jonah and I explain about Violet attacking us in the elevator) filling out a ream of paperwork, and photographers taking tons of photos to prove Jonah was here, the hospital lets Celine go home. With us. With me.\n\n\"So what do you want to do when we get there?\" I ask Celine on the way downstairs.\n\nShe squeezes my hand. \"I was thinking we could make some smoothies and watch _Some Kind of Wonderful._ \"\n\n# PART 4\n#\n\n#\n\n# _Kendra_\n\nThe elevator door slams shut behind them, and a ball of fire comes at me.\n\n\"Hey!\" I yell. \"If you don't stop, you're going to kill us both!\"\n\n\"Does it really matter?\" Violet asks.\n\n\"It does to me. I want to see how this turns out, whether he wakes her.\" For I have realized that Violet wouldn't be here if she didn't think Celine would wake. And I've realized something else. I've figured out who can wake her. It's not Jonah Prince.\n\nI see Violet gearing up for another attack. Her magic is no greater than mine. It may be less. But she's more ruthless. She loves no one and has nothing to lose. I once felt that way, but now . . . well, I want to check on Celine. I can hold Violet at bay long enough for Goose and Jonah to reach her, I hope, but I can't stop Violet forever.\n\nI've frozen the elevator on the fourteenth floor. Another explosion rocks it.\n\nI dodge the fireball, putting it out with a neat blast of water.\n\n\"Play with fire,\" I say, \"and we'll both get burned.\"\n\nViolet smiles. \"The difference between us is I don't care if I die. I don't care about anything.\"\n\n\"Then why hurt that sweet child?\"\n\n\"Because that child is evil, the spawn of evil.\" She walks away as much as possible in an elevator. I know why she's doing it, to make me think she's pacing, make me let down my guard. But I never let down my guard with Violet. I did it early on, and I regret it.\n\n\"You think she's like her mother?\" I say, eyes firmly on her.\n\n\"Her mother, or her father. Greg was no better. I see that now. He wanted Jennifer as a trophy, no more. That's why he preferred her even when we were both beautiful. She had more status.\"\n\n\"Maybe he loved Jennifer, and not you.\" I can't resist twisting the knife. What difference does it make? Being careful around Violet didn't help.\n\nViolet ignores me. \"He wanted her as a trophy. And then, when she was gone, he wanted me for the same reason. He never loved either of us, not really.\" She shakes her head sadly.\n\n\"Celine loved you,\" I say. \"Before she knew you killed her mother, she loved you.\"\n\nViolet looks over her shoulder at me, her face like a crumpled gardenia. \"No one has ever loved me, not really.\"\n\n\"You know that isn't true.\" I walk over to her and lay a hand on her shoulder. \"I have loved you like a daughter since the first day we met.\"\n\nAnd, like a real daughter, she fights against me, pushing me away with hands suddenly burning hot. I cringe, and she says, \"You don't love me.\"\n\n\"I do, though I did you a disservice, allowing you to change yourself so much.\"\n\nI remember how she looked that first day, so small and pale, beaten down by those horrible boys. I'd had my own experiences with boys like that, and I'd have done _anything_ to help her. I had done anything. I had given her my knowledge, my instruction, my magic, my heart. At what point did I give too much, do too much? And could I have stopped her if I'd tried?\n\n\"A disservice?\" Violet murmurs, as if she hasn't quite heard. \"I was miserable. You . . . tried to help me.\"\n\n\"But did I help you? Or did I make things worse?\"\n\nShe shakes her head, still not looking at me. \"I don't know.\"\n\nA voice comes through the elevator's intercom. \"Are you all right in there? We're sending help.\"\n\n\"It's fine.\" But, obviously, time is running out. I can't keep Violet in this elevator forever. She could leave if she chose. I only hope she'll stay. I must persuade her to make peace with Celine or, at least, leave her alone.\n\n\"Celine isn't who you think,\" I tell her.\n\n\"Of course not,\" Violet snaps. \"I'm always wrong about everything.\"\n\n\"Maybe not everything, but this. You told Goose that Celine could never care about him. You were wrong about that too.\"\n\nShe shakes her head. \"I wasn't. Little bitch would only want the captain of the football team. She'd never appreciate that kid, even after all he went through for her.\"\n\nI pull a mirror from my voluminous skirt. Violet knows what it is because she has one just like it. I gave it to her so many years ago, and we have spoken through it almost every day. I say, \"Show me Celine.\"\n\nThe scene in the mirror shifts to Celine's hospital room. Celine is awake, looking around the room. She says, \"True love, right?\" My heart feels tight in my chest. It worked!\n\nViolet pushes the mirror back toward me. \"That proves nothing. The pop star, he woke her up.\"\n\nI angle the mirror toward her. Now, Celine is holding Goose's hand, gazing into his eyes.\n\n\"She loves him, always has. So you were wrong about that. What else were you wrong about, Violet?\"\n\nShe stares at the mirror like someone in a fog. \"I don't know.\" She takes it from me, gazing at the happy couple. \"This is all I ever wanted. This. Love. But when Greg died, there was no chance left for me.\"\n\n\"No chance? You have every chance. You're immortal, magical. There is always another chance.\" It's a conversation we've had before, unsuccessfully. She doesn't seem to comprehend how long her life will be. I, with hundreds of years behind me, know that life stretches before her like a patchwork quilt with many experiences, some beautiful, some heartbreaking. \"Go someplace where no one knows you, and start again.\"\n\n\"Someplace else.\" The mirror catches the ceiling lights. \"Yes, someplace else. Will you take care of her then, of Celine?\"\n\n_So you can always know where to find her?_ But I don't say it. She is staring so oddly that I wonder what she has in mind. \"Of course Celine will be taken care of. But what about you, my darling?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Her voice is a shredded whisper. \"What about me?\"\n\nAnd suddenly the elevator begins moving, down this time. It doesn't stop at twelve or anywhere but goes all the way to the bottom. When the door opens, Violet steps forward, then out. \"Good-bye, Kendra. And thank you. I know what I have to do.\"\n\nShe presses the twelve button, gives a tiny wave of her fingers. They are, as usual, perfectly manicured. Everything about her is lovely, luminous. If you didn't know her, you'd think she was perfect.\n\nShe smiles as the door closes, and I know I will never see her again.\n\nOn the twelfth floor is celebration. Celine, Goose, Goose's father, Jonah, all celebrate Celine's revival. A photographer snaps pictures. It is hours before we leave, and when we do, I go in the car with Goose, Celine, and his father. Goose and Celine sit in the backseat, holding hands.\n\n\"I think you should stay with me,\" I tell Celine. \"I can protect you in case . . .\" I'm not actually sure Violet intends to do anything, but I realize I want Celine with me. \"You don't need protection anymore, probably. But I'm alone and you're alone. It was meant to be.\" She can be my daughter, and I can do a better job this time.\n\n\"That might be good,\" Goose's father says. \"If Goose and Celine are . . . together, it wouldn't be right for Celine to live with us.\" I see him raise his eyes in the rearview, but then he smiles.\n\n\"Hey,\" Goose says. \"I thought you said you couldn't just zap people someplace. Looked like you kind of zapped into that elevator.\"\n\nI shrug. \"Every rule has an exception.\"\n\nCeline says, \"I'd like to live with you, Kendra. But you don't think Violet will try to harm me again?\"\n\nI start to say I don't know what Violet will do, but that I will try to protect her.\n\nThen, something catches my eye.\n\nOff in the distance, a plume of smoke, a brush fire maybe. But it's not in the right direction for a brush fire, not to the west. Rather, it's in the direction of\u2014\n\nI nudge Goose's father and point. \"Drive that way.\"\n\n\"What? Why?\"\n\nBut then, he too sees it, an orange blur, a flame, just for a second.\n\nCeline, noticing, shrieks, \"Oh, no! No! Do you think\u2014?\"\n\nI shake my head. \"I'm not sure.\"\n\nWe follow the smoke until we are on a familiar street, Violet's street. Celine's street. Celine's house.\n\nThe house is in flames.\n\nI hear glass breaking, and a crow flies overhead.\n\n#\n\n#\n\n# _Violet_\n\nSomething is burning. It's my house. It's burning down. I myself struck the match, a wooden match from a restaurant matchbox, someplace Greg and I used to go. _Greg! Did you ever love me? Or was I just a poor substitute for someone else? Did you ever even love her?_ A sob escapes my throat, or perhaps I'm choking. I am lying in the bed I used to share with my husband, waiting. If I rest my nose on his pillow, I can still smell him, barely. Except it's hard to breathe. I stare into the silver mirror in my lap, expecting to see the girl I was, the ugly girl. I'm still beautiful, but all I want is to die. What the dwarf said was right. Everyone hates me. It isn't my face, not anymore, but me. And yet, as the flames lap closer and closer to the bed, the mirror in one hand, my wedding photo of Greg and me in the other, I can't help but wonder if that could change. Maybe there is another way, another place. I could do as Kendra said, go somewhere else where no one knows me, start over as many times as I need to. Change my appearance and fly like a crow to faraway places.\n\nThe room is hot. A window breaks, and I am sweating, blinking my eyes against the gray smoke. A mortal would have succumbed to it long ago, but I am no mortal and can only die from the pain of the flame. I dread it, coward that I am. I squint at the silver mirror. \"Show me Celine,\" I tell it.\n\nThere she is, black hair and white skin, a beautiful girl, a girl who once loved me. A girl I loved. She's with the dwarf, sitting in a car holding his hand. Her eyes widen, and she leans to embrace him, gazing at him as if he is the most beautiful man she has ever seen. He turns and smiles, and suddenly, he is beautiful, dark brown eyes shining from a handsome face. I see his beauty as I wished others would see mine. I know I was wrong about Celine. I was wrong about so many things. Was I wrong about myself too? Can there be hope for me?\n\nI feel a spark on my shoulder. The bedsheet has caught fire, and soon, I will be consumed by it. I am not tied to this bed, though. I can still flee. I make my decision. I take one final look at the photo, at Greg. Greg, who never loved me at all, not really. I feed it to the flames. I watch it burn.\n\nThere is nothing left of Greg but Celine. There is nothing at all left of Violet. Violet is dead. Quickly, I manufacture something, a dummy version of the girl I was, the ugly girl. I remember reading _The Picture of Dorian Gray._ In the end, when the beautiful main character died, he became the hideous old man in the picture. That was how they found him. They could only recognize him by the rings on his hand. That is how they will find me\u2014or think they did\u2014my charred remains lying on the bed. But I will be gone, far, far away from all of them.\n\nThen, I make my escape, flying on jet-black wings out the window and away, into the warm summer night.\n\nI will begin again . . . somewhere!\n\n#\n\n#\n\n# _Celine_\n\n# _February, the next year_\n\n\"You know we don't actually need to go shopping,\" Kendra says as we pull into the Target parking lot where it all began. I'm driving the red VW Bug Jorge helped me buy with money from the trust he set up for me out of my father's estate. Goose taught me to drive because Kendra definitely didn't know how. \"That's one of the great things about being a witch, no money needed.\"\n\n\"I know,\" I tell her. \"But you know you like shopping. It gives you ideas.\"\n\nBoy, does it give Kendra ideas. Since I've started taking her on weekly shopping trips, our entire house has gone from French provincial to Early College Dormitory with every kind of thing Target sells, all in pastel polka dots. Kendra buys none of it. It all just appears. \"You know you love the dollar section.\"\n\n\"That's true. You think they have that mint foot rub?\" She exits the car, fluffing her purple tulle bustle. \"Maybe I should get a job there.\"\n\nGoose and I exchange a look. Kendra, work? Kendra, wear a uniform? Kendra, deal with the public?\n\n\"What?\" She looks from one of us to the other. \"It would be easy for me and give me something to do when you go away to college.\"\n\nWe start toward the shopping carts. There are tons of black birds, crows, or grackles on the lights overhead, and they're cawing and chirping so loud it makes my head hurt. I'm freaked out by birds, have been ever since we had to read \"The Birds\" __ in English class this fall. Goose loves that and loves to mess with me. \"They're gathering, Celine,\" he says in a creepy voice. \"They're making plans.\"\n\n\"Quit it!\" I slap his shoulder. He recoils like I've hurt him, but I know he's messing with me. Still, I give his shoulder a pat.\n\nKendra has also been staring at the birds, but now, she says, \"Come along, children.\" She grabs a cart and starts booking it to the entrance.\n\n\"Maybe you should take Kendra to some higher-end places,\" Goose says, yelling over the cawing. \"Get ideas for a prom dress.\"\n\n\"Splendid idea,\" Kendra says, still walking extra fast.\n\nI love Kendra, but since I've been living with her, she has this great idea I should dress like her. I'm more of a prep, but I'll occasionally let her design a dress for me. Just not for prom.\n\nI try to change the subject. \"Is that your way of inviting me to prom?\" I ask Goose.\n\n\"I sort of thought it was a given we were going together, since I'm the love of your life.\"\n\n\"It is, and you are. But it's still nice to be asked.\" I was sort of expecting an elaborate \"prom-posal\" out of him. He's theatrical, after all. He's left roses in my locker twice, and once planned an elaborate scavenger hunt, involving teachers, students, even the football coach, all to give me my birthday present, a bracelet with charms representing both our families, and us. So I was expecting at least a song with the lyrics changed to include my name, sung at a pep rally. Which would be super-embarrassing, actually.\n\nWe've reached the entrance. I'm ready to go in, to get away from the birds. But Goose takes my hand and gets down on one knee. \"Celine, my darling, will you accompany me to the prom?\"\n\nI laugh. \"Of course I will.\" And part of me is thinking, _Get up._ But the other part of me knows he's perfect, that I need someone just like him, someone who doesn't mind being stared at, who helps me get out of myself. Who loves me for me. Finally. So I wiggle my fingers. \"Now, kiss my hand.\"\n\nHe does. The birds are screeching, cawing. I tug at his hand to help him up. \"Let's go in. The birds are freaking me out.\"\n\nJust as I say that, one bird swoops down from the rest. It's a big one, and flying sideways, it looks like a black kite. It flaps its wings right in my face. I run behind Kendra and Goose, remembering my mother, her fear of animals. But the bird doesn't peck or attack me. Instead, it flutters down and rests on the shopping cart handle, right by Kendra's hand. It stands there, staring at me. I grab Goose's hand at the same time Kendra grabs my other one. So we form a weird human chain, me and the two people I love best. No one can hurt me, not with love and magic on my side.\n\nThe bird cocks its head to one side, watching us.\n\nIt blinks, then flies away.\n\nI stand, holding Goose's and Kendra's hands, and watch it disappear into the sky.\n\n#\n\n#\n\n_Goose_\n\nAnd we live happily ever after.\n\nReally. That's all.\n\nThe End\n\n## Excerpt from _Beheld_\n\n## Prologue\n\nI know that children don't read fairy tales anymore. Oh, they see the movies\u2014animated, sweet ones with helpful birds and talking raccoons, problematic ones where passive young women simply sleep and wait for their princes to come. But those are made-up stories. The real stories, stories that have recurred time and time again, are far more brutal. Stepmothers ordering their daughters' hearts brought to them to eat raw. Young women cutting off their toes to fit an idealized vision of female beauty. And those are just the romances!\n\nI know, for I have been alive for much of this time. Not all, of course. These tales date back to the ancient Greeks, and I'm not _that_ ancient. Still, I have lived as a witch since my birth in 1652, and as a teenager since I was one, over three hundred years ago.\n\nIn that time, I have sought love. Once, I found the man I thought would be mine forever. But I have lost him time and time again. This story is about how I found love and lost it. I don't know how it will end.\n\nBut it started in Salem, Massachusetts. I may, in previous accounts, have fibbed a bit when I said I wasn't there. It is _such_ a clich\u00e9 to claim one was in Salem. But I was. Most of those accused as witches there weren't actually witches, but a few of us were.\n\nOr, at least, two.\n\n##\n\n_Witches and Wolves_\n\n_Salem, Massachusetts_\n\n_January 1692_\n\nI might not have stayed in Salem had it not been for James. I might have been safer. But I have never been one to court safety above all, and I wasn't in 1692.\n\nIt was in 1692 that I fell in love with James.\n\nThen I had been alive close to two score years, but like most magical beings, I did not look it. Nay, I did not feel it either. This was convenient, as few things in my life were, for appearing mature carries with it certain expectations\u2014that the person will marry, have children, _be_ mature. I wanted none of that, for few people were like I was. They would age. They would die, as my family had.\n\nI would not, as long as I stayed clear of fire. Fire was the only thing that could kill a witch. Still is.\n\nI knew not to play with fire.\n\nI knew, also, not to play at love. Love would only lead to painful loss.\n\nBut then I met James.\n\nIt happened one morning, early, so early that my breath was a silver cloud on night black as my cloak. I was out chopping wood for the family's needs. I was a servant, but the Harwoods were not wealthy, so I was rather a maid-of-all-trades\u2014chop the wood, darn the socks, watch the babes. It reminded me of life with my own family, back when I had one.\n\nThat morning, the spring breezes had not yet chased away the winter cold, but I was warm, for I was working. Goody Harwood kept a close watch on me, so I could not use magic. Not all the time, anyway.\n\nIf you think I was working like the mature woman I should have been, you do not know me well. I was slim, as I still am. Every swing of the ax was a herculean effort. I had been out close to an hour and had only two bone-thin logs to show for it. I knew that soon, she would be there, spying for me, accusing me (not incorrectly) of malingering. I had to move quickly.\n\nI picked up the ax.\n\nJust as I did, a black shape crossed my vision. Bird!\n\nThis was enough to make me stop again. The birds had left for winter and, thus far, had not returned. And this was no robin redbreast, but a crow.\n\nI had a history with crows.\n\nI examined the bird. It was a large one with a yellow bill. It flew around me just above my head and, finally, settled on the very log I had been about to split.\n\nI laid down my ax, sighing as it sank into a snowdrift. My hands were bare and would surely freeze when I reached in.\n\nI shooed the bird.\n\nIt did not move. Nor the second nor the third time, either. It merely stared with its black bead eyes, as if it intended to speak.\n\nFinally, I reached for the ax. The blade was freezing. I meant to swing it just once.\n\nWhen I rose, the bird had disappeared.\n\nNot entirely pleased at the end of my excuse for idleness, I returned to my chopping.\n\n\"Mistress!\"\n\nA voice interrupted me, startled me.\n\nI whirled to see where it came from, for I had been sure I was quite alone.\n\n\"Your humble servant,\" someone said, and he bowed.\n\nHe wore black, at least what I could see, from the toes of his shoes to his hat. With his face thus obscured, he might have been any man I had seen before, any man in Salem, farmers beaten down by the winter's struggle, old before their time.\n\nBut when he rose, I knew I had never seen him before.\n\nI would have remembered.\n\nThe man staring back at me was beautiful in an unearthly way, with hair the color of fallen pine needles, skin that had never known harsh sun or harsher winter cold, and eyes a shade bluer than the bluest ocean. He was perhaps two years older than I\u2014meaning two years older than I appeared, so still in the bloom of youth, tall and strong.\n\nI hesitated. I wanted his help as much to keep him there as to get out of my work. But neither motive was proper for a girl my age, a girl any age in Salem. I glanced around. No signs of life anywhere except for the trickle of smoke from the chimney. I had built a fire when I'd risen. With any luck, the Harwoods would gather by it and Goody Harwood would not come looking for me when she needn't.\n\nI nodded, trying to pull my gaze down like a proper young lady.\n\n\"If you please,\" I said.\n\nHe moved closer and, at first, I started at his nearness. Then I realized he meant to take the ax from me. I held it out to him, trying to lower my eyes.\n\nI saw him notice, and his gaze upon me made me look down all the more. Yet I so wished to stare at him. I held my arms around my body, pretending only to be affected by the cold.\n\nI knew it was more than that.\n\nHe took the ax, brushing each of my gloveless hands with his own. They were so warm, and I sank a bit when the weight was removed.\n\nFinally, I glanced up, for he was very tall, and when I did, I saw him smile.\n\nI pulled my eyes away, but his smile remained in my memory. He was _so_ handsome.\n\n\"There now.\" He spoke with a bit of an accent, from Scotland. \"You are too young and too lovely for such hard work.\"\n\nI looked down harder.\n\n\"I am not as young as you might believe.\" I backed away.\n\n\"Nor am I.\" He made no move to chop the wood. \"And I know things. Have you heard about what is happening in Salem?\"\n\nI had. At least, I thought I had. There were rumors of children bewitched by demons. But I did not want to admit that it concerned me. If I did, he might suspect how much it did. And why.\n\nSo I said, \"I know little. I spend my days and nights just as you see me and my Sundays in worship.\"\n\nThe left corner of his mouth came up as if to call me on this lie. \"Like any God-fearing young maiden.\"\n\nI nodded. \"Of course.\"\n\nHe nodded, half gravely. \"Then I should tell you. It happened in town, at Reverend Parris's house. His daughter, Betty, and niece, Abigail, have been behaving . . . bizarrely.\"\n\nI had heard it. Young girls barking like dogs, writhing and crying out as if in pain. I had not done it. Nor were there any other witches in these parts. Perhaps there was a fungus in their flour. Perhaps they just wished for attention. But I knew better than to say that.\n\n\"I see.\" I managed a nod.\n\n\"But did you know that in Boston four years ago, a young woman was stricken with similar symptoms?\"\n\nAye. I had heard something of that.\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"She was, and a woman named Ann Glover was hanged as a witch based upon the suspicion that she had enchanted the girl.\"\n\n\"What has this to do with me?\" I asked. \"Why are you telling me this?\"\n\nI had stood out too long with too little work, and now my body was cold, so cold it felt as if the bones might snap.\n\nHis words did nothing to warm me. \"Because it concerns you, Kendra.\"\n\n\"Why?\" How did he know my name?\n\nBut then I heard the creak of the opening door. I whirled to make my excuses to Goody Harwood, but she smiled.\n\n\"Oh! I thought to hurry you along. The fire is waning, and you must make the breakfast still. But I see you have been harder at work than I suspected. I suppose I couldn't hear the thuds for the gusts.\"\n\nAs if to answer, the wind whipped through me, ruffling my hair. I turned away.\n\nGoody Harwood had not mentioned the man who was there, and when I turned, I saw why. He was gone, gone as if he had never existed. But in his place was a cord of neatly stacked logs. A crow set atop them.\n\nI took a shaky breath. I felt about to choke. \"I will be but a moment longer.\"\n\nAnother gust shook the branches, and she shut the door against it.\n\nWhen I turned back, the wood was still there, and the man. I had not imagined it, any of it.\n\n\"How did you . . . ?\" A thousand questions leaped to mind, but I completed the one I had started. \"How did you know?\" _My name? That I was a witch?_\n\n\"I knew because I knew. James Brandon, at your service.\"\n\n\"I have to go inside, sir.\"\n\n\"Nay.\" His blue eyes were intense now. \"You should leave Salem, and quickly. This place is not safe. For you. For any of us. But I will stay and see it out, to protect innocents. You should protect yourself.\"\n\nDid he mean to say that he was a witch\u2014a wizard\u2014himself? I wanted to know, and yet my need to flee him was stronger. \"I must go inside, sir. The family will wonder about me. I have to make the breakfast.\"\n\nHe gathered some of the wood and brought it to me. As he did, he met my eyes, and for a moment, the wind ceased and the air became first warm, then hot around me, until I felt like I might burn through the drifted snow and not be unearthed until springtime.\n\n\"Then I will see you soon, Kendra,\" he said. \"I will see you every day until you agree to leave. Now go inside.\"\n\nI could not turn away from him easily, but I forced myself. I had great experience in taking leave of people. I reached for the doorknob.\n\n\"One other thing.\" His voice interrupted me. \"Beware of wolves.\"\n\nI turned back, but when I did, he wasn't there. In his place was the black crow, staring at me with bright eyes.\n\nIt flew away.\n\nThe wind began to howl again and did not stop until I was inside the house.\n\n## Back Ads\n\nDISCOVER\n\nyour next favorite read\n\nMEET\n\nnew authors to love\n\nWIN\n\nfree books\n\nSHARE\n\ninfographics, playlists, quizzes, and more\n\nWATCH\n\nthe latest videos\n\nTUNE IN\n\nto Tea Time with Team Epic Reads\n\n## About the Author\n\nPhoto credit Gene Flinn\n\n**ALEX FLINN** loves fairy tales and is the author of the #1 _New York Times_ bestselling _Beastly_ , a spin on _Beauty and the Beast_ that was named a _VOYA_ Editor's Choice and an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. _Beastly_ is now a major motion picture starring Vanessa Hudgens. Alex also wrote _A Kiss in Time_ , a modern retelling of _Sleeping Beauty; Cloaked_ , a humorous fairy-tale mash-up; _Bewitching_ , a reimagining of fairy-tale favorites, including _Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, The Princess and the Pea,_ and _The Little Mermaid_ , all told by Kendra, the witch from _Beastly_ ; and _Towering_ , a darkly romantic take on _Rapunzel_. Her other books for teens include _Breathing Underwater, Breaking Point, Nothing to Lose, Fade to Black_ , and _Diva_. She lives in Miami with her family. Visit her online at www.alexflinn.com.\n\nDiscover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.\n\n## Books by Alex Flinn\n\nBEASTLY\n\nBEASTLY: LINDY'S DIARY\n\nBEWITCHING\n\nMIRRORED\n\nTHREE BEASTLY KENDRA CHRONICLES\n\nFOUR BEASTLY KENDRA CHRONICLES\n\nBEHELD\n\nCLOAKED\n\nA KISS IN TIME\n\nTOWERING\n\nA MAGICAL TRIO\n\nBREATHING UNDERWATER\n\nDIVA\n\nFADE TO BLACK\n\nNOTHING TO LOSE\n\nBREAKING POINT\n\n## Credits\n\nCover art \u00a9 2015 by Howard Huang\n\nCover design by Heather Daugherty\n\n## Copyright\n\nHarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.\n\nMIRRORED. Copyright \u00a9 2015 by Alexandra Flinn. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.\n\nwww.epicreads.com\n\n* * *\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nFlinn, Alex.\n\nMirrored \/ Alex Flinn. \u2014 First edition.\n\npages cm\n\nSummary: A modern, multigenerational tale of Kendra, the witch from \"Snow White,\" who trains Violet, an ugly, lonely, and heartbroken girl in the 1980s who transforms herself into \"the fairest one of all\" but still cannot win Greg's heart, and Celine, Greg's daughter with Violet's high school rival, Jennifer.\n\nISBN 978-0-06-213451-6 (hardcover)\n\nEPub Edition \u00a9 August 2015 ISBN 9780062134547\n\nVersion 11282016\n\n[1. Beauty, Personal\u2014Fiction. 2. Witches\u2014Fiction. 3. Popularity\u2014Fiction. 4. Schools\u2014Fiction.] I. Title.\n\nPZ7.F6395Mir 2015 |  2014041196  \n---|---  \n[Fic]\u2014dc23 |  CIP  \n|  AC\n\n* * *\n\n15 16 17 18 19 PC\/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\n\nFIRST EDITION\n\n## About the Publisher\n\n**Australia**\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.\n\nLevel 13, 201 Elizabeth Street\n\nSydney, NSW 2000, Australia\n\nwww.harpercollins.com.au\n\n**Canada**\n\nHarperCollins Canada\n\n2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor\n\nToronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada\n\nwww.harpercollins.ca\n\n**New Zealand**\n\nHarperCollins Publishers New Zealand\n\nUnit D1, 63 Apollo Drive\n\nRosedale 0632\n\nAuckland, New Zealand\n\nwww.harpercollins.co.nz\n\n**United Kingdom**\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Ltd.\n\n1 London Bridge Street\n\nLondon SE1 9GF, UK\n\nwww.harpercollins.co.uk\n\n**United States**\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Inc.\n\n195 Broadway\n\nNew York, NY 10007\n\nwww.harpercollins.com\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n## Trisha Ashley\n\n## The Magic of Christmas\n\n## Dedication\n\nFor my son, Robin Ashley,  \nwith love.\n\n## Contents\n\nTitle page\n\nDedication\n\nPrologue: December 2005, Winter of Discontent\n\nChapter 1: Old Prune\n\nChapter 2: All Fudge\n\nChapter 3: Bittersweet\n\nChapter 4: Mushrooming\n\nChapter 5: Sweet Mysteries\n\nChapter 6: Driven Off\n\nChapter 7: Loose Nuts\n\nChapter 8: Well Braced\n\nChapter 9: Soul Food\n\nChapter 10: Cornish Mist\n\nChapter 11: Popped Corks\n\nChapter 12: Just Desserts\n\nChapter 13: Raspberries\n\nChapter 14: Slightly Curdled\n\nChapter 15: Drink Me\n\nChapter 16: Unrehearsed Entrances\n\nChapter 17: Tart\n\nChapter 18: Simmering Gently\n\nChapter 19: Stirring\n\nChapter 20: Freshly Minted\n\nChapter 21: Slightly Stewed\n\nChapter 22: Given the Bird\n\nChapter 23: Put Out\n\nChapter 24: Flamb\u00e9\n\nChapter 25: Cr\u00e8me de Coeur\n\nChapter 26: Crackers\n\nChapter 27: Charmed\n\nChapter 28: Cold Snap\n\nChapter 29: Clueless\n\nChapter 30: Unscheduled Appearances\n\nChapter 31: Middlemoss Marchpane\n\nChapter 32: Hoar Frost\n\nChapter 33: Well Stirred\n\nForget the Jimmy Choos, Chocolate Shoes And Wedding Blues Is the Only Accessory You Need For Spring 2012...\n\nTwelve Days of Christmas\n\nAbout the Author\n\nOther Books by the Same Author\n\nCopyright\n\nAbout the Publisher\nThe Magic of Christmas is loosely based on one of my earlier novels, Sweet Nothings, with the addition of a lot of new material. I felt there was so much more to say about the village of Middlemoss and all the characters who live there, especially Lizzy and her friends in the Christmas Pudding Circle, the annual Boxing Day Mystery Play and the vanishing squirrels!\n\n## Prologue: December 2005, Winter of Discontent\n\nThe venue for the last Middlemoss Christmas Pudding Circle meeting of the year (which was usually more of an excuse for a party) had been switched to Perseverance Cottage because Lizzy's thirteen-year-old son had come down with what she'd thought was flu and she wanted to keep an eye on him.\n\nLater, looking back on the events of that day, it seemed to Lizzy that one minute she'd been sitting at the big pine table in her kitchen, wearing a paper hat and happily debating the rival merits of fondant icing over royal with the other four members of the CPC, and the next she was frantically snatching at the card listing the symptoms of meningitis, which she kept pinned to her notice board, and shouting to Annie, her best friend, to ring for an ambulance.\n\nAt the hospital, Jasper changed frighteningly fast from a big, gruff teenager to a pale, sick child, and Lizzy tried urgently to contact her husband, Tom, who was away on one of his alleged business trips. But as usual he didn't answer his mobile and was nowhere to be found, so all she could do was leave messages in the usual places... and several unusual ones.\n\nThe hospital radio was softly warbling on about decking the halls with boughs of holly, but Lizzy, filled with a volatile mixture of desperate maternal fear and anger, wanted to deck her selfish, unreliable husband.\n\nIt was just as well that Annie was such a tower of strength in an emergency! During that first long day while Lizzy anxiously waited for the antibiotics to kick in, her friend popped in and out between jobs for the pet-sitting agency she ran, visited Perseverance Cottage to feed the poultry and let out Lizzy's dog, and reassured Tom's elderly relatives up at the Hall that she would keep them updated with every change in Jasper's condition.\n\nThen in the evening she returned to the hospital and she and Lizzy spent the long night watches sitting together while Jasper slept, reminiscing in hushed voices about when they first met and became best friends at boarding school. Lizzy had begun spending the holidays with Annie's family in the vicarage at Middlemoss, where she was quickly absorbed into the Vane household, much to the relief of the elderly bachelor uncle who was her guardian \u2013 and it was also in Middlemoss that she'd met Tom and Nick Pharamond, cousins who were often farmed out with relatives up at the Hall in the school holidays.\n\nNick was the eldest: quiet, serious and appearing to prefer the company of the cook at Pharamond Hall to anyone else's. Tom, who was really only nominally a Pharamond, his mother having married into the family, was the opposite: mercurial, charming and gregarious, though he'd had a quick temper and a sharp tongue, even then...\n\nNick was the first to fly the nest. Having inherited the Pharamond cooking gene in spades, it wasn't a huge surprise to anyone except his staid stockbroker father when he took off around the world at eighteen, tastebuds and recipe notebook at the ready. Now he was chief cookery writer for a leading Sunday newspaper and author of numerous books and articles, while Tom, in contrast, had dropped out of university and gravitated down to the part of Cornwall where many of his more useless friends had also ended up.\n\nWhen he set eyes on Lizzy again after a long interval, it was across a buffet table at a large party in London, where he was a guest, and where she and Annie, who'd done a French cookery course after school, were helping with the catering. He fell suddenly in love with her, a passion that also embraced her rose-tinted dreams of a self-sufficient existence in the country.\n\nSomehow she'd forgotten about his dark good looks, his overwhelming charm and his quirky sense of humour... Before she'd had time to think \u2013 or to remember his quick temper, occasional sarcasms and how short-lived his enthusiasms had been in the past \u2013 he'd swept her off her feet, into a registry office and down to the isolated hovel he was renting in Cornwall.\n\n'Marry in haste, repent at leisure,' she said to Annie, as Jasper stirred restlessly in his hospital bed. 'You tried your best to warn me not to rush into it.'\n\n'You fell in love and so did Tom: there was no stopping you,' Annie said. 'Besides, you were addicted to all those books about living in Cornish cottages, with donkeys and daffodils and stuff.'\n\n'True,' Lizzy agreed wryly, 'and it was blissful that first summer \u2013 until the reality of living in a dank, dilapidated cottage in winter with a newborn baby set in, especially after Tom started vanishing for days on end without telling me when and where he was going.'\n\n'He was worse after Jasper was born, wasn't he? I think he resented not being the centre of attention,' Annie said.\n\n'He still does, though how you can be jealous of your own son, goodness knows! Anyway, it was like living with a handsome but unreliable tomcat... and nothing much has changed, has it?' Lizzy asked bitterly.\n\n'Perhaps not, but at least two good things came out of your marriage,' Annie pointed out, being a resolutely glass-half-full person: 'Jasper and your books about life in Perseverance Cottage.'\n\n'True, and it was thanks to your telling Roly how cold and damp the cottage was, after you visited us, that he offered us a house on the estate rent free, so that actually makes three good things.'\n\n'Oh, yes \u2013 and it was marvellous when you came back to Middlemoss to live,' Annie agreed fervently. 'I'd missed you so much!'\n\nHer voice had risen slightly and Jasper woke up and grumpily demanded why they were muttering over him like two witches. Then he complained that the dim light hurt his eyes, and a nurse appeared and firmly ushered them out of the room for a while.\n\nThe following morning it was clear that the antibiotics were working. Great-uncle Roly visited Jasper in the afternoon and by evening he was so obviously on the mend that Lizzy managed to persuade Annie, who'd brought sandwiches and a flask of soup ready to share a second night's vigil with her, to go home instead and get some sleep.\n\nLizzy herself intended spending a second night there, of course: by Jasper's bedside when allowed, or in the stark waiting room, with its grey plastic-covered chairs and stained brown cord carpet.\n\nIt was in the latter room that Tom's cousin Nick Pharamond found her, having driven non-stop halfway across Europe since Roly had given him the news about Jasper. His brow was furrowed with added frown lines from tiredness, and the dark stubble and rumpled black hair didn't do much to lighten his usual taciturn expression. Lizzy always imagined that Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester would have been exactly like Nick, but she was still both delighted and relieved to see him because, unlike Tom, you could always rely on him to turn up in an emergency.\n\nAlthough she wasn't normally a weepy sort of person, she instantly burst into tears all over his broad chest, while he patted her back in a strangely soothing way. Then he made her drink the hot soup Annie had left and eat a sandwich she didn't want: he was forceful as well as reliable.\n\nThe only downside to his presence during the rest of that long night was that Lizzy became so spaced out with shock and exhaustion that something unstoppable took over her mouth. She could hear her own voice droning on and on for hours, telling Nick a whole lot of really personal stuff about the last few years that she'd only previously confided to Annie, like how bad relations had become between her and Tom, especially since she found out about his latest affair.\n\n'I don't know who this one is, but she's been having a really bad influence on him. He's played away before, of course, but it was never serious. He says it's my fault anyway, for being so wrapped up in the cottage, the garden and Jasper \u2013 and perhaps it is.'\n\n'That's totally ridiculous, Lizzy: of course it isn't your fault!' Nick said. 'He should grow up!'\n\nFilled with gratitude at his understanding, she'd fished out a petrol receipt from the bottom of her handbag and on the back of it feverishly scribbled down her cherished recipe for mashed potato fudge, a creation she'd first invented while trying to cook up some comfort from limited ingredients down in Cornwall (and which was much later to be christened Spudge by Jasper).\n\nIn return Nick, who was normally pretty tight-lipped on anything personal, divulged that Leila (his wife) refused all his suggestions that they both cut down their working hours to spend more time together, so they seemed to be seeing less and less of each other. This was really letting his guard down, so the night-watch effect must have been getting to him, too.\n\n'Do you think everything will be all right with me and Tom once Jasper's off to university in a few years and I'm not so tied to Middlemoss and the school run?' she asked Nick, optimistically. 'I could even go with him on some of his business trips to Cornwall.'\n\n'I honestly don't know, Lizzy, but it won't be your fault if it isn't,' Nick said, and gave her a big, wonderfully comforting hug.\n\nThen something made her look up and over his shoulder she caught sight of Tom standing in the doorway staring at them.\n\n'Oh, Tom, where have you been?' she cried, releasing herself from Nick's arms. 'Still, never mind \u2013 you're here now, that's the main thing.'\n\nTom ignored her, instead demanding suspiciously of Nick, 'What are you doing here, that's what I want to know?'\n\nHe was still looking from one to the other of them as if he'd had an extremely odd idea, which it emerged later he had \u2013 one that would finally turn what had already become a very sour-sweet cocktail of a marriage into a poisoned chalice.\n\nBut at the time, all Lizzy registered was that his first words were not an urgent enquiry about his only child and, in one split second, not only did the last vestiges of her love for Tom entirely vanish, but they took even the exasperated tolerance of the previous years with them, so there was absolutely no hope of resuscitating their marriage.\n\nIf Tom had ever possessed the core of feckless sweetness she'd believed in, then some wicked Snow Queen had blown on his heart and frozen it to solid ice.\n\n## Chapter 1: Old Prune\n\nHere in Middlemoss Christmas preparations start very early \u2013 in mid-August, in fact, when the five members of the Christmas Pudding Circle bulk-order the ingredients for mincemeat and cakes from a nearby wholefood cooperative. Once that has arrived and been divided up between us, things slowly start to rev up again. It always reminds me of a bobsleigh race: one minute we're all pushing ideas to and fro to loosen the runners and then the next we've jumped on board and are hurtling, faster and faster, towards Christmas!\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nThe members of the Christmas Pudding Circle were sitting round my long, scrubbed-pine kitchen table for the first meeting of the year. It was a hot, mid-August morning, so the door was open onto the sunlit cobbled courtyard in order to let some cooling air (and the occasional brazen hen) into the room.\n\nI poured iced home-made lemonade into tumblers, then passed round the dish of macaroons, thinking how lovely it was to have all my friends together again. Apart from my very best friend Annie Vane, there was Marian Potter who ran the Middlemoss Post Office, Faye Sykes from Old Barn Farm and Miss Pym, the infants' schoolteacher. The latter is a tall, upright woman with iron-grey hair in a neat chignon, who commands such respect that she's never addressed by her Christian name of Geraldine, even by her friends.\n\n'Oh, I do miss our CPC meetings after Christmas each year,' Annie said, beaming, her round freckled face framed in an unbecoming pudding-bowl bob of coppery hair. 'I know we see each other all the time, but it isn't the same.'\n\n'I was just thinking the same thing,' I agreed. 'And it doesn't matter that it's midsummer either, because I still get a tingle down my spine at the thought that we've started counting down to Christmas.'\n\n'I suppose we are in a way, but it's more advance planning, isn't it?' Faye said.\n\n'Yes, and we'd better get on with it,' Marian said, flicking open a notebook and writing in the date, for she organises the CPC just as she, together with her husband Clive, run most of the events around Middlemoss. As usual, she was bristling with energy right down to the roots of her spiky silver hair. 'First up, are there any changes to the list of ingredients for Miss Pym to order?'\n\n'I still have last year's list on my computer, so it will be easy to tweak it before I email it off,' Miss Pym said, helping herself to more lemonade. An ice-cube cracked with a noise like a miniature iceberg calving from a glacier.\n\nBut there was not much to tweak, for of course we mostly make the same things every year: mince pies, Christmas cakes and puddings. We need large quantities too, for as well as baking for our own families, we also make lots of small cakes for the local Senior Citizens Christmas Hampers, which are annually distributed by Marian and the rest of the Mosses Women's Institute.\n\n'Who has got the six small cake tins for the hamper Christmas cakes?' asked Annie.\n\n'Me,' I said.\n\n'I'll put you down to bake the first batch then,' Marian said, scribbling that down, then she handed out the CPC meetings rota. We're supposed to take it in turns to host it in our homes but I don't know why she bothers, because after the first one it always goes completely haywire for one reason or another.\n\nThe important business of the meeting concluded, I got out some coffee granita I'd made. It never tastes quite as perfect as I hope it will, but they were all very kind about it. Then the conversation turned to frozen desserts in general and we discussed the possibility of concocting a brandy butter ice cream to go with Christmas pudding. I think Faye started that one: she makes a lot of ice cream for her farm shop.\n\nWriting the CPC meeting up later for the Chronicles, I added a note to include the recipe for the brandy butter ice cream to that chapter if one of us came up with something good, and then laid my pen down on the kitchen table with a sigh, thinking that it was just as well I had the Christmas Pudding Circle to write about.\n\nAlthough my readers loved the mix of domestic disaster, horticultural endeavour and recipes in my Perseverance Chronicle books, I could hardly include bulletins on the way the last, frayed knots of my failed marriage were so speedily unravelling, which was the subject most on my mind of late. I had become not so much a wife, as landlady to a surly, sarcastic and antisocial lodger.\n\nThe first Perseverance Chronicle was written in a desperate bid to make some money soon after we were married, influenced by all the old cosy, self-sufficiency-in-a-Cornish-cottage books that I had loved before the reality set in. Mine were a little darker, including such unromantic elements as the joys of outside toilets when heavily pregnant in winter and having an Inconstant Gardener for a husband.\n\nIt was accepted by a publisher and when we moved back to Lancashire I simply renamed the new cottage after the old and carried on \u2013 and so, luckily, did those readers who had bought the first book.\n\nMy self-imposed quota of four daily handwritten pages completed (which Jasper would type up later on the laptop computer Unks bought him, for extra pocket money), I closed the fat A4 writing pad and turned to my postcard album, as to an old friend. This was an impressively weighty tome containing all the cards sent to me over the years by Nick stuck in picture-side down, since interesting recipes were scribbled onto every bit of space on the back in tiny, spiky handwriting.\n\nHe still sent them, though I hadn't seen very much of him in person, other than the occasional Sunday lunch up at Pharamond Hall, since the time Jasper was ill in hospital. And actually I was profoundly grateful about that, what with having poured my heart out to him in that embarrassing way, not to mention Tom suddenly getting the wrong idea when he arrived and found Nick comforting me...\n\nAnd speak of the devil, just as I found the card I wanted, a dark shape suddenly blocked the open doorway to the yard and Tom's voice said, 'Reading your love letters?'\n\nHe was quite mad \u2013 that or the demon weed and too much alcohol had pickled his brain over the years! The album was always on the kitchen bookshelf for anyone to read, so he knew there was nothing personal about the cards \u2013 unless he thought that addressing them to 'The Queen of Puddings' was lover-like, rather than a sarcastic reference to one of my major preoccupations.\n\nMind you, Tom was not much of a reader, though luckily that meant he had never, to my knowledge, even opened one of my Perseverance Chronicles.\n\n'No, Tom, I'm looking for a particular marzipan petit four recipe for the Christmas Pudding Circle to try,' I said patiently. 'The only love letters I've got are a couple of short notes from you, and they're so old the ink's faded.'\n\n'So you say, but I don't find you poring over them all the time, like you do over Nick's precious postcards,' he said, going to wash his hands at the kitchen sink.\n\nI dished out some of the casserole that was simmering gently on the stove and put it on a tray, together with a chunk of home-made bread, since he now preferred to take all his meals alone in the sitting room in front of his giant TV. Jasper and I had the old set in the kitchen and tended to leave him in sole possession.\n\nHe picked up the bowl of stew now and stared into it like a sibylline oracle, but the only message he was likely to read was 'Eat this or go hungry.'\n\n'What are these black things, decayed sheep's eyeballs?'\n\n'Prunes. It's Moroccan lamb tagine.'\n\nFrom his expression you would have thought I'd offered him a dish of lightly seasoned bat entrails.\n\n'And I suppose Nick gave you the recipe. What else has he given you lately?' he said, with a wealth of unpleasant innuendo. 'Don't think I haven't noticed that your son looks more like him every day!'\n\n'Oh, for God's sake, don't start on that again!' I snapped, adding recklessly, 'You know very well why Jasper looks like Nick, just as you look like Great-uncle Roly: your mother must have been having an affair with Leo Pharamond while she was still married to her first husband! Why don't you ask her?'\n\nIt was certainly obvious to everyone else, since those slaty purple-grey eyes and raven-black hair marked out all the Pharamonds instantly. But Tom went livid and hissed like a Mafia villain in a bad film, 'Never ever malign my mother's name again like that \u2013 do you hear me?'\n\nThen he followed this up by hurling the plate of hot casserole at the wall with enormous force, shattering it and sending fragments of bowl and spatters of food everywhere. He'd never been physically violent (I wouldn't have stood for it for one second) so I don't think he was particularly aiming at me, but a substantial chunk of green-glazed Denby pottery hit my cheekbone and fell at my feet.\n\nIt was a shock, though, and I stood there transfixed and staring at him, one hand to my face, in a silence broken only by the occasional slither and plop of a descending prune. Suddenly finding myself released from thrall, I turned and walked out of the door, dabbing lamb tagine off my face with the hem of my pale green T-shirt as I went, then headed towards the village.\n\nI must have looked a mess, but luckily it was early evening and few people were about, for the Pied Piper of TV dinners had called them all away, using the theme tune of the popular soap series Cotton Common as lure.\n\nI didn't have far to go for refuge. Annie's father used to be the vicar here, but now that he and his wife are alleviating the boredom of retirement by doing VSO work in Africa, Annie has a tiny Victorian red-brick terraced cottage in the main street of Middlemoss.\n\n'Lizzy!' she exclaimed, looking horrified at discovering me stained and spattered on her doorstep. 'Is that dried blood on your face and T-shirt? What on earth has happened?'\n\n'I think it's only prune juice and gravy, actually,' I reassured her, touching my cheek cautiously. 'A bit of plate did hit me, but it must have had a round edge.'\n\n'Plate?' she repeated blankly, drawing me in and closing the front door.\n\n'Yes, one of those lovely green Denby soup bowls we had as a wedding present from your parents.'\n\n'Look, come into the kitchen and I'll clean you up with warm water and lint while you tell me all about it,' she said soothingly.\n\nThe lint sounded very Gone With the Wind \u2013 but then, she has all the Girl Guide badges and I don't suppose the First Aid one has changed for years. So I followed her in and sank down on the nearest rush-bottomed chair, my legs suddenly going wobbly. Trinity (Trinny, for short), Annie's three-legged mutt, regarded me lambently from her basket, tail thumping.\n\n'There's nothing much to tell, really,' I said. 'Tom flew into one of his rages and lobbed his dinner at the wall.'\n\n'Oh, Lizzy!'\n\n'I said something that made him angry and he just totally lost it this time. I don't think he was actually aiming at me, though it's hard to tell since he's such a rotten shot and \u2013 ouch!' I added, as she dabbed my face with the warm, damp lint.\n\n'The skin isn't cut, but I think you might get a bruise on your cheek,' she said, wringing the cloth out. 'I could put some arnica ointment on it.'\n\n'I don't think I could live with that smell so close to my nose, Annie,' I said dubiously, but her next suggestion, that we break out the bottle of Remy Martin, which she keeps in stock because her father always swore by it in times of crisis, met with a better reception.\n\n'I think you really ought to leave Tom right away, Lizzy,' Annie suggested worriedly. 'He's been so increasingly horrible to you that it's practically verbal abuse \u2013 and now this!'\n\n'I'm just glad Jasper wasn't there,' I said, topping my glass up and feeling much better. 'He's gone straight from the archaeological dig to a friend's house, and won't be back till about ten.'\n\n'His exam results should be here any time now, shouldn't they?'\n\n'Yes, only a couple more days.' I sipped my brandy and sighed. 'Even though I'll miss him, it'll be such a relief to have him safely off to university in October, because I live in dread that Tom will suddenly tell him to his face that he doesn't think he's really his son. That would be even more hurtful than ignoring him, the way he's been doing the last couple of years.'\n\n'I don't know what's got into Tom,' Annie said sadly. 'He always had so much charm... as long as he got his own way.'\n\n'He still does charm everyone else. I'm sure no one would believe me if I told them what he's really like at home.'\n\n'True, but he's so used to me being around, he's let the mask slip sometimes, so I've seen it for myself,' Annie said. 'He was all right with Jasper for the first few years, though, wasn't he?'\n\n'Well, he didn't take a lot of notice of him, but he was OK. But he started to turn colder towards me even before he got this strange idea that I had a fling with Nick, so I think whoever he's been having an affair with since then has had a really bad effect on his character.'\n\n'You did have a fling with Nick,' Annie pointed out fairly.\n\n'Oh, come on, Annie! I was way too young and anyway, it only lasted about a fortnight before he told me he was going abroad for a year because he wasn't changing his life-plans for my sake. I didn't see him after that until the day I got married to Tom and he turned up then with Leila in tow \u2013 do you remember?'\n\n'Gosh, yes. She was so scarily chic, in a Parisian sort of way, that she made me feel like a country bumpkin \u2013 she still does! But I thought it was nice of Nick to make the effort, even though he and Tom had grown apart over the years. They never had a lot in common, did they?'\n\n'I think the main problem was that Tom always felt jealous of Nick, since Nick was a real Pharamond and Roly's grandson, whereas he was just a Pharamond because his mother had married one. Allegedly,' I added darkly.\n\n'It's odd how things turn out,' mused Annie, putting away the bowl of water and tossing the lint into the kitchen bin. 'You always had much more in common with Nick than with Tom.'\n\n'How on earth can you say that, when we argue all the time?' I demanded incredulously. 'The only thing Nick and I have ever had in common is a love of food, even if mine is much less cordon bleu.'\n\nThough of course it is true that food has played an important part in both our families. The search for a good meal in the wrong part of a foreign city was the downfall of my diplomat parents and would be the downfall of my figure, too, were I ever to stop moving long enough for the fat to settle.\n\nAs to the Pharamonds, the gene for cooking was introduced into the family by a Victorian heir who married the plebeian but wealthy heiress Bessie Martin, only to die of a surfeit of home-cooked love some forty years later, with a fond smile on his lips and a biscuit empire to hand on to his offspring.\n\n'You and Nick have both got short tempers and you love Middlemoss more than anywhere else on earth,' Annie said. 'And of course I know that Jasper is Tom's son, but it's unfortunate that he's looking more and more like Nick with every passing year.'\n\n'Well, yes, that's what Tom said earlier, so I reminded him about the rumours that his mother had an affair with Leo Pharamond before her first husband was killed, and that's what started the argument off! He always flies into a complete rage if I say anything against his sainted mother.'\n\n'It's quite a coincidence that Leo Pharamond and her first husband were both not only racing drivers but killed in car crashes,' Annie said, 'though there did seem to be a lot of fatal crashes in the early days.'\n\n'Someone told me they called her the Black Widow after Leo died, so it's not surprising her third husband gave it up and whisked her off back to Argentina,' I said.\n\nTom's mother had started a whole new life out there, but her firstborn was packed off to boarding school and farmed out at Pharamond Hall in the holidays. That made us both orphans in a way, which had once seemed to make a bond...\n\nAnnie said, 'Tom's hardly seen his mother over the years, has he?'\n\n'No, or his half-siblings. He blames it all on his stepfather, of course, and won't hear a word against her. Come to that, I've only met her a couple of times and we can't be said to have bonded.'\n\n'You'd think she'd at least be interested in her grandson \u2013 Jasper's such a lovely boy,' Annie said fondly.\n\n'I used to send her his school photos, but since I never got any response, I gave up. In fact, with all this rejection, it's wonderful that poor Jasper isn't bitter and twisted, too!'\n\n'Oh, he's much too sensible and he knows we all love him: me, Roly, even Mimi.'\n\nI considered Unks' unmarried sister, Mimi, who is not at all maternal and whose passions are reserved for the walled garden she tends behind the Hall. 'You're right, she does seem to like him, despite his not being any form of plant life.'\n\n'And Nick is fond of him \u2013 Jasper and he get on well.'\n\n'He only really sees him during our occasional Sunday lunch up at the Hall, when we're all on our best behaviour for Roly's sake, because Tom's made it abundantly clear he isn't welcome at Perseverance Cottage.'\n\n'How difficult it all is!' Annie sighed, which was the under-statement of the year. 'I always agreed with Mum and Dad that marriage should be for ever, but once Tom started having affairs and being really nasty to you and Jasper, I changed my mind. He's not at all the man you married.'\n\n'Oh, I don't know,' I reflected. 'I think perhaps he is, it's just that his true nature was hidden underneath all that charm. His sarcastic tongue has suddenly become a lot more vicious, though, which I expect is because he really wants me out of the cottage now, but I mean to try and stick to my original plan and hang on until I've got Jasper settled at university. It doesn't do a lot for my self-confidence when Tom's constantly belittling me and telling me how useless I am, though.'\n\n'You're not useless,' she said, 'you've been practically self-sufficient for years in fruit, vegetables and eggs, made a lovely home for him and Jasper, and written all those wonderful books.'\n\n'I don't actually get paid very much for the Chronicles \u2013 they're a bit of a niche market \u2013 and I'm running late with the next, what with one thing and another.'\n\n'I suppose it's hard to think up funny anecdotes to go between the recipes and gardening stuff, what with all the worry about Tom. But if you want to leave him right now, you know you and Jasper can move in here any time you like, and stay as long as you want,' she offered generously.\n\n'I do know, and it's very kind of you,' I said gratefully, not pointing out that her cottage isn't much bigger than a doll's house: two tiny rooms up and down, crammed so full of bric-a-brac you can hardly expand your lungs to full capacity without nudging something over. Jasper, when he visits, tends to stand in the corner with his arms folded so as not to damage anything.\n\n'Once Jasper is at university I might have to take you up on that offer, but very temporarily. I'll still need to make a home for him to come back to. I'll have to get a job stacking supermarket shelves, so I can rent somewhere. I'm not really qualified to do anything else.'\n\n'Then what about Posh Pet-sitters? Business is expanding hugely since I added general pet-feeding and care to the dog-walking, and I could do with an assistant.'\n\nAnnie set up Posh Pet-sitters several years ago with a loan from her parents, and business seemed to be building up nicely, due to the patronage of several of the actors from the long-running drama Cotton Common, set in a turn-of-the-century Lancashire factory town, who have suddenly 'discovered' the three villages that comprise the Mosses.\n\nWhere they led, other minor celebrities followed, since although off the beaten track, we're within commuting distance of Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and the M6, and in pretty countryside just where the last beacon-topped hills slowly subside into the fertile farmland that runs west to the coast.\n\nSome of the actors live in the new walled and gated estate of swish detached houses in Mossrow, but others have snapped up whatever has appeared on the market, from flats in the former Pharamond's Butterflake Biscuit factory, to old cottages and farms.\n\n'Did you go and see Ritch Rainford yesterday?' I asked, suddenly remembering how excited Annie had been at getting a call from the singer-turned-actor who plays Seth Steele, the ruggedly handsome mill owner in Cotton Common. (All that alliteration must have been too much for the producers of the series to resist!)\n\nHe's bought the old vicarage where Annie's family used to live, a large and rambling Victorian building with a brick-walled garden, in severe need of TLC and loads of cash. (The new vicar is now housed in an unpretentious bungalow next to the church.)\n\nAnnie's pleasantly homely face, framed in a glossy pudding-bowl bob of copper hair, took on an unusually rapt \u2013 almost holy \u2013 expression and her blue-grey eyes went misty. 'Oh, yes! He's...' She stopped, apparently lost for superlatives.\n\n'Sexy as dark chocolate?' I suggested. 'Toothsomely rum truffle?'\n\n'Just \u2013 wonderful,' she said simply. 'He has such charisma, it was as though a... a golden light was shining all around him.'\n\n'Bloody hell! That sounds more like finding all the silver charms in your slice of Christmas pudding at once!' I stared at her, but she was lost in a trance.\n\n'Lizzy, he's so kind, too! When I explained that I used to live at the vicarage, he took me around and showed me all the improvements he's made, and told me what else he was going to do. Then he just handed me a set of keys to the house so he could call me up any time to go and exercise or feed his dog.'\n\n'Well, if your clients didn't do that, you wouldn't be able to get in,' I said drily. 'What sort of dog does he have?'\n\n'A white bull terrier bitch called Flo \u2013 very good-natured, though I might have to be careful around other dogs.'\n\n'And what's the new vicar like?' I asked, but she hadn't noticed, being full of Ritch Rainford to the point where her bedazzled eyes couldn't really take in another man. However, a crush on a handsome actor was not likely to get her anywhere.\n\nAnnie was once engaged, but was jilted with her feet practically on the carpeted church aisle. Since then she had safely confined her affections to unsuitable \u2013 and unattainable \u2013 actors.\n\n'I've heard he's single and has red hair,' I said encouragingly since, despite her own copper locks, she has a weakness for redheaded men.\n\n'He hasn't got red hair, he's blond!' she protested indignantly, and I saw that she was still thinking of Ritch Rainford. Perhaps I ought to watch Cotton Common to see what all the excitement was about.\n\nEventually Annie ran me home, since I wanted to be there when Jasper returned. I was by then attired in one of her voluminous cardigans \u2013 a bilious green, with loosely attached knitted pink roses \u2013 to hide the dried but dubious-looking stains on my T-shirt.\n\nShe said she was going to come in with me and give Tom a piece of her mind, which would not have gone down well, but luckily Tom, his van and some of his clothes had vanished. He'd also locked me out; but not only did Annie have our key on her ring, I kept one hidden under a flower pot, so that wasn't a problem.\n\n'Looks like he's gone away again,' I said gratefully. 'Thank goodness for that.'\n\nOf course he hadn't thought to feed the hens, who had put themselves to bed in disgust, or the quail, so Annie helped me to shut everything up safely for the night.\n\nAs we walked back to the cottage Uncle Roly Pharamond's gamekeeper, Caz Naylor, sidled out of a small outbuilding and, with a brief salute, flitted away through the shadows towards the woods behind the cottage.\n\nHe's a foxy-looking young man, with dark auburn hair, evasive amber eyes and a tendency to address me, on the rare occasions when he speaks, as 'our Lizzy', thus acknowledging a distant relationship that all the Naylors in the area seemed to know about from the minute I set foot in the place for the first time at the age of eleven.\n\nAnnie looked startled: 'Wasn't that Caz? What's he doing here?'\n\n'I let him have the use of the old chest freezer in there. Since I cut down on the amount of stuff I grow, I don't need it,' I said, for I'd been slowly running things down ready for the moment that I knew was fast approaching, when I must leave Perseverance Cottage. 'He comes and goes as he pleases.'\n\nShe shook her head. 'All the Naylors are strange...'\n\n'But some are stranger than others? My mother was a Naylor too, don't forget! Descendant of some distant ancestor who made good in Liverpool, in the cargo shipping line \u2013 which at least explains why I'm such a daughter of the soil and feel so firmly rooted here.'\n\nShe smiled. 'I expect Roly told him to keep an eye on things after that animal rights group started targeting you.'\n\n'More likely he's keeping an eye on his freezer,' I said, though it was true that the only evidence of ARG (as they are known locally) I'd spotted around the place lately were the occasional bits of gaffer tape where a banner had been ripped off my car or the barn. 'Perhaps they just aren't bothering with me that much. I mean, I can see why they might target Unks and Caz, especially since no one knows what Caz does with all those grey squirrels he traps, but why me? I'm not battery farming anything.'\n\nAll my fowl lived long, happy and mainly useless lives, except for an excess of male quail and the occasional unwanted cockerel, which Caz dispatched for me with expert efficiency.\n\n'I expect they just include you in with the Pharamond estate, since your cottage is part of it,' she agreed. 'It's not personal.'\n\nWe cleaned up the mess in the kitchen as well as we could and then Annie left, since it was clear enough that Tom wasn't coming back that night, at least \u2013 and I thanked heaven for small mercies.\n\n'What happened to your face, Mum?' Jasper asked, getting his first good look at me in the light of the kitchen, when a friend dropped him home later. 'That looks like a bruise coming up. And why are you wearing one of Auntie Annie's horrible cardigans?'\n\n'Your father dropped a plate and a piece hit me,' I explained. 'Annie loaned me the cardigan to cover up the gravy stains on my T-shirt and I forgot to give it back when she went home.'\n\nHe looked at the dent and new marks on the plastered kitchen wall and said, 'He dropped a plate horizontally?' in that smart-lipped way teenage boys have.\n\n'Yes, he was practising discus throwing,' I said, and he gave me a look but let the subject drop.\n\nHe didn't ask where his father was. But then, at that time, he never did.\n\n## Chapter 2: All Fudge\n\nWe are in the middle of a hot spell and the air is fragrant with sweet peas and roses and full of the dull, drowsy drone of bees drunk on nectar. Yesterday I divided up the bigger clumps of chives and began drying herbs for winter, crumbling them up as soon as they were cool and storing them in cork-topped containers, though the bay leaves have simply been left in bunches hanging from the wooden rack in the kitchen. But soon they, too, will be packed in jars and put away in the cupboard until needed.\n\nAs I used up the final jar of last year's mincemeat for brownies, I wondered if mincemeat would also work as an ingredient in fudge \u2013 maybe even in Spudge, the mashed potato fudge I invented while we were living in Cornwall...\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nTom had been gone a couple of days when Jasper pointedly enquired after dinner one night if there was anything I wanted to discuss, but I just said we would have a little chat before he went to university and he gave me one of his looks.\n\nI knew he was now an adult, and at some point I'd have to explain to him that I was going to leave his father and the cottage as soon as he'd gone off to university, but at that moment he was so happy that he'd got the exam grades he needed for his first choice, I didn't want to rain on his parade.\n\nNext day, when I let out the hens, I found it was one of those delicious late summer mornings that reminded me of the early honeymoon weeks of our marriage in Cornwall: dreamy swirls of mist with the warm sun tinting the edges golden, like pale yellow candyfloss wisps. You could easily imagine King Arthur and Queen Guinevere riding out of it in glorious Technicolor, all jingling bridles and hooded hawks, though if they had they would probably have been surprised to find themselves transported from the land of legend into a Lancashire backwater like Middlemoss.\n\nThe last remaining acres of darkly watchful ancient woodland that crowded up to the back of Perseverance Cottage would have looked normal enough to them, I suppose \u2013 apart from Caz Naylor, who as usual was camouflaged from headband to boots, Rambo-style. I spotted him flitting in and out of the trees only by the white glint of his eyeballs and the sweat glistening between the green and brown streaks on his naked chest. A blink and he was gone, back to wage war on the dangerous alien life form known to the uninitiated as the grey squirrel.\n\nStill, even in Arthurian times they would probably have had some kind of shamanistic Green Man and so would be used to such goings-on, and the duckpond, chickens and vegetable patch out front would look reassuringly normal to them. But what would they have made of the huge, tumble-down old greenhouse, the remains of a previous tenant's abortive attempt at market gardening? Or my battered, once-white Citro\u00ebn 2CV? A 2CV that, I now noticed, had its hood down, so the seats would be soaked with dew and very likely lightly spattered with hen crap. Or even, which was much, much worse, duck gloop.\n\nIt was also listing drunkenly on one seriously flat tyre.\n\nTossing the last of the feed to the hens, I stuck my head inside the cottage door.\n\n'Jasper?' I called loudly up the steep stairs, expecting him to be still asleep. By nature, teenagers are intended to be nocturnal, so it felt cruel to have to drag him out of his lair under the eaves each morning.\n\nInstead, he loomed out of the doorway next to me, making me jump. 'I'm here, Mum. What's up?'\n\n'Flat tyre. You have your breakfast and get ready while I change it. I hope it's a mendable puncture \u2013 the spare's not that brilliant and if I have to buy a new one it'll be worth more than the rest of the car put together.'\n\nOne of the Leghorns had followed me into the flagged hallway (a Myrtle: all the white hens are called that; and the browns, Honey) and I shooed it out again. There's something terribly cement-like about hen droppings when they set hard.\n\n'I'll change it,' he offered. 'Or I can cycle over.'\n\n'No, I'll have it done by the time you've had breakfast, and you'll be late otherwise.'\n\nThe medieval dig he was working at was only a few miles away, but the lanes between the site and us were narrow and twisty, so I worried about his safety. Annie calls it 'mother hen with one chick' syndrome, but she is just as dotty about Trinity, her rescued dog. And if I hadn't been an anxious mother, then maybe I wouldn't have demanded the right treatment for Jasper's meningitis that time he was rushed into hospital, even before the tests came back positive... It didn't bear thinking about.\n\nJasper wandered out again a few minutes later holding a piece of toast at least an inch thick, not counting the bramble jelly and butter, removed the wheel brace from my hand (giving me the toast to hold in exchange), and unscrewed the last nut.\n\n'Thanks, that was stiff. You'd think if I'd tightened it up in the first place, I'd be able to undo it easily, wouldn't you?'\n\n'Dad not back yet?' Jasper asked, glancing across at the large, ramshackle wooden shed Tom used as his workshop, with the 'Board Rigid: Customised Surfboards' sign over it.\n\n'No.'\n\n'Well, remember that time you asked him to go and buy a couple of pints of milk, and you didn't hear from him for a week?' he said, clearly with the intention of comforting me should I need it. But actually, I was sure he shared my feeling that his father's increasing number of absences were a blessing, even though I was usually the one on the receiving end of Tom's viciously sarcastic outbursts.\n\nHe couldn't help but have noticed the way Tom had estranged himself from both of us, behaving more like a lodger than a husband and father.\n\nJust let me get him safely off to university in October, then I can sort my life out \u2013 somehow, I prayed silently.\n\nJasper said nothing more, but retrieved his toast and went back into the house.\n\nThe first golden glow of the morning was fading, much as my love for Tom had quickly vanished once I'd grasped what kind of man I'd married: the mercurial type, an erratic moon orbiting my Mother Earth solidity. For years I'd thought that deep down he loved and needed me, and he'd always managed to sweet-talk me into forgiving him for anything and everything, although my exasperation levels had slowly risen as my son matured and my husband remained as irresponsible as ever. Have you ever imagined what it would be like to be married to Peter Pan once the novelty wore off? A Peter Pan with a dark side he kept just for me... like a sweet chocolate souffl\u00e9 with something hard at its centre on which you could break your teeth \u2013 or your heart.\n\nHis cousin Nick, whose Mercedes sports car was slowly bumping down the rutted track towards me, scattering hens, wasn't any kind of souffl\u00e9 \u2013 more like one of his own devilishly hot curried dishes. He does cook like an angel, though, and he's an expert on all aspects of food and cooking, writes books and articles and has a page in a Sunday newspaper colour supplement.\n\nThe Pharamonds didn't seem to do marriage terribly well and he'd had a volatile, semidetached relationship with Leila for years. She's another chef, which was at least one too many cooks on the home front, by my reckoning. I was glad to see she wasn't with him that day, because Leila is a lemon tart. Or maybe, since she's French, that should be tarte au citron?\n\nMiaou.\n\nI resolved not to be catty about her, even if every time we met she contrived to make me feel like a lumbering great carthorse. She's an immaculately chic, petite, blue-eyed blonde, while I am tall and broad-shouldered, with green eyes flecked with hazel, fine light brown hair in a permanent tangle, and the sort of manicure you get from digging vegetable beds without gloves on.\n\nUnks \u2013 Great-uncle Roly \u2013 didn't like her either. He said if it weren't for her refusing to stop working all hours in her restaurant in London and settle down, there would have been lots of little Pharamond heirs by then. But he couldn't have thought this through properly, because if they were a combination of the scarier bits of Nick and Leila, that would be quite alarming indeed.\n\nLeila was married before and was fiercely independent, with her own swish apartment above her restaurant; while Nick had a small flat in Camden. And considering he spent at least half his time at Pharamond Hall, which Leila rarely visited, you'd wonder when they ever saw each other.\n\nI certainly hadn't seen Nick for ages. He always phoned up for any eggs, fruit or vegetables he needed when staying at the Hall and working on recipes, but I just dropped them off with Unks' cook, Mrs Gumball.\n\nYet here he was, deigning to pay me a visit. As his Mercedes pulled up I removed the jack and then slung the punctured tyre in the back of the car, where Jasper's bike already reposed. You can get anything in a 2CV, if you don't mind being exposed to the weather.\n\nNick got out. He was wearing dark trousers and an open-necked soft white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the glossy, thick black plumage of his hair spikily feathering his head. His strong face, with its impressively bumpy nose, can look very attractive when he smiles, though the last time he'd wasted any of his charm on me was in the hospital when Jasper had meningitis. And after the way I'd bared my soul to him in the night hours, I could only feel profoundly grateful that I hadn't seen much of him since then.\n\nI distinctly remember telling him how I hoped that once Jasper was at university, things would get better between me and Tom \u2013 and instead, from that very moment they'd rapidly got worse and worse...\n\nI became aware that Nick was waving his hands slowly in front of my face, like a baffled stage hypnotist.\n\n'Planet Earth to Lizzy: are you receiving me?'\n\n'Oh, hi, Nick \u2013 long time, no recipe,' I said, wiping my filthy hands up the sides of my jeans \u2013 they were work ones, so it wasn't going to make a lot of difference. I only hoped I hadn't run them through my hair first, though since I didn't remember brushing it this morning, a bit of grease would at least hold the tangles down.\n\nHe frowned down at me. 'I sent you a card from Jamaica.'\n\n'That was ages ago, and a recipe for conch fritters isn't exactly the most useful thing to have in the middle of Lancashire \u2013 the fishmongers don't stock them. Anyway, what are you doing here at this time of the morning? Have you driven straight up from London?'\n\n'Yes, I'm looking for Tom,' he said shortly, checking me over with eyes the dark grey-purple of wet Welsh slate, as though he wasn't sure quite what species I was, or what sauce to serve me with. 'What have you done to your face?'\n\nI flushed and touched the bruise on my cheek with the tips of my fingers. 'This? Oh, a plate got dropped and one of the pieces bounced up and hit me,' I said lamely; it was almost the truth.\n\nHis brows knitted into a thick, black bar as he tried to imagine a plate that explosive.\n\n'It looks worse than it is, now it's gone all blue and yellow \u2013 it'll have vanished in a day or two. And Tom's away,' I added. Thank goodness!\n\nFrom the way Nick was looking at me I thought I'd said that aloud for a minute, but finally he asked, 'Oh? Any idea when he'll be back?'\n\n'No, but he's been gone since Monday, so I'll be surprised if he doesn't turn up today.'\n\nHe raised one dark eyebrow. 'And do you know where he's gone?'\n\n'He didn't say and there is no point in ringing his mobile because he never answers or gets back to me.' I shrugged, casually. 'You know what he's like. He might be off delivering a surfboard. I'm pretty sure he's not doing a gig with the Mummers, they don't usually go that far from home.'\n\n'A gig \u2013 with the what?'\n\n'The Mummers of Invention: you know, that sort of folk-rock group he started with three local friends?'\n\n'No,' he said shortly. 'I'm glad to say I don't.'\n\n'You must do because one of them's that drippy female Unks rents an estate cottage to \u2013 she sells handmade smocks at historical re-enactment fairs. And if you ever came up for the Mystery Play any more, you would have seen them \u2013 they provide the musical interludes. Tom played Lazarus as well, last year. He stepped in at the last minute and the parish magazine review said he brought a whole new meaning to the role.'\n\n'I can imagine \u2013 and I do intend being here for the next performance.'\n\n'I thought Leila couldn't leave her restaurant over Christmas?'\n\n'She can't; I can,' he snapped, and I wondered if their marriage was finally dragging its sorry carcass to the parting of the ways, like mine. 'So, you've no idea where Tom is, or when he'll be back?'\n\n'Probably Cornwall, that's where he mostly ends up, and if so, he's likely to be staying with that friend of his Tom Collinge, the weird one who runs a wife and harem in one cottage.'\n\n'I suppose he may be there by now, but he was in London on Monday night, Lizzy. I ran into him at Leila's restaurant, but he left in a hurry \u2013 without paying the bill.'\n\n'He did?' I frowned. 'That's odd. I wonder what he was doing in London?'\n\n'Well, it evidently wasn't me he'd gone to see, since he bolted as soon as I arrived.' He looked at me intently, as though he'd asked me a question.\n\n'Oh?' I said slowly, trying to remember whether Tom had actually ever said which of his friends he stayed with when he was in London.\n\n'Still, you know Tom,' I tried to laugh. 'He probably just found himself near the restaurant and dropped in.'\n\n'Then just took it into his head to shoot off without paying when I turned up unexpectedly? Leila said she didn't want to charge him for the meal anyway, since he's a sort of relative.'\n\n'That's kind of her,' I said, amazed, because it wouldn't surprise me if she gives even Nick a bill when he eats there!\n\n'Yes, wasn't it just?' he said drily. 'And one of the staff let slip that he'd stayed in her apartment the previous night, too \u2013 the staff seemed to know him pretty well. But I told Leila, business is business and she'd never let sentiment of any kind come before making money before, so I would just drop the bill in on my way up to the Hall. Here it is.'\n\nI looked at his closed, dark face again and suddenly wondered if he suspected that Tom and Leila had something going on. Surely not. It would be totally ridiculous! I knew that Tom had been having a serious affair for the last few years, of course, but not who it was with, although I assumed it was someone down in Cornwall where he spent so much time. It couldn't be Leila... could it?\n\nMy mind working furiously, I took the offered bill and glanced down at it, then gasped, distracted by the staggering sum. 'You must be absolutely rolling in it, charging these prices!'\n\n'Not me \u2013 Leila. And the prices aren't anything out of the ordinary for a restaurant of that standard. She's just got a Michelin star.'\n\n'Congratulations,' I said absently, staring at the bill, the total of which would have fed the average family of four for about a year. More, if they grew most of their food themselves, like I do. 'But I'm sorry, I don't have that kind of money on the proceeds of my produce sales \u2013 and in case you haven't noticed, I've scaled that side of things down drastically in the last eighteen months.'\n\n'Come on, you must get good advances for your \"how I tried to be self-sufficient and failed dismally\" books. You can't plead poverty,' he looked distastefully down at the mess he was standing in, 'whatever it looks like here!'\n\n'You should have looked before you got out of the car,' I said coldly. 'The ducks have been up. And one small book every two or three years doesn't exactly rake in the cash. I only get a couple of thousand for them. I'm lucky to still have a publisher! My agent says it's only because my faithful band of readers can't wait to see what else goes pear-shaped every time. And they like all the recipes.'\n\n'Ah yes, the Queen of Puddings!' He wrinkled his nose slightly.\n\n'What?' I said indignantly. 'Just because it's wholesome, everyday stuff, it doesn't mean it isn't good food! At least my recipes don't need ninety-six exotic ingredients, four servile minions and a catering-sized oven to produce.'\n\nHe grinned, as though glad to have got a rise out of me, and I began to remember why our boy-girl romance never got off the ground: an interest in food is the only thing we've ever had in common, whatever Annie says, and he never tires of reminding me that mine is not gourmet, and it's largely focused on sweets and desserts.\n\n'And this is not my bill, so you'll have to come back and speak to Tom about it later,' I added, sincerely hoping that that was all he wanted to talk to Tom about. Clearly he was harbouring suspicions... But no, whoever Tom was having an affair with, it couldn't be Leila, his own cousin's brittle little acid drop of a wife, however strange the circumstances might look!\n\n'If I can catch him,' Nick said, the grin vanishing. He abruptly changed the subject. 'Jasper had his results yet?'\n\n'Oh, yes!' I said, happily diverted. 'Yesterday and they were just what he needed for Liverpool University, to read Archaeology and History. He's having breakfast at the moment \u2013 why don't you come in and talk to him? He hasn't thanked you for that Roman cookery book you sent him, yet.'\n\nJasper's keenly interested in food and drink too, but only from a purely historical perspective. Delving about in medieval cesspits and middens, which was what he seemed to be spending his days doing at the dig, suited him down to the ground.\n\nNick looked at his watch. 'I haven't time today, so congratulate him for me, won't you? I'd better be off. I'm doing some articles on eating out in the North-West \u2013 out-of-the-way restaurants and hotels \u2013 so I need to drop my stuff off up at the Hall and get on with it. Breakfast awaits, then lunch and dinner...'\n\n'Lucky you,' I said politely, though sitting in restaurants isn't my favourite thing. I'd rather pig out at home than eat prettily arranged tiny portions consisting of a splat, a dribble and a leaf, in public.\n\nHe was frowning down at me again. 'You know, Lizzy, two thousand is peanuts compared to what I get for my books. No wonder you're living in a hovel \u2013 especially with Tom spending his earnings as fast as he makes them.' He gestured at the giant satellite dish, incongruously attached to the side of the cottage.\n\n'We don't need a huge amount of money and Perseverance Cottage is not a hovel,' I began crossly. 'Uncle Roly had all the mod cons installed before we moved in, and it's exactly how I like it. I've got everything I want.'\n\n'Have you? Or perhaps you've got more than you bargained for,' he said drily, his eyes again resting speculatively on my bruised cheek.\n\nI hoped he didn't think Tom had taken to physical violence \u2013 or that I would have stayed to be a punchbag if he had! I was just about to disabuse his mind of any suspicions in that quarter when he turned round to survey my domain and remarked suavely: 'I wouldn't say the family have come a long way from the heady days of Pharamond's Butterflake Biscuits, but they have certainly diverged in their interests.'\n\nThen, before I could point out that he at least was still vaguely in the bakery line, he got back into his car and reversed away in a cloud of dust. A lot of gritted chickens shot out from under it.\n\n'Wasn't that Uncle Nick?' Jasper asked, coming out ready for the off.\n\n'Yes, but he couldn't stay. He had an urgent appointment with breakfast, though he did send you his congratulations on the exam results. Get in. I'll just wash my hands and we'll go.'\n\n'Can I drive?' he asked hopefully. He'd recently passed his test, lessons courtesy of a lucky win on the gees at Haydock by Great-uncle Roly.\n\n'OK. Turn it round while I get ready.'\n\nHe'd left the cottage door open, and one of the hens had made a small deposit on the rag rug.\n\n## Chapter 3: Bittersweet\n\nWe are more than halfway through August, the time of year for eating fruits and salads as they come into season; but all too soon we will be bottling, brewing, jamming and preserving as if our lives depended on it and famine was sure to follow glut. And the minute the Christmas Pudding Circle receive their bulk order of dried fruits, peel, nuts and other ingredients, we will all be making our mincemeat too, for we use a marvellous Delia Smith recipe that keeps for ever.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nAll the way to the dig, while the loud music chosen by Jasper drowned out even the possibility of conversation, I wondered whether it could possibly be Leila that Tom had been having an affair with for the last couple of years \u2013 or the main one, because I'm sure he still scattered his favours pretty widely.\n\nWas Nick really hinting that he suspected that, or had I imagined it? But things certainly didn't sound too friendly between him and Leila, even by their semidetached, sweet-and-sour standards!\n\nAnd what would I say to Tom when he returned? While saying nothing would probably be the most sensible option until my plans to leave were in place, I couldn't let what he'd done pass, even if I didn't really think he was trying to hurt me physically.\n\nMaybe I should have left before, even if it did mean disrupting Jasper's schooling? The situation had certainly been affecting him \u2013 he seemed practically to have given up going out with his friends in the evening when Tom was home. Instead, he lurked in his room with the laptop Unks bought him, only suddenly looming silently up between us whenever voices were raised.\n\nSo now was probably the moment to clear the air and tell Tom straight that I was not prepared to put up with his behaviour any more, so I was leaving him. I was convinced this was what he'd been angling for, so he could play the hurt innocent party to everyone and, perhaps, install someone else here in my place...\n\nI found that a particularly horrid thought, but Perseverance Cottage belonged to his uncle Roly, so obviously if anyone were moving out it would have to be me. And I simply wouldn't ask Roly to help me, for not only did I not want to disillusion him about Tom, whom he had treated like another grandson, but he'd already been so kind and generous to us all these years by letting us have the cottage rent free.\n\nI expected I could find new homes for the hens and quail, but finding a new home for me would be the major problem. While the recent influx of newcomers into the area (especially the Cotton Common crowd) might mean that Annie's Posh Pet-sitters could expand enough to employ me part-time, on the downside, it also meant property rentals had soared out of my reach.\n\nIt was all depressingly difficult! Oh, why couldn't Tom just vanish into thin air, never to be seen again, like those mysterious disappearances you read about in the newspapers?\n\nIn need of comfort, I stopped off at Annie's cottage on the way home from dropping Jasper at the dig. It was still early, but she'd already made a chicken casserole and popped it in the slow cooker for later.\n\nShe seemed to have learned a lot more practical stuff than I ever did on that French cookery course we did in London after we left school, where volatile Madame Fresnet screamed at us all day long in French, the language in which we were supposed to learn to cook, thus killing two birds with one stone. At the end of the six months we all emerged with shattered eardrums, shattered French and the ability to whip up tartelettes au fromage at the drop of a whisk.\n\nTrinity skipped up to greet me, and Susannah, Annie's deaf white cat, regarded me with self-satisfied disinterest from the top of the Rayburn.\n\n'All right?' Annie asked anxiously, scrutinising my face.\n\n'Fine. Tom's not back yet and Jasper's at the dig \u2013 I just dropped him.'\n\n'It's great he got his first choice university, isn't it?' she said, getting down another mug from the rack and pouring me some coffee. 'Do you want a chocolate croissant? They're hot from the oven and I don't think I can eat the last one, I've had two already.'\n\n'Your eyes are bigger than your belly,' I said vulgarly, accepting the plate, and sat down at the kitchen table, keeping my eyes firmly away from Trinny's pleading dark ones, because the last thing a dog with three legs needs is to be overweight.\n\n'I saw Nick this morning,' I told her, dunking the croissant into my coffee so the bittersweet dark chocolate began to melt into it. This makes a change, because I usually do it the other way round and dip my food into melted chocolate, especially strawberries. It's amazing what you can coat in chocolate \u2013 and I'm not talking about that revolting body paint, because I prefer to keep the two greatest pleasures life can hold completely and unmessily separate... or at any rate, I did. I think I have forgotten how to do one of them.\n\n'That's really what I came to tell you about, Annie. He called in early on his way up to the Hall, and he said Tom was in London on Monday.'\n\nI described my conversation with Nick. 'Don't you think that sounds like he suspects Tom and Leila might be having an affair?'\n\n'Oh, no, surely not? Not with his own cousin's wife?' she exclaimed, looking horrified. Annie is just too nice for her own good, but I suppose being a vicar's daughter didn't exactly help to squash her natural inclination to think the best of everybody if she possibly could.\n\n'I don't know, but I certainly hope not. I can't really see him and Leila getting it together, can you? She's quite scary, in a beady-eyed and elegantly chic way. And I always thought it must be someone local or down in Cornwall, so perhaps Nick has got the wrong end of the stick.'\n\n'I'm sure he must have,' she agreed, and then her eye fell on the kitchen clock. 'Look at the time! I promised I'd put in a couple of hours at the RSPCA kennels. The flu's hit the staff and volunteers hard. There are no pet-sitting jobs that I can't handle myself this afternoon, but tomorrow will be busier.'\n\nShe looked slightly self-conscious: 'Ritch Rainford has asked me to go in at lunchtime and walk Flo, because he'll be at the studios in Manchester all day.'\n\n'You'd better get off, then, if you're sure there's nothing you want me to do. I'll see you at the Mystery Play committee meeting later, when I'll finally get to meet the new vicar.'\n\n'Oh, yes, he's... he seems nice,' she said vaguely, but I could see that her mind was still too taken up with the delights of Ritch Rainford to bother with lesser mortals.\n\n'Oh, before you go, can I borrow that candyfloss maker you bought for the last Cubs and Brownies' bazaar? Some lusciously lemon morning mist has given me ideas.'\n\n'Of course. Now, where did I put it?' She vanished into the pantry and came back with a large cardboard box. 'The instructions and everything are still in there. Do you need anything else? Sugar?'\n\n'No, I'm OK for sugar,' I assured her.\n\nI left her putting Trinny in the back of her car, and then drove down to the other end of the village to drop the punctured tyre off with Dave Naylor at the local garage, Deals on Wheels. (And I know it seems confusing at first that most of the indigent Mosses population who are not Pharamonds are either Naylors or Gumballs, but you quickly get used to it.)\n\nThen I headed for home, passing the entire contingent of the Mosses Senior Citizens' Circle waiting to board a coach for the annual trip to Southport Flower Show... including Unks' alarmingly spry octogenarian sister, Mimi Pharamond. I slowed down, staring, and she waved at me gaily, the rainbow-coloured Rastafarian knitted hat Nick brought her back from Jamaica flapping over one eye.\n\nSince Juno Carter, her long-suffering companion, was currently laid up after an accident, letting Mimi loose alone on the flower show seemed a recipe for disaster. I only hoped someone had been delegated to keep an eye on her. And a firm grip.\n\nThere was still no sign of Tom's van outside the cottage and you couldn't miss it because it had 'BOARD RIGID' in big fluorescent orange letters up the side and the logo of a stickman surfing. The workshop door was closed too, but in the bedroom I found his dirty clothes scattered on the rug as though washed up there by a high tide, so he'd either gone out again, or come back without his van.\n\nStill, clearly he had returned from wherever it was he'd been. I gathered up Tom's clothes, added some of Jasper's and mine, and then went down to stuff them in the machine. There was no beating them on a rock for me, even in the first flush of self-sufficiency in Cornwall, though before I bought the washing machine out of my first Perseverance Chronicle sale, I used to do the laundry by trampling up and down on it in the bath. Then I would pass it through an old mangle in the yard, which was not fun in winter.\n\nIt hadn't taken me long to realise that most books on self-sufficiency were written by men in warm, comfortable rooms, while their wives were out there dealing with the raw realities of life. Or that Tom, while initially enthusiastic, soon lost interest and succumbed to the burgeoning surfing culture instead. Once you added a tiny baby into the equation, the offer of a cottage on the Pharamond estate up in Lancashire was one I was determined we wouldn't refuse.\n\nAs I pointed out to Tom at the time, if you have the contacts, you can customise surfboards anywhere, and besides, Middlemoss was as close to a home as I had ever got, and I longed to return there.\n\nTom's jeans crackled when I picked them up to stuff into the washer, but then I always had to empty his pockets of a strange assortment of objects, from board wax to fluffy sherbet lemons.\n\nThis time the haul was a dark blue paper napkin tastefully printed in the corner with the word 'Leila's' in gold, a teaspoon that probably came from the same place, since it was definitely classier than any of our mismatched assortment, a stub of billiard chalk, a red jelly baby with the head bitten off and a piece of pink paper folded tightly into the shape of a very small rose.\n\nTom had doodled in origami roses as long as I'd known him, which could be very irritating when it was my shopping list or the top page of a stack of book manuscript; but equally, it used to be rather endearing when it was an apology for forgetting to tell me he was going off somewhere. At least, it was until the novelty wore off, along with my patience.\n\nI flattened this one out and found it was the last part of a letter, abjuring my husband to 'Tell old Charlie Dimmock you've found someone else and give her the push', and promising, if he did, to tie him up \u2013 and maybe even down if he really begged her to. It was signed 'Your Dark Heart'.\n\nWell, that didn't sound like Leila, did it? I could imagine she'd give anyone a good basting, but would she have time in her busy schedule for bondage?\n\nA horrible image flashed before my eyes of a naked Tom, trussed and oven-ready, and I found I was sitting on the quarry tiles feeling sick and recalling the last time we made love, which was just before Jasper was taken ill.\n\nI'd accused Tom of having yet another affair, but this time his attempt to sweet-talk me round hadn't entirely worked and he'd said I was so unresponsive he felt like he was practising necrophilia. And then I'd said that I felt much the same, since he might look like the man I married, but the part of him I'd loved seemed to be quite dead.\n\nThis threw him into the first of his really frighteningly violent rages during which he said that living with a cold bitch of a wife who thought food could cure anything was enough to send any man off the rails, and stormed out.\n\nAfter this I began sleeping in the small boxroom off our bedroom, and things between us went downhill rapidly. He made no attempt to conceal his affairs, though this note was the first hard evidence that any of them were serious...\n\nFeeling suddenly dizzy, I put my head on my knees and closed my eyes, wishing our old lurcher, Harriet, was still around to snuffle sympathetically in my ear.\n\nWhen the feeling passed off I resolutely got up and washed my face in the kitchen sink with cold water, ate an entire packet of those chocolate mini-flake cake decorations, then went out to the workshop, from where faint strains of Metallica now wafted through the Judas door.\n\n## Chapter 4: Mushrooming\n\nI know a lot of people dry mushrooms, or freeze the button ones, but I either eat them freshly gathered from the nearby fields, or not at all.\n\nBut I do make marzipan mushrooms sometimes and give them as gifts in the sort of little paper-strip baskets we used to weave at infants' school for Easter eggs. The mushrooms are very easy: you simply make the cap from marzipan and place it upside down. Then press a disc of more marzipan onto it, coloured brown with a little cocoa powder, and make a ribbed effect with a fork. Add a marzipan stalk, and hey presto! Realer than real.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nTom had his back to me when I went in, spray-stencilling some intricate, hand-cut Celtic design onto a surfboard. He was wearing a mask and baggy dungarees over his T-shirt and jeans, and his dark hair curled onto the nape of his neck in a familiar ducktail.\n\nWhere his cousin Nick was built on a large and rugged scale, Tom was a slight, wiry man and every slender bone of his body was beautiful. But despite (allegedly) not being a Pharamond other than in name, he did have the unmistakable look of one, so I was convinced that all the rumours about his mother were true.\n\nI stood there for a minute, thrown by that familiar curl of hair, shaken by the stirring of a tenderness I had thought long dead. Then he must have felt my presence, for he turned cold grey stranger's eyes on me, pushing down the mask. The CD came to an end and there was silence.\n\nHis eyes flicked to the fading bruise on my cheek and away again. 'You're still here, then? Thought you might have cleared off.'\n\n'Like where?' I demanded. 'And Jasper? The animals? Did you think I had an ark ready and waiting somewhere?'\n\n'Ah, yes, I forgot: my great-uncle by marriage, my cottage. Poor little orphan Lizzy has nowhere to go, has she?'\n\n'Don't think I intend staying with you any longer than I have to,' I told him coldly. 'The minute Jasper's off to university, that's it. And if you're interested, his results came and he got into Liverpool.'\n\n'It's always Jasper, isn't it?' he said pettishly.\n\n'You should be pleased because he's your son too, whatever mad ideas you've got in your head. But I'm not playing your games any more, Tom \u2013 you can believe what you like.'\n\n'Oh, come on, Jasper's the spitting image of Nick, my dear old no-blood-relation cousin \u2013 and don't forget I caught you in each other's arms at the hospital when Jasper was ill.'\n\n'I've told you repeatedly that he was just comforting me \u2013 and you could have been doing that, if I'd been able to get hold of you! But I conceived Jasper practically as soon as we'd got married and I never even looked at Nick in that way \u2013 or any other man! No, there's another obvious reason why both you and Jasper look like Pharamonds, only you'd rather believe ill of me than your mother!'\n\n'We'll leave my mother out of this,' he said, that ugly look in his eyes. 'But the sooner you clear out, the better.' Turning back towards his board he said dismissively, 'Fetch me a beer out will you? There's some in the fridge.'\n\n'Fetch it yourself. I didn't come out here to wait on you. Oh, and here's a restaurant bill from Leila. I only hope the meal was worth it!'\n\n'What?' He swung round and snatched it from me, glanced at it and then looked up suspiciously. 'Where did you get this?'\n\n'Nick called by early this morning. You left Leila's without paying the bill, and she wants her money.'\n\n'Oh, I don't think this is Leila's idea,' he said, crumpling the bill into a ball and tossing it into a corner. 'I've already paid her \u2013 in kind. Bed and board. So now you know, and presumably Nick also knows.'\n\n'Suspects, perhaps... but... Leila can't possibly be \"Dark Heart\"!' I blurted.\n\nHe took a menacing step towards me. 'What do you know about Dark Heart?'\n\n'I found a bit of a note in your pocket when I was sorting the washing, but it didn't sound like Leila,' I said, standing my ground.\n\n'It isn't,' he said shortly. 'It's someone else... someone more conveniently local, who's prepared to please me in ways you wouldn't have, even if I'd asked, dearest wife.'\n\n'Is it someone I know, Tom? And Leila \u2013 was that a one-off? She isn't the woman you've been having an affair with since before Jasper was ill, is she?'\n\nHe didn't reply, just smiled rather unpleasantly. I hoped he hadn't been running two of them in tandem even then. But someone local... who could it be?\n\nOh God, he hadn't got drunk and started an affair with that drippy girl who played the electric violin and sang in the Mummers, had he? I'd noticed she hadn't been able to look me in the eye for months, but thought she'd maybe been one of his one-night flings. Evidently, he wasn't going to tell me anyway.\n\nI thought of something else. 'Where's your van?'\n\n'It broke down in a lay-by about twenty miles away. I had to get the garage to bring it in \u2013 think the gearbox's had it. Now, any more questions? Only I need to finish this board because I'm off down to Cornwall at the weekend to deliver it, assuming the van's fixed by then.'\n\nI stared at him, thinking how normal a monster could look.\n\n'If you aren't leaving immediately, you could make yourself useful and fetch that beer,' he suggested.\n\n'Fetch it yourself! I'm going for a walk in the woods to think all this over, and then later I've got a Mystery Play Committee meeting, the first of the year,' I said, and saw a flash of anger in his eyes.\n\nAs I left I heard the music restart, and the hissing of the spray.\n\nOutside I practically fell over Polly Darke, our local purveyor of stirring Regency romances \u2013 and I use the term 'Regency' very loosely, since she never let historical facts come between her and the story. She gave me one of them once and I noticed the words 'feisty' and 'lusty' appeared on practically every page to describe the heroine and hero.\n\nAnd now I came to think of it, she never let facts come between her and a modern story either, since she was always snooping about under one pretext or another, and twisting things she saw and heard into malicious gossip. Divorced, she had lived in her hacienda-style bungalow between Middlemoss and Mossedge for several years, and I'm sure was convinced that she was accepted everywhere as a local.\n\nWhile I didn't suppose she could have heard anything much through a wooden door, that wouldn't prevent her from spreading lurid rumours about me and Tom around the three villages by sundown.\n\nShe was looking her usual strange self, in a severely truncated purple Regency-style dress, and with her hair cropped and dyed a dense, dead black. She clutched a small blue plastic basket of field mushrooms to her artificially inflated bosom, which might or might not be a fashion statement \u2013 are plastic baskets currently a must-have accessory?\n\nApart from the kohl-edged eyes and puffy, fuchsia-pink lips (which reminded me, strikingly, of a baboon's bottom), her face was pale as death. Paler.\n\n'Oh, Polly, are you all right?' I asked. 'You haven't been eating your own home-bottled tomatoes or anything like that, have you?'\n\nFrom time to time she fancied herself as the Earth Mother type and tried her hand at jams, chutneys and bottled goods, which she then gave to all and sundry, in my case together with a generous dose of botulism or something equally foul. Just my luck to get that one!\n\n'Oh, no, I haven't had time for any of that, Lizzy \u2013 I've got a book to finish, you know.'\n\n'Yes, Senga does like you to keep them coming, doesn't she?'\n\nHaving fallen out with two agents and three publishers, Polly had been taken on by my own agent, Senga McDonald \u2013 and may the best woman win.\n\nHer dark eyes slid curiously to the closed workshop door and back to my face. 'I thought I heard raised voices \u2013 is everything OK with you and Tom? Only sometimes lately you haven't seemed entirely happy, and you know you can always depend on me if you need a shoulder to cry on.'\n\nOh, yes, but only if I kneel down first, I thought, as she smiled at me in a horribly pseudo-sympathetic sort of way.\n\n'I'm fine,' I said shortly. 'We were just discussing business. Were you looking for me?'\n\nShe gave a start. 'Oh, yes. I picked loads of mushrooms in the paddock this morning early and I thought you might like to swap them for some quail eggs? But if it's inconvenient, it doesn't matter.'\n\n'No, not at all. I'm just off for a walk, but you know where they are in the small barn? Help yourself and leave the mushrooms there,' I told her, and walked off, not caring whether she thought me rude or not. When she first moved to Middlemoss she went all out to be my best friend, but we had absolutely nothing in common (apart from Senga). Anyway, I already have a best friend in Annie.\n\nNor, it occurred to me, was she the type to skip about the fields at dawn gathering mushrooms, which in any case looked suspiciously like shop-bought ones, small, clean and perfectly formed. My marzipan mushrooms looked earthier than those!\n\nI headed for the woods, for I found their dark, cool depths wonderfully soothing, especially on a hot day. They restored a sense of my unimportance in the great scale of things, shrinking my problems down to a more manageable, acorn size.\n\nLuckily I was wearing a pinky-red T-shirt, so Caz would spot me if I strayed onto the smaller paths he stalked so relentlessly. But if he was out there with his gun, he didn't make himself known. He's not much of a talker in any case; but then, most of his dealings are with squirrels, so he doesn't need to be.\n\nAfter a while I found my thoughts turning away from more painful subjects onto the comforting one of food, wondering which member of the Christmas Pudding Circle would come up with the best recipe for brandy butter ice cream.\n\nMore than likely it would be Faye, since she's a farmer's wife who has diversified by opening a farm shop and caf\u00e9, where she sells her own home-made organic ice cream. She was already perfecting a Christmas-pudding-flavoured one.\n\nEventually, as the shadows lengthened, I reluctantly had to turn for home, even though I dreaded seeing Tom again. But there was no need: he wasn't there and, more to the point, neither was my car.\n\nCome to that, even the punnet of mushrooms Polly Darke had presumably left had vanished into thin air, though possibly Caz had been around and fancied them. He knows he can help himself to anything edible he can find, though it seemed a bit greedy to take them all. (He keeps the freezer I gave him locked, so goodness knows what's in there. Better not to know, perhaps?)\n\nI searched for a note saying where Tom and my car had gone to, but there was nothing. Unless he came back by the time I returned from the Mystery Play Committee meeting, Jasper was going to have to cycle home that evening, and I would be extremely annoyed.\n\nI fed, watered and generally cared for everything that needed my attention, then changed and set off for the village hall \u2013 on foot.\n\n## Chapter 5: Sweet Mysteries\n\nThe Mystery Play Committee will reconvene on the 19th of August with rehearsals to start in September as usual. If any member of last year's cast cannot for any reason continue in their role, would they please inform Marian and Clive Potter at the Middlemoss Post Office.\n\nMosses Messenger\n\nThe members of the Middlemoss Mystery Play Committee were gathered around a trestle table in the village hall, which exhibited reminders of its many functions: the playgroup's brightly coloured toys poked out from behind a curtained alcove and their finger-painting decorated one wall, while the other bore posters of footprints illustrating the various new steps the Senior Citizens' Tuesday Tea Dance Club were trying to master.\n\nPersonally, I thought salsa might give one or two of them a bit of trouble, but I was sure they would all give it a go. Their line dancing ensemble at the last Christmas concert had been a big hit, and Mrs Gumball, the cook up at Pharamond Hall, had got so excited she fell off the end of the stage. But fortunately foam playmats were always stacked there after an incident a few years back, when one of Santa's little elves fell over, causing a domino effect along the line until the last one dropped off and broke a leg.\n\n'I think we might as well start, Clive,' I suggested to the verger, opening the plastic box of Choconut Consolations I'd brought with me and setting it in the middle, so everyone could help themselves. 'I don't know where Annie's got to, but Uncle Roly's gone to the races. He said after all these years he could do the Voice of God in his sleep, so you could sort it all out without him.'\n\nThis year's committee was formed of the usual suspects; some of them also CPC members. There was Dr Patel, our semi-retired GP, Miss Pym the infants' schoolteacher, the new vicar \u2013 untried and untested and looking more than a little nervous \u2013 and Clive and Marian Potter, who between them ran the post office, the Mosses Messenger parish magazine and also pretty well everything else that happened round Middlemoss, including directing the annual Mysteries. Then there was my humble self, for Clive liked to have a token Pharamond on tap, since Uncle Roly was inclined to give his duties the go-by if something more interesting came along. Annie was presumably held up somewhere.\n\n'Very well. I've convened this meeting earlier than usual for two reasons,' announced Clive, who is like a busy little ant, always running to and fro. Marian is the same, and I have a theory that they never sleep, just hang by their heels for the odd ten minutes to refresh themselves, like bats. Come to that, they're so in tune with one another they have probably leaped up the next rung of the evolutionary ladder and communicate in high-pitched squeaks us mere bog-standard humans can't hear.\n\n'First off, I thought the vicar might need a bit more time to get to grips with the Mysteries, it all coming as a bit of a surprise to him, like.'\n\nThe vicar, a carrot-haired, blue-eyed man with a naturally startled expression, nodded earnestly: 'But I'm delighted, of course \u2013 absolutely delighted.'\n\nI wondered if anyone had warned him that the last vicar was currently having a genteel nervous breakdown in a church nursing home near Morecambe. An elderly man, he'd been hoping for a quiet country living, I feared, where he could jog along towards his retirement, not the whirl of activity that is the Mosses parish. But at least the new one was younger and unmarried. I observed with interest the way he suddenly went the same shade as his hair when Annie, breathless and dishevelled, rushed into the room.\n\n'Sorry I'm late,' she said, subsiding into the seat next to me. 'One of the dogs slipped its lead and was practically in Mossrow before I caught him.'\n\nShe smiled apologetically around at everyone and, apart from the vicar, who was still looking poleaxed, we smiled back, since Annie is Goodwill to all Mankind personified. Even though I'm her best friend, I have to admit that she is a plump, billowy person the approximate shape of a cottage loaf and, although her hair is a beautiful coppery colour, that pudding-bowl bob does not do her amiable round face any favours. She certainly doesn't normally cause men to go red and all self-conscious...\n\n'We were only just starting,' I assured her. 'Clive's called the meeting to familiarise the vicar\u2014'\n\n'Do all call me Gareth,' he interrupted eagerly, finding his voice again, but I expect most of us will just carry on addressing him as 'Vicar' because we are nothing if not traditionalists in Middlemoss.\n\n'And you must call me KP,' said Dr Patel agreeably, 'like the nuts.'\n\n'And I'm Lizzy,' I put in hastily, seeing Gareth's puzzled expression at KP's old joke. 'You've already met Annie, haven't you?'\n\n'Oh, yes.' He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. 'At church.'\n\nHe was just Annie's type and clearly smitten, but she didn't seem to notice!\n\n'Perhaps we'd better get on?' suggested Clive. 'Only the Youth Club will be in here tonight for snooker, and I'll need to set the tables up. First, could you all please read this quote from a recently published book.'\n\nHe passed round a bundle of photocopies.\n\nAlthough called the Middlemoss Mysteries, this surviving vestige of a medieval mystery play, annually performed in an obscure Lancashire village, is in reality a much debased form. At some point in its history it was reduced to a mere series of tableaux illustrating several key Biblical scenes, such as the Fall of Lucifer, Adam and Eve and the Nativity. Then, early last century what little dialogue remained was rendered into near-impenetrable ancient local dialect by Joe Wheelright, the Weaver Poet, and this is constantly reinterpreted by each generation of actors. The head of the leading local family, the Pharamonds, traditionally speaks the Voice of God.\n\nWe all read it in silence.\n\nThen Annie said, 'Well, it's not so bad, is it, Clive? We can't hope to keep the Mysteries a total secret, so we always do get some strangers coming along, especially since the Mosses have suddenly become so terribly trendy to live in.'\n\n'No, it's the folksy visitors who would want to take over and fix the whole thing like a fly in amber that we want to discourage,' I agreed. 'The Middlemoss Mystery Play is just for the locals, something we've always done, like that Twelfth Night celebration they have up at Little Mumming.'\n\n'That's hardly comparable with our play, dear, since I'm told it's only a morris dance and a small miracle scene of George and the Dragon,' Marian said.\n\n'That's right,' agreed Clive. 'But they keep it quiet: I've even heard that they block the road into the village with tractors on the day, to deter strangers.'\n\n'I think the best thing about our Mysteries is the way each new generation of actors adds a little something to their parts, even if we do now stick more or less to the Wheelright version,' I said, though actually, while the acting itself is taken very seriously, I often suspect the Weaver Poet of having had a somewhat unholy sense of humour.\n\n'I don't think \"debased\" is a very polite description,' Marian said, looking down at her photocopy again and bristling to the ends of her short, spiky silver hair. 'And what does he mean, \"impenetrable dialect\"? If the audience doesn't know the bible stories before they see it, then they should, so they'd know what was going on!'\n\n'Er... yes,' said the vicar, with a gingerly glance at Dr Patel, who was sitting with his hands clasped over his immaculately suited round stomach, listening benignly.\n\n'Oh, don't mind me,' the doctor said, catching his eye. 'I went to infants' school right here \u2013 my father was the senior partner at the practice \u2013 so I know all the bible stories. So did all the Lees from the Mysteries of the East Chinese takeaway in Mossedge, and there's usually at least one of that family taking part in the play.'\n\n'We have many mysteries,' I said helpfully. 'Even the pub is called the New Mystery.'\n\n'Little Ethan Lee made such a sweet baby Jesus last year,' Miss Pym said sentimentally. 'He simply couldn't take his eyes off the angels' haloes.'\n\n'None of us could,' Annie said. 'We'd never had ones that lit up before.'\n\n'Oh?' said Gareth, clearly groping to make sense of all this. 'Well, Clive has kindly loaned me the videos of last year's performance, which I've watched with... with interest.' He cleared his throat. 'While I've seen the Chester Mystery Plays and, er... although the format of scenes from the Old and New Testaments have similarities to that, otherwise they don't seem much alike...'\n\n'They're not, Vicar,' Clive said. 'They might have been at one time \u2013 you'd have to ask Mr Roly Pharamond, he's got all the records. But when the Puritans took over and tried to ban it, the squire \u2013 another Roland, he was \u2013 he told the players to cut it right down, so it could be performed in one day up at the Hall, instead of here on the green.'\n\n'Yes,' agreed Marian, 'and on Boxing Day instead of Midsummer Day, because fewer strangers would be travelling about then. Then, when it was safe to perform the Mysteries in public again \u2013 well, we'd got used to doing things our way.'\n\n'So it's still performed up at the Hall on Boxing Day?' Gareth asked.\n\nMiss Pym nodded. 'In the coach house. The doors are opened wide and the audience stands in the courtyard, with lots of braziers about to keep them warm. The stables on either side are used as dressing rooms. It lasts about five hours, with breaks for refreshments, of course, and musical interludes.'\n\n'Musical interludes? Indeed?' Gareth brightened. 'Hymns, perhaps? I'm hoping to breathe a little life back into the church choir.'\n\n'No, actually a local group perform \u2013 the Mummers of Invention,' I told him. 'My husband sings with them and they're quite good. Sort of electric folk style.'\n\n'Mummers of Invention?' he murmured, looking bemused.\n\n'The last vicar had the strange idea that the play was blasphemous in some way,' Clive said, 'but you could see yourself from the video that it's the exact opposite, couldn't you? It's all bible stories, and the entire parish is involved right down to the infants' school. The children always play the procession of animals into the ark.'\n\n'And they helped me to make the Virgin's bower last year with wire and tissue paper flowers,' Miss Pym said, 'though since it kept falling on Annie's head (your fifth and last appearance as Virgin, wasn't it, dear?) it could not have been called an unqualified success.'\n\nAnnie caught the vicar's eye, went pink, and looked hastily away \u2013 but at least now she had noticed him.\n\n'And you run the Mysteries committee, Clive, and direct the play?' Gareth asked.\n\n'Yes, that's right. In September we start giving out the parts and rehearsing. No one can play the same role for more than five years except God, so things change, and different people come forward or drop out.'\n\n'Some of the new actors who've moved into the area lately have volunteered,' I said.\n\n'Yes, like Ritch Rainford,' Annie murmured dreamily, and I gave her a look. I hope she's not going to get a serious crush on the man, since it's unlikely to lead anywhere.\n\n'But most of them don't live here all the time, Annie, and you need people who do, especially when there are more rehearsals just before Christmas.'\n\n'Yes, so the parts are usually played by local people and someone always volunteers if there's an emergency, like last year when Lazarus broke both ankles falling off his tractor,' Dr Patel said. 'He could have lain down, but there was no way short of a real miracle he was ever going to rise up and walk. So Lizzy's husband, Tom, stepped in at the last minute.'\n\n'He made a very good Lazarus: I gave him four stars in the parish magazine review,' Clive broke in.\n\nGareth turned to me. 'So, your husband is Tom Pharamond, and he also plays in a band called the Mummers? I don't think I've met him yet, have I?'\n\n'I shouldn't think so, he's not much of a churchgoer. And he said he wouldn't take part in the play again this year, it was a one-off, Clive \u2013 sorry. You'll need a new Lazarus.'\n\n'Pity,' Clive said regretfully. He coughed and shuffled his papers together. 'So, we'll ask for nominations for the parts and rehearsals will start in the middle of September in two groups, one on Tuesdays and the other, Thursdays. As usual, I'll need a director's assistant for each scene. Lizzy, will you take on the Fall of Lucifer, the Creation, and Adam and Eve? You are still doing Eve this year, I hope?'\n\n'Yes, my fifth and final go too, thank goodness \u2013 even a knitted bodystocking is perishingly cold in December. I had to keep warming myself over a chestnut brazier last year and a couple of my fig leaves got singed.'\n\n'You could try thermal underwear?' suggested Miss Pym. 'Those thin silk ones for under ski suits.'\n\n'That's an idea! Not so bulky.'\n\n'Miss Pym will do Noah's Flood, of course, and Marian will oversee Moses. One of the tablets broke last time; someone will need to make a new one...' Clive made a note, and ticked off Moses.\n\n'Vicar, if you could be in charge of the Nativity \u2013 Annunciation, Magi, Birth of Christ, Flight into Egypt?'\n\n'Yes, of course,' Gareth agreed, though rather numbly, I thought. But unlike the last vicar, at least he hadn't started gibbering and lightly foaming at the mouth by this stage.\n\n'Dr Patel has offered to do the Temptation of Christ, the Curing of the Lame Man, the Blind Man, and the Raising of Lazarus: all short scenes.'\n\n'Seems appropriate,' agreed the doctor, adding generously, 'and the Water into Wine and Feeding of the Five Thousand too, if you like.'\n\n'I'll see to the Last Supper, Judas, the Trial and Crucifixion myself this year \u2013 the Crucifixion's always tricky, but you might want to take that on next year, Vicar \u2013 and then that leaves just the Resurrection, Ascension and Last Judgement.'\n\n'I'll do those again,' offered Annie.\n\n'We do the final dress rehearsals for the whole thing up at the Hall in a couple of sessions before Christmas,' Marian helpfully explained to the vicar. 'In random order, or it would be unlucky. But since at least two-thirds of the players will have done their parts before, it's just a question of making sure the new ones know their lines and where to stand, that's all.'\n\n'Oh, good,' said poor Gareth weakly. He looked at his watch. 'I'd better get back \u2013 I've got a funeral to prepare.'\n\n'Yes, our Moses \u2013 such a sad loss,' Miss Pym said. 'We will have to recast that part, too.'\n\nClive stuffed his papers and clipboard into a scuffed leather briefcase and then he and Marian started transforming the hall into a snooker parlour for the Youth Club, turning down my offer of help.\n\nWhen I went out the vicar was already halfway across the green with Annie, heading in the direction of the church. I bet they were only talking about something totally mundane like Sunday school, though, and she hadn't noticed at all that he fancied her.\n\nMiss Pym climbed into her little red Smart car and vanished with a vroom, and Dr Patel wished me good night and got into his BMW.\n\nI wended my way home to Perseverance Cottage, where I did not find my husband or, more importantly, my car, but did find a telephone message on the machine from Unks, asking me to ring him back. When I did, he told me that Mimi, his elderly sister who lived at the Hall with her long-suffering companion Juno, had been arrested by the police at the Southport Flower Show, having temporarily got away from Mrs Gumball, who'd volunteered to keep an eye on her. You can't blame her, though, since Mimi is very spry for an octogenarian while Mrs Gumball is the human equivalent of a mastodon, so moves slowly and majestically.\n\nUnfortunately, Mimi is a plant kleptomaniac: no one's garden is safe from her little knife and plastic bags, and she really just can't understand why anyone should take exception to her habits. Still, the police had merely cautioned and released her this time and, since the coach had by then set out on the return journey, drove her and Mrs Gumball home in a police car.\n\nRoly said she was under the impression they had done it to give her a treat, and was hoping next year's flower show would be as much fun.\n\nThen he added, rather puzzlingly, 'And I hope Tom told you that you can stop worrying about ever losing Perseverance Cottage, my dear, because after I'm gone, it's yours and Tom's. I would have said before, if I'd known it was on your mind.'\n\n'But I wasn't worried, Unks! In fact, the thought never even entered my head,' I assured him. Since I would have to leave soon, it was immaterial to me, but Tom had evidently used me as an excuse to find out how things had been left. How Machiavellian he's becoming!\n\nAfter this, I unpacked Annie's candyfloss machine to distract myself from worrying until Jasper arrived safely home. The instructions absolutely forbade me to use any natural essences or colourings other than special granulated ones designed for the purpose, which was disappointing from the point of view of making Cornish Mist, until I discovered one of the tubs in the box was lemon.\n\nFascinating how the floss forms inside the bowl like ectoplasm, and you have to wind the near invisible threads onto wooden sticks. Fine, sugary filaments drifted everywhere, and the kitchen took on the hot, sweet, nostalgic smell of funfairs.\n\nIt was really messy but fun, which Jasper said was a good description of me, too, when he got home and saw what I'd been up to, though by then I was sitting among the debris, writing it all up for the Chronicle.\n\nMaybe I'll have 'messy, but fun' as my epitaph.\n\n## Chapter 6: Driven Off\n\nI wonder if plastic bags of fluffy white candyfloss labelled 'edible Santa beards' would go down well with children at Christmas? I expect they would try them on and get terribly sticky, though.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nThere was still no sign of my car next morning and, in a furious temper, I rang all of Tom's friends that I knew about, or who I had mobile numbers for although trying to contact his surfing buddies down in Cornwall was always like waking the dead, and I got little sense out of them even when they did answer the phone.\n\nThe first time or two he went missing for a few days I also rang the local hospitals and the police, but after that I learned my lesson.\n\nI woke Jasper early and saw him off by bike to the dig, then I called Annie to tell her I was without transport; but luckily she only wanted me to exercise the two Pekes and a Shitzu belonging to one of the more elderly members of the Cotton Common cast, Delphine Lake. She'd bought one of the expensive flats in part of the former Pharamond's Butterflake Biscuit factory in the village and I'd walked her dogs several times before.\n\nUncle Roly sold the Pharamond brand name out to a big conglomerate years ago for cash, shares and a seat on the board, which was both a smart and lucrative deal; so now the factory has been converted to apartments, a caf\u00e9-bar called Butterflakes, and a museum of Mosses history.\n\nDelphine's dogs may be little, but they loved their walks, so it was late morning before I got back to the cottage and found a female police officer awaiting me on the doorstep. An adolescent colleague sat biting his fingernails behind the wheel of a panda car.\n\nI immediately thought the worst, as you do. 'Jasper?' I cried. 'Has something happened to Jasper?'\n\n'Mrs Elizabeth Pharamond?' she queried solemnly.\n\n'Yes!'\n\n'I'm Constable Perkins and I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you.'\n\nShe paused, and I was just about to take her by the throat and shake her when she added,\n\n'About your husband.'\n\n'Oh \u2013 thank God!' I gasped devoutly, then burst into tears of relief.\n\nWresting the keys from my nerveless fingers, she ushered me into my own home, where she broke the news that Tom had had a fatal accident. He'd driven off the road into a disused quarry, which was odd in itself, since there's only one place within a radius of about fifty miles where he could have managed to perform that feat, and it's up a little-used back lane.\n\nWhile her colleague made me tea, she spoke to me with skilful sympathy, though my reactions clearly puzzled her. But all I was feeling was an overpowering sense of relief that it wasn't Jasper.\n\nAnd then I got to thinking that this was all so blatantly unreal anyway, that it couldn't be true: it must be just some dreadful nightmare!\n\nThis was a very calming idea, since I knew I'd wake up sometime, so I agreed quite readily to go and identify Tom's body. My head seemed to be this helium-filled thing bobbing about on a string \u2013 or that's what it felt like, anyway \u2013 but there's no accounting for dreams.\n\nAnd Tom, apart from his thin, handsome face being a whiter shade of pale, looked absolutely fine. He was always one to land butter-side up...\n\n'Is this your husband?' the policewoman asked formally.\n\n'Yes \u2013 Thomas Pharamond. Are you sure he's dead? Only he looks just like he did when he was playing Lazarus.'\n\nShe gave me a strange look, but assured me that Tom had broken his neck in a very final manner. Then she offered me yet another cup of tea, which I didn't want, and took me home again, sitting beside me in the back seat while the adolescent did the driving. He feasted on his fingernails at every red light and I don't know why, but it suddenly reminded me of the stewed apple with little sharp crescents of core snippings that they used to give us at school for pudding.\n\nThe policewoman whiled away the journey by telling me that they thought the car (my car, which was now a write-off) had been at the bottom of the quarry for a few hours before it was found, and he must have died instantly, but I expect they say that every time. There would have to be a post-mortem examination, and probably an inquest. I think she said there would be an inquest. I wasn't taking it all in, because of course it wasn't real.\n\nWhen we got to Perseverance Cottage, she asked if there was someone who could stay with me.\n\n'Oh, yes \u2013 I'll phone the family right now,' I assured her, suddenly desperate to get rid of her. 'Thank you for... for \u2013 well, thank you, Officer. I'll be fine.'\n\nShe looked a bit dubious, but drove off leaving me to it, and I thankfully closed the front door and leaned against it: that seemed solid enough. So did the cold quarry tiles beneath my feet when I kicked my sandals off...\n\nIt began slowly to dawn on me that this really was happening and Tom was actually dead! In which case, I could only be glad that Jasper was at his dig, since I'm sure he would have insisted on coming with me to identify Tom, though actually his face had looked peaceful enough, if vaguely surprised by the turn of events. I felt a sudden pang of guilt, remembering how glad I had been that it was Tom who had died and not Jasper.\n\nBut now I'd have to break the news to him about his father... and to Unks and Mimi and Tom's mother out in Argentina...\n\nStiffening my trembling legs I tottered into the sitting room and dialled the Hall, getting Uncle Roly.\n\nI don't think I was the mistress of either tact or coherence by this stage, but he took the news well, if quietly, and offered to phone Tom's mother and stepfather in Argentina himself, which was a huge relief. Then he said he would also try and contact Nick, still off touring the eateries of the rural North-West.\n\n'And Jasper?' he asked. 'I take it he is at the dig, and doesn't know?'\n\n'Yes, and I think I'll just wait for him to come home before I tell him,' I decided, for why rush to give him the bad news? 'Anyway, Tom was driving my car \u2013 his van broke down \u2013 so I haven't got any transport.'\n\nWhen I phoned Annie she was out and the message I left was probably unintelligible.\n\nRoly thoughtfully called in later in the Daimler to say Joe Gumball was driving him over to the dig to collect Jasper and he could break the news to him on the way home, if I wanted.\n\n'Oh, Unks, you are kind!' I said, gratefully. 'But it must be just as hard for you. You don't have to do it.'\n\n'My dear, having lived through the war, I'm inured to breaking bad news.'\n\nI offered him some of the damson gin I'd been drinking to try to dispel that feeling of being underwater with my eardrums straining, but which had just seemed to make everything more unbelievably bizarre, and said anxiously, 'I can't believe Tom isn't going to walk back in through that door at any moment, the way he always turned up after he'd been missing for a few days.'\n\nHe patted my hand. 'There, there, my dear. Leave everything to me. I'll be back with Jasper in no time.'\n\nMimi phoned me up just after he'd left, but halfway through offering me her condolences in a graciously formal manner, she completely lost the thread and said she was too busy to talk to me just now. Then she put the phone down.\n\nBut at least her call had jarred me into remembering to feed the poultry. It was a bit late, but when I called, 'Myrtle, Myrtle, Myrtle \u2013 Honey, Honey, Honey!' they all came running.\n\nRound the side of the big greenhouse I came unexpectedly nose to bare (except for the camouflage paint) chest of Caz Naylor, who indicated with a nod of his head and a raised eyebrow that he would like to know what was happening.\n\n'Tom's driven off the quarry road,' I said. 'In my car.'\n\n'Dead?'\n\n'So they say.'\n\n'Car?'\n\n'That's a write-off, too.'\n\nHe grunted non-committally, then handed me a small blue plastic basket containing one slightly decayed mushroom. 'Poison,' he said, prodding it with a slightly grimy finger.\n\n'I know,' I began, recognising it, but he turned and flitted off back through the shadows until he'd completely vanished into the woods.\n\nThat was the longest conversation I'd had with him for ages... and what was the significance of the poisonous fungi in a punnet that looked suspiciously like the one Polly Darke had brought me full of field mushrooms... was that only yesterday? Perhaps she'd inadvertently picked a poisonous one? After my previous experience of Polly's way with foodstuffs, I should have been more cautious in accepting them anyway!\n\nOr perhaps Caz had simply taken to giving brief nature lessons in his spare time.\n\nJasper was very quiet and pale when he came in, and though we shared a long hug, said he'd like to be alone for a bit and vanished up to his room. I thought it best to leave him to talk in his own time.\n\nHe did reappear when Annie arrived and seemed pretty composed by then, though he being the quiet stoical type it's hard to tell, even for me.\n\nI thought I was quite composed too, but as soon as Annie walked through the door I burst into tears, as though her arrival was some kind of absolute proof that it really wasn't all a ghastly nightmare. I left a full set of grubby fingerprints up the back of her lavender Liberty cotton shirt.\n\nShe hugged Jasper too, something which he would normally go out of his way to avoid, even though he is fond of her. Then we all just sat around in a fuzzy cloud of disbelief and damson gin.\n\nIt was the sheer unreality: Tom had gone missing so many times, it was hard to believe he wouldn't just walk through that door at any minute with the TV remote control in his hand (he secreted it away somewhere in his workshop when away), and sit watching endless films on Sky, which he'd had installed soon after he got the giant TV.\n\nHe'd always been supremely selfish. Even the Tom I fell in love with, charming though he'd been, really only thought about himself for at least ninety-five per cent of the time, which is why he always did exactly what he wanted and apologised afterwards.\n\n'Yes, I know,' Annie agreed when I shared this gem with her, together with the rest of the bottle of gin, after Jasper had gone up to bed (or at least, back up to the Batcave). 'But when he was around he seemed to cast a spell of charm, so people didn't realise it until later. Or if they did, they didn't mind, because they thought he wasn't doing it intentionally to hurt anyone, it was just how he was.'\n\nThe gin might not have been such a good idea after all, for my past life seemed to take on a darkly ominous pattern. 'Why?' I demanded. 'What have I done to deserve this? Why do I have to lose everyone? I know I didn't love Tom any more, but I didn't want any harm to come to him either!'\n\n'We all have to die,' Annie pointed out soothingly, passing me the plate of ginger parkin she'd found in the fridge while looking for something to blot up the alcohol. I must have sliced and buttered it earlier, on automatic pilot.\n\n'Yes, but why don't my loved ones die naturally of old age? Look at my parents! OK, Daddy was a diplomat, but of all the British Consulates in all the world, why did they have to be sent to that one? And having got there, why did they have to immediately sit in the wrong restaurant and get blown up? Couldn't they have settled for baked beans on bagels at home, and then lived nice, peaceful lives and been more than a few faded snapshots and some stored furniture to their only daughter?'\n\n'But you had nothing to do with it \u2013 you'd just arrived for your first term at St Mattie's,' she pointed out. 'You weren't even in the same country. Stop imagining you're some kind of Angel of Death! What would Daddy say if he could hear you?'\n\nFrom past experience I could confidently predict that Annie's father would go wandering off into a scholarly monologue on angels of death, the existence and symbolism of, which would be soothing, but not precisely helpful.\n\nAnnie gave me a hug. 'It's not your fault that Tom was killed and you did your best to save your marriage. I know what it's been like the last few years, and you're a saint to have stayed with him.'\n\n'I'm not a saint. I stayed for Jasper, really, and because we both loved living here.' A tear rolled down my cheek and landed onto the half-eaten slice of parkin I was holding, though I didn't remember taking a piece.\n\n'I'm sure for the first few years Tom did love and need you, Lizzy. He wandered off, but he always came back again.'\n\n'Perhaps, but there were always other women. I tried to shut my eyes to it, but it hurt, Annie.' I swallowed hard. 'But I think I'm grieving for the Tom I married, even if the man I thought he was never existed. And I still feel guilty for being so relieved that it was Tom, rather than Jasper.'\n\nAnnie comforted me as well as she could, and I have a vague recollection of her helping me up to bed, where I must have passed out.\n\nWhen I staggered down next morning, feeling like Lady Lazarus, everything had been cleared and tidied and washed up.\n\nThere's probably a Girl Guide badge for coping with a friend's bereavement too, together with the Advanced Award for staying in control of your faculties while under the influence of damson gin.\n\n## Chapter 7: Loose Nuts\n\nCandied citrus peel makes a good gift and although the traditional process is messy and time-consuming, there is a quick method, which I have used with some success. When candied, the pieces can be dipped in good dark chocolate for a tasty treat.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\n'Oh, my husband was really selfish,' I said to PC Perkins, when she came back again later that day for what she called 'a little background detail'. This, oddly enough, seemed to consist of asking me what Tom had been like, but I expect she'd been on some kind of Dealing with the Victims of Bereavement course, or something.\n\nI'd finished quick-candying the orange peel left from yesterday and today's breakfast juice, and was just writing the recipe up for the latest Perseverance Chronicle, so even the sitting room, when I led the way into it, still smelled enticingly of citrus and hot sugar.\n\nI seemed to be going through the motions of normal life, but most of the time my brain was entirely absent, so I must have been doing it on automatic pilot.\n\nJasper, who had phoned up the dig earlier to explain his absence, followed us in and loomed about protectively. After the previous night's hair-down, damson-gin-fuelled wake with Annie, I had given up trying to hide things from him. I don't think it worked in the first place.\n\n'Oh, really?' she said encouragingly, seating herself on the armchair Tom had favoured for his telly watching. I made a mental note to do something about that giant blank screen, which was like having a dead eye in the room...\n\nI shuddered and she eyed me speculatively.\n\n'You don't make your husband sound terribly attractive, Mrs Pharamond!'\n\n'Actually, he could be very charming, and when I fell in love with him I thought the way he used to vanish for days without a word was endearingly absent-minded and eccentric. But really, he was just too wrapped up in himself to bother doing anything he didn't want to, a bit like a cat.'\n\n'But you can still love a cat,' Jasper pointed out. 'Most cat owners seem to think their cats love them back, too.'\n\n'He did seem fond of me, in his way, until the last few years \u2013 and of you, too, Jasper, when you were small,' I assured him, wiping a runny tear away. 'Some men just aren't good with children.'\n\n'I expect we'd have got on better if I'd surfed, or was interested in weird folk-rock music and stuff \u2013 fitted into his interests,' Jasper agreed. 'History and archaeology bored him.'\n\n'Yes, and he wasn't even interested in food, was he, except from the eating it point of view?'\n\nThe police officer, who'd been listening in a sort of fascinated silence, now broke in, notebook at the ready. She seemed to have an agenda of her own. 'Just a couple of questions, Mrs Pharamond \u2013 and I'm sure you have a few you would like to ask me.'\n\nShe gave me a reassuring smile, though it contained no warmth. Yesterday she'd seemed so kind and sympathetic, so maybe she could switch a fa\u00e7ade on and off at will, like Tom. She also had coral-pink lipstick on her front teeth and it was so not her colour.\n\n'Perhaps your son \u2013 Jasper, isn't it? \u2013 could make some tea,' she suggested.\n\n'I think I'll stay here,' Jasper said thoughtfully, settling down on the sofa next to me.\n\n'Can you tell me what time your husband left here on the Wednesday? You said you last saw him then, didn't you?'\n\n'I don't know when he left, because I went for a walk in the late morning \u2013 a long walk in the woods \u2013 and when I got back my car had gone.'\n\n'Did he often borrow your car?'\n\n'No, practically never, because I usually made sure he couldn't find the keys. His van had broken down, that's why he took mine.'\n\n'So you were surprised to find your car gone?'\n\n'Yes, and annoyed when he didn't come back in time for me to go and collect Jasper from the dig... or at all. I needed my car.'\n\n'He would probably have come back in good time if the accident hadn't happened, Mum. His mobile was in the workshop and I expect he'd have taken it with him if he hadn't just popped out for something,' Jasper said. 'Wonder where he was going. I checked it for messages, but he'd wiped them, so that was no help.'\n\n'I don't know,' I said dubiously. 'He probably just forgot his phone.'\n\n'Where do you think he might have been going, Mrs Pharamond?'\n\n'I've no idea. But he told me earlier he had to finish a surfboard to deliver this weekend, so I was surprised when he didn't come back.'\n\n'Finish a surfboard?'\n\n'He customised surfboards for a living. You know \u2013 spray-painted designs on them? He was a keen surfer, too...' I stopped, having a sudden vision of Tom freewheeling into space off the quarry road and wondering if he found the sensation exhilarating? I wouldn't put it past him, and of course he'd never expect anything he did, however dangerous, to actually kill him.\n\n'And you were here all evening?'\n\n'Yes. After I got back from the Mystery Play Committee meeting in the village hall I was experimenting with candyfloss, so I was pretty busy.'\n\nShe gave me a strange look but didn't follow that one up. Instead she turned her attention to Jasper.\n\n'And you were at this archaeological site all that day?'\n\nHe nodded. 'Occasionally I cycle there in the mornings, but Mum usually picks me up in the evening. The narrow roads round the site have become a bit of a rat run since everyone got satnav and she thinks I'll get knocked off the bike,' he said tolerantly. 'When I got home she'd been making lemon candyfloss. Yummy.'\n\n'Right,' she said, scribbling away. I nearly asked her if she would like me to whip her up some Cornish Mist, but I could see she had no sense of humour.\n\n'So, Mrs Pharamond, you must have been angry about your husband taking the car?'\n\n'I was, and even more so when he didn't come back. But I knew if I didn't turn up at the dig, Jasper would cycle back, he really didn't mind.'\n\nI was starting to feel strangely worried, despite knowing I had nothing on my conscience other than guilt for that profound moment of relief I'd felt on hearing that it was Tom who'd had the accident and not Jasper.\n\n'Jasper, perhaps tea would be a good idea? Or coffee. Would you mind?'\n\nHe gave me a look, but rose to a gangling six foot and, stooping under the low beam, went to the kitchen, though he left the door ajar. This is not a cottage where you can have private conversations... or indeed, private much of anything.\n\n'Can you tell me how the accident happened yet? I thought he must have had a seizure, perhaps, or a heart attack, even though he seemed a bit young for that? Or perhaps the brakes failed, or something?'\n\n'Actually, it looks as though one of the Citro\u00ebn's wheels came off.' Her eyes were fixed on my face to gauge the full effect of this pronouncement.\n\n'A wheel came off? But would that have caused him to veer off the road?'\n\n'Not necessarily. It's usually possible to drive on three wheels to a safe halt.'\n\nA sudden, rather nasty, thought struck me. 'Do you know which wheel came off?'\n\n'The front driver's side.' She looked at me intently again, and I realised I must've turned pale. 'Why?'\n\n'I had a flat tyre... it must have been that same morning, so I changed the wheel for the spare and took it in to be mended. Jasper undid the last nut \u2013 it was stiff \u2013 but I changed the wheel and put the nuts on again,' I said firmly. 'Jasper had gone back into the house by then. And what's more, it was absolutely fine on the drive to the dig and back!'\n\n'Mrs Pharamond, I'm not accusing you of anything!'\n\nWasn't she? It began to sound amazingly like it!\n\n'Isn't it just possible you didn't tighten them up quite enough, so they slowly worked loose? Accidents do happen.'\n\n'You mean I might have accidentally killed my husband?'\n\nNow I saw which way she was heading with this, I thanked God it was me who had tightened the nuts and not Jasper!\n\n'If they were a bit loose, then the tight bends of the quarry road could have completed the job,' she said. 'It's a possibility. We haven't found any of them yet.'\n\n'But I'm sure they were tight, because I used a wheel br\u2014' I stopped as Jasper came back in carrying a battered tin tray of mugs and an open carton of milk.\n\n'Yes, they were,' he said, putting the tray down on the coffee table with a thump that slopped some coffee over the rims. 'I could hear what you were saying from the kitchen and Mum put the wheel back on and tightened the nuts. And then when she went in to wash her hands, I tightened them up even more.'\n\nWe gazed at him, though presumably not with the same mixed feelings of affection and exasperation.\n\n'Oh, Jasper,' I said, 'I'm not being accused of anything except carelessness, so you really don't have to try and protect me!'\n\n'I'm not, Mum, it's quite true. I left you putting the wheel back on, but I checked it was tight enough later, when you weren't about.'\n\nI wondered how often he'd felt he needed to check up on me, and from my expression he deduced that he ought to add something. 'It was fine \u2013 I thought it would be.'\n\n'Of course it was! Any idiot can change a wheel,' I said indignantly.\n\nPC Perkins had lost interest in the ins and outs of our dispute, and turned to Jasper, notebook at the ready. 'So you are quite sure that the wheel was in a safe condition?'\n\n'Absolutely. And I often checked them and the tyre pressure since I passed my test, for the practice.'\n\n'So, how do you account for the same wheel coming off?'\n\n'I don't \u2013 that's your job, isn't it? But we don't know how long he'd been out, so he could have left the car standing about, and loosening the wheel nuts might have been someone's idea of a joke.' He shrugged. 'Mum's car was ancient, so who knows? Maybe the threads had gone or something, even?'\n\nI stared at him, thinking that he certainly didn't get his coolness and sang-froid from me or Tom \u2013 but, of course, my father was in the diplomatic service.\n\nShe closed her notebook with a snap. 'Once the post-mortem has been completed, if everything is in order, an inquest will be opened and adjourned and an interim death certificate issued,' she said briskly, by which I presumed she meant unless they found I'd been feeding him Cyanide Chutney for months. (Or Polly Darke's poisonous tomatoes. Pity I hadn't thought of that one!)\n\n'The funeral can then take place, and the inquest proper will open at a later date.'\n\n'Must there be another inquest?'\n\n'Yes, it's standard procedure in cases of this kind.'\n\n'Which kind?' I demanded, when I heard the kitchen door suddenly burst open and crash back against the wall, rattling all the china on the dresser. Then Polly Darke stumbled over the sitting-room threshold like a dishevelled, shrink-wrapped Bacchae, all billowing green chiffon sleeves, stick-thin legs and enormous boobs.\n\n'Well, stay me with flagons,' I said, surprised (damson gin for preference), for even Polly wasn't usually this avid to garner news.\n\nHer slightly prominent eyes passed over the policewoman and fixed on me. 'Is it true?' she demanded thrillingly. 'Is Tom really dead? They're saying he had an accident \u2013 in your car!'\n\nPresumably this was rhetorical, for with an anguished cry of, 'Tom! Tom!' she threw herself into the nearest chair and burst into hysterical sobs.\n\nJasper and I exchanged glances. Attention-seeking taken to extremes, combined with a raging desire to know what was happening was, I'm sure, our first thought.\n\n'This is Polly Darke, Officer,' I explained resignedly. 'She's a novelist and lives near Mossrow.'\n\nPolly looked up, her face like a drowned flower (a slightly withered pansy). 'I can't believe it. Only the night before last Tom was with me, and now he's gone. Gone!'\n\n'Why was he with you?' asked Jasper, puzzled. 'I thought he'd finally finished those Celtic murals you asked him to do ages ago?'\n\n'Because he loved me!' she exclaimed tragically and began to sob gustily again.\n\n'He was with you the night before last?' I stared at her, my mind whirling faster than a tumble dryer. 'Good heavens, don't tell me that you, of all people, are Dark Heart? No, it can't possibly be you!'\n\n'Yes it is! Why not?' she demanded belligerently, straightening from her pose of utter despondency. 'I could give him what he needed\u2014'\n\n'Tie him up, tie him down?' I suggested a bit numbly. You know, I'd never even considered her as a possible suspect, because to me she was a rather pathetic and ludicrous creature, though perhaps men might see her differently? But not young men, apparently, for Jasper looked even more incredulous than I was.\n\n'Dark Heart?' he queried.\n\n'Yes, your father was having an affair with someone, but though I found a note in his pocket on the morning of the day he vanished, it was only signed \"Dark Heart\", so I didn't know who it was.'\n\n'You mean, Dad was having an affair with her?'\n\n'Evidently, but I certainly thought it would be someone younger.'\n\nI'm quite sure Polly is much older than I am \u2013 well the other side of forty \u2013 even if she does try to hold back the years with every ancient and modern art at her disposal.\n\n'What do you mean?' she demanded indignantly, glaring at me. 'I'm only thirty-five!'\n\n'And the rest,' Jasper said drily.\n\nI'd entirely forgotten the policewoman was there until she interjected into the sudden lull in the proceedings, 'So you knew your husband was having an affair, Mrs Pharamond?'\n\nHer notebook was open again, I saw, pen poised.\n\nI glanced uneasily at Jasper. 'He... well, he had had lapses occasionally in the past, but they didn't mean anything. Then I found out about a more serious affair about five years ago, when my son was ill \u2013 and I'm so sorry, Jasper: I didn't want you to find out about your father's affairs, especially like this.'\n\n'Oh, I knew all about the women, Mum,' he said calmly. 'I even caught him at it with that girl out of the Mummers once, when I walked in on them in the workshop.'\n\n'You did?'\n\n'That's a lie!' Polly yelled furiously, but Jasper just glanced coolly at her, one eyebrow raised, as though she were a failed souffl\u00e9. He looked terribly like Nick. I don't think Polly is any kind of souffl\u00e9, though, more of a synthetic Black Forest gateau with poisonous cherries.\n\n'So you were not on good terms with your husband,' the policewoman suggested to me, 'although he'd had affairs in the past to which you hadn't objected?'\n\n'Of course I objected!' I exclaimed. 'What do you take me for? And they were usually more in the nature of one-night stands than anything serious. For a long time I used to believe him when he said he loved me and they meant nothing.'\n\n'Yes, but that was the old Dad, not the nastier model we've had to live with lately,' Jasper pointed out. 'Even I've overheard him, taunting you about some woman he's been seeing \u2013 and he's not coming across as a very admirable-sounding character, is he?'\n\nThe police officer said patiently, 'So this time he was having a serious affair, Mrs Pharamond? He would have left you?'\n\n'No, it had to be the other way round, because this cottage belongs to his great-uncle by marriage, Roly Pharamond. So I intended leaving, once Jasper was at university and I'd found new homes for the livestock and sorted out somewhere to go, some sort of job...' I trailed off.\n\n'That's so not true! I heard you arguing in his workshop that very morning and when I questioned him about it later, he told me he'd asked you to leave and you'd refused!' Polly cried. 'He was afraid Roly Pharamond would take your side and he'd lose the cottage and everything he'd worked for.'\n\n'Obviously you didn't hear much, Polly!' I said, surprised. 'What I actually told him was that I'd had enough and was going to leave him as soon as I could. And if anyone worked around here and stood to lose everything, it was me!' I added incautiously, and the policewoman's pen skidded quickly across the page.\n\n'Well, at least you don't have to do that now, Mum,' Jasper remarked, and a small silence ensued.\n\nI sighed. 'We might still have to move, Jasper. It depends on Uncle Roly.'\n\n'Unks won't put you out, Ma. He's really fond of you.'\n\n'So,' said the officer to Polly, 'you overheard an argument, and what then?'\n\n'She came out,' Polly said, with a venomous look at me. 'So I said I'd brought her some field mushrooms to exchange for eggs, and she said, \"Help yourself, I'm going for a walk.\" She was really odd \u2013 she looked furious. When she'd gone I spoke to Tom briefly and he said he'd come over later, after he'd finished the board he was painting \u2013 which he did. And that's the last time I saw him, because when I woke up early next morning he'd gone. He parks around the back of the house, out of sight, so I'd no idea he hadn't come in his own van,' she added. 'I just assumed he had.'\n\n'No, it was still at the garage,' I told her. 'But if he hadn't taken my car, when he knew very well I wanted it later, it might have been me and Jasper who had the accident.'\n\n'It should have been you!' she said venomously. Her reddened eyes and sharp nose made her look like a particularly unsavoury rodent.\n\nJasper stood up slowly and said in a tone of menace I'd never heard from him before, 'I think you've said \u2013 and done \u2013 quite enough. Why don't you clear off?'\n\nShe floundered hastily and inelegantly out of the chair and backed towards the door. PC Perkins jumped up and stood between them.\n\n'If I could have your name and address, Ms Darke? I'll follow you over and ask you a few more questions in your own home, if I may?' She turned to me with a thin smile: 'Thank you for your assistance, Mrs Pharamond.'\n\nI had a horrible feeling she suspected me of loosening the wheelnuts on purpose, then leaving the keys out where Tom was sure to find them. And goodness knew what Polly would tell her!\n\n'Jasper,' I said when they'd gone, 'you were wonderful!'\n\n'Don't worry, Mum, that cop may have a suspicious mind, but we know there's nothing to find, so they can't pin anything on you.'\n\n'Thank you, darling,' I said weakly, then had a thought. 'I wonder if Tom had anything to eat at Polly's? Only if he had an attack of food poisoning, that might account for why he lost control of the car when the wheel came off.'\n\n'I don't think he went there to eat, Mum,' Jasper said, before vanishing back up to his Batcave.\n\nIn the kitchen I discovered that half the candied peel had vanished, presumably eaten by Jasper while waiting for the kettle to boil, but then, it's very moreish. But it didn't matter, I was only going to dip it in dark chocolate as a treat for later.\n\nMeanwhile, there was a whole row of bolting lettuces (I'd planted too many, as usual) to toss to the hens, and fruit to pick: a fresh strawberry Pavlova would be wonderfully comforting.\n\n## Chapter 8: Well Braced\n\nOnce our bulk order for dried fruit, peel and all the other ingredients has arrived and been divided up among the five members of the Christmas Pudding Circle, you can tell where we all live by the rich aroma of cooking mincemeat wafting from the doors and windows. We tend to make it early and of course it's useful all year round, for making mincemeat brownies, stuffing baked apples and a host of other things \u2013 not least the famous Middlemoss Marchpane tart.\n\nI'm going to make a bumper quantity this time, before I really get going on all the bottling, preserving and freezing of garden fruits and vegetables that starts to build up momentum at this time of year: the making of chutneys, jams, curds and relishes...\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nOn the Monday Jasper returned to his dig (by bike) and I went to the Christmas Pudding Circle meeting. I was glad of any distraction from the turmoil of mixed emotions caused by Tom's death and Polly's revelations, though it would have been impossible to describe what I felt. It wasn't even as if Tom had played a major part of our lives for the last few years, except in a negative, passing storm-cloud sort of way, but still, grief of some kind was an element and Jasper, I was sure, felt much the same. And also, I was increasingly uneasy at the direction the police enquiries seemed to be taking...\n\nMarian's carefully drawn-up CPC meetings rota had already gone to pot. This one was held at Faye's farm instead of Annie's cottage, because our ingredients had arrived and she had more room in her kitchen than anyone else for dividing everything up.\n\nAnnie picked me up and ran me there and was concerned to know how Jasper was doing.\n\n'Still confused, poor boy,' I said. 'Tom had been so horrible to him lately \u2013 but he was still his dad, after all.'\n\n'I expect he feels all angry and sad and muddled up,' she agreed. 'And you, too!'\n\nWhen we got to Faye's, the others were already there and expressed their condolences, before we got down to the business of the meeting: dividing up our purchases of flour, dried fruit and peel, flaked almonds and all the rest of it. Faye's cavernous farmhouse kitchen slowly became redolent with the spicy fruity smell of Christmas and I found that strangely comforting.\n\nSo too was the tea Faye laid on afterwards, with strawberry jam and clotted cream to spread on the freshly baked scones. It was no wonder her little tearoom was perpetually packed out, so that she had to take on extra staff!\n\nI felt so much better after spending an hour or two in the undemanding company of my friends. And then the making and bottling of my mincemeat over the following days, along with producing some jam and chutney from a basket of ripe apricots given to me by Marian, proved a pretty good distraction.\n\nDue to Unks ringing an old number instead of that of Nick's BlackBerry, it was Wednesday before he tracked him down to give him the bad tidings, and by then I'd already received a postcard of Morecambe Bay he'd posted a couple of days ago. It bore a scribbled recipe for spiced potted shrimps, which I found immensely comforting.\n\nUnks said Nick sent his love and would call me when he got back, because, of course, being a true professional, he will complete his assignment and send in his copy first. This was more than I seemed able to manage, for the end of August deadline for sending in my newest Perseverance Chronicle was fast approaching.\n\nI rarely mentioned Tom in the books \u2013 though when I did I referred to him only as 'the Inconstant Gardener' \u2013 but I couldn't entirely ignore what had happened to him, so bringing the latest one to a close on any kind of upbeat note would be impossible. Unless, that was, I ended it just before Tom's demise. Then I could include it in a foreword at the start of the book after that, which would come out when a decent interval had passed, the misery blunted by time.\n\nI could even end my current Chronicle with an apocryphal near-death by mushrooms instead. It's the sort of thing my readers seemed to enjoy and I often embroidered the truth to make a good story. Saved by Caz Naylor in the nick of time... assuming he had found the poisonous fungi in the basket of mushrooms Polly left me, which I don't think was ever clearly established. He could have been giving me a hint about Polly and Tom. I'm sure Caz must often have been flitting about the place in the evenings like a shade, so may well have seen and heard some of what had been going on.\n\nBut I should have known better than to accept anything edible from Polly's hands, even if the mushrooms had looked suspiciously like supermarket ones, brought as an excuse to snoop around Perseverance Cottage \u2013 or maybe, now I know about her affair with Tom, in order to see him without my suspecting anything.\n\nI had a sudden horrible thought. If I'd cooked the mushrooms without spotting the poisonous one, Jasper might have been made ill too! (But not Tom, who didn't like them.) That put me right off mushrooms, whereas before I loved them.\n\nA lovely letter of condolence came from the Vanes this morning. They must have posted it practically the minute Annie told them about Tom. Of course, they only really knew the old, charming Tom and not the monster I'd been living with lately, but it was very kind and comforting all the same.\n\nThe latest issue of the Mosses Messenger was in the letter box too, and carried a Mystery Play notice, which I found a bit poignant.\n\nIMPORTANT NOTICE!\n\nEveryone wanting to take part in the next Mystery Play should put their name forward immediately to Clive and Marian Potter at the Middlemoss Post Office, including any of last year's performers intending to reprise their roles. (Applicants must be residents of Middlemoss, Mossedge or Mossrow and able to devote one night a week to rehearsals.) Sadly, due to bereavement, the important roles of Moses and Lazarus need to be recast and, as always, we need a new baby Jesus. Rehearsals will start in mid-September.\n\nI'm sure I will never be able to watch the Raising of Lazarus scene again without thinking of Tom, though actually when Lazarus's mother says to Jesus, 'Our Lazarus hath popped his clogs, and he were my only child,' my eyes tend to well up anyway.\n\nOf course, Jesus immediately tells Lazarus to stop larking about, because his mother is in a proper state about him, and up he jumps with a cheery, 'Hello, our ma. Is summat up?'\n\nBut there will be no miracle this time for Tom, who hath well and truly popped his clogs.\n\n'Hi, Lizzy, I hear fate caught up with Tom before I did,' was Nick's bluntly uncompromising opening gambit later that day when he did finally phone. 'Roly told me what happened.'\n\nI gripped the receiver tightly. 'Oh, Nick! Did Unks tell you it was my car? The wheel came off, and it was the one I'd just changed the tyre on, so I'm sure the police think I did it on purpose!'\n\n'Don't be so bloody stupid, of course they don't think that! Why would you tamper with the wheel on your own frigging car?' he snapped, and I stopped wilting over the receiver and glared at it, as though Nick could see me.\n\n'That's true, I wouldn't \u2013 but his van was at the garage and for once I'd left my keys out somewhere where he could find them. And we'd just had an argument, which Polly Darke overheard \u2013 she told the police. Nick, she was the one Tom was having the affair with, but I don't think anyone except the police and Jasper know about that yet.'\n\n'Well, I certainly didn't, but it doesn't surprise me, because apart from you, he always did have crap taste in women.'\n\nThat was as close to a compliment as I'd ever got from Nick \u2013 and he can't include his own wife in that statement either, can he? So he mustn't really think Tom and Leila were having an affair, after all. The idea of Leila as Tom's lover is even more ludicrous than Polly, so I expect Tom was simply after free bed and board in London and lied to me to spur me into finally leaving him.\n\n'I had to go and identify Tom,' I said abruptly, my thoughts taking a sudden, darker turn. 'It was all right until we actually went in, because I thought it was a nightmare, so it didn't matter. But then there he was and... I kept expecting his eyes to open. I couldn't believe he was really dead, even though they said his neck was broken. Now I keep thinking about him, so white and... gone.'\n\n'Don't think about it, then,' he said sensibly. 'It's a pity I wasn't home to identify him for you. Anyway, it wasn't your fault and I think he's given you a rough time the last year or two. I've kept my nose out, but I've heard things.'\n\nTears pricked behind my eyes. 'Well, it's over now and they're releasing the body. They've done the post-mortem and adjourned the inquest,' I said, shivering. 'The inquest will reopen again later, but not for ages probably, so the funeral can go ahead on Tuesday.'\n\n'Then they don't suspect you of anything, you stupid bat,' he said, with what sounded suspiciously like relief. Surely Nick didn't secretly think I'd bumped Tom off, too? 'I'm heading down to London tomorrow,' he added, 'but I'll be back in a couple of days, if you need any help with the arrangements.'\n\n'Thanks, but I've got Annie \u2013 and the rest of my friends in the CPC have volunteered to help. The new vicar seems very pleasant and helpful too. In fact, everyone has been so kind. Roly offered to have the bunfight after the funeral up at the Hall, but I wanted it here. I'm going to do everything just the way the Tom I married would have wanted it \u2013 the fun one with a sense of humour.'\n\n'Let's hope it's a nice day then, because you won't get more than six people standing up in your sitting room.'\n\n'I'm going to use the old greenhouse: that's certainly big enough. I was going to get rid of it, so it's fortunate I haven't got round to it yet.'\n\n'It'll still have to be a fine day, because it leaks like a sieve,' he objected.\n\n'Caz Naylor asked me if he could do anything, and he's out there now mending the cracked panes with gaffer tape.'\n\nSaying Caz had volunteered to help was a slight exaggeration, since his precise words had been a questioning, 'Do owt, our Lizzy?'\n\n'You're honoured,' Nick said drily. 'Whenever Roly or I ask him to do anything, he vanishes. How's Jasper taking all this?'\n\n'Stoical and quiet, but much the same as me: in some ways it's a relief to know Tom's not coming back, but then we feel guilty for even thinking that, and sad at the same time and...' I broke off, my voice wobbling.\n\n'Do you want me to come straight back now?' he asked abruptly.\n\n'No, of course not! What could you do?' I said, braced by his tone.\n\n'Nothing, I suppose. Where's Jasper now?'\n\n'He's been back at the dig since Monday. He thought he might as well, rather than mope around the house.'\n\n'Very sensible. Has he sorted out his university accommodation yet? Or is he going to live at home?'\n\n'I wanted him to live in the hall of residence for the first year at least, because that's what university is all about, isn't it \u2013 getting away from your parents and making your own life? Only now he says he might share a house with one of his friends and some other students instead.'\n\n'He's very level-headed for his age. I'd let him do whatever he wants.'\n\n'Yes, I suppose so, and at least Liverpool is close enough for him to come home for the weekend, or for me to drive over, if he gets homesick or anything.'\n\n'I expect he'll quickly have other distractions.'\n\n'I should think the course will be distraction enough. I'm so proud of him, getting onto it. And he should get the full student loan now too, I think, because it'll be based on my income and I've hardly got any, because I don't suppose barter counts. Unks told Jasper yesterday that he was going to make him an allowance. He's so kind, and really, we have no claim on him.'\n\n'Roly thinks of you as family. And speaking of family, have you heard from Tom's mother and stepfather? You'd think they would offer to help!'\n\n'Oh, they have, and it was dreadful! He phoned and said Tom's mother was too upset to speak to me and probably wouldn't be well enough to travel all this way for the funeral, but he would pay for it all! I told him I didn't want his money and I haven't heard anything since.'\n\n'Well, burn all your boats at once, why don't you?' he said sarkily.\n\n'You're such a comfort to me!' I snapped, but beginning to feel much more like the real Lizzy Pharamond under all this bracing common sense.\n\n'Fellow feeling, darling. Leila and I are going to split, though I hope not in quite so final a manner as you and Tom.'\n\n'You are? I'm so sorry!'\n\n'Are you? Then don't be! Things haven't been good between us for a long time, though she's always refused to discuss divorce.'\n\n'Well, she's Catholic,' I pointed out. 'That's probably it.'\n\n'Only nominally, and she's going to have to get used to the idea, so the sooner the better. That's why I'm going straight down there now, to tell her.'\n\n'You mean she doesn't know yet?'\n\n'She knows how I feel: our marriage is dead in the water, and it's time to call it quits. And I want to spend much more time in Middlemoss: I feel more creative there.'\n\n'Lawrence Durrell's \"spirit of place\",' I agreed. 'Middlemoss gets your creative juices flowing. Mine, too \u2013 this is my real home and I'm not sure I could write anywhere else.'\n\n'If you can call your stream-of-consciousness burblings writing, any more than you can describe your recipes as cookery,' he said. 'We can only be grateful you do your ghastly Chronicles under your maiden name and disguise anything that might give away the location!'\n\n'At least anyone can make my recipes, you don't need a thousand pounds worth of equipment and three underlings to help you!' I shot back rather unfairly, since I know very well he whips up his recipes in his own kitchen, or the one at the Hall: personally tried and tested before being unleashed in his Sunday newspaper cookery page, or in his books. They're mostly straightforward recipes too, not nouvelle cuisine or anything, though some are still a little fancy for my taste. I like to keep things simple.\n\n'Plebeian', he once called me, when he found me devising a recipe for strawberries and custard bread-and-butter pudding. But then, as I recall, he ended up eating two plates of it... and now I come to think of it, I haven't made that for quite a while and it's yummy... real comfort food.\n\n'I think we're digressing,' he said, sounding pleased as always to have got a rise out of me. 'I'm going to London to tell Leila that I'm instructing my solicitor to start divorce proceedings, whether she wants it or not. After that, I'll be back at the Hall, so I'll be around if you want me. Don't tell anyone about the divorce yet. I'll break the news to Roly later. I'm not sure how he'll take it, and I don't want to give him any more shocks.'\n\nActually, I thought Roly would be pleased rather than shocked, but I didn't say so. 'No, I won't mention it to anyone and\u2014' I broke off as a thought struck me. 'Nick, I don't think Leila knows about Tom yet! How awful, I forgot to tell her!'\n\n'I'll tell her and I'll be back before the funeral,' he said, and put the phone down.\n\nIf he'd been here in person, I wondered if he would have given me a big, comforting hug like he had in hospital that time, when Jasper was ill... and looked at me with that same startled expression in his slate-coloured eyes, as though surprised to find himself doing it?\n\nHe does have a softer side and, although he can be a bit taciturn, he's all bark and no bite.\n\nIn the event, Nick wasn't back before the funeral, calling from London to explain briefly that Leila insisted on being present at it and was refusing to discuss anything about the divorce until afterwards, so he'd be driving her up on that morning.\n\nThere wasn't anything for him to do, anyway \u2013 I was pretty well organised, Annie having taken over the finer details. When you've been Leader of the Pack (Brownies) for years, these things come naturally to you.\n\nThe funeral being on a Tuesday, the preceding Monday's CPC meeting had been cancelled and instead my friends all brought to Perseverance Cottage food for the buffet and then stayed to help get everything ready. Annie must have spent half the night making little sausage rolls, Faye had baked both sweet and savoury scones, Marian brought the makings of three different kinds of sandwich and Miss Pym had assembled two huge platters of cold meats.\n\nSo by late Monday afternoon the preparations for the Feeding of the Five Thousand \u2013 or however many turned up to be fed and watered after the ceremony \u2013 was complete. Every surface in the kitchen and larder groaned under the weight of plates and bowls and platters. The fridge door kept trying to spring open, and plastic bags of yellow candyfloss swung from the rack above the kitchen table. The very air could have been sliced up and served with whipped cream, it was so loaded with mingled aromas.\n\nAnnie came back later, and she and I sat in the tiny sitting room, drowning our sorrows in elderberry wine and eating some of the mincemeat brownies intended for tomorrow, while Jasper was out the back, immolating Tom's favourite surfboard on the garden bonfire. He was accompanied by the strange, small dog (rather like a hairy haggis with legs) which Annie had brought with her, along with Trinny, and it had immediately attached itself to Jasper.\n\nHe came in from his bonfire with the creature under one arm and vanished up to his Batcave in the attic to bludgeon his emotions with loud music.\n\n'Annie, that dog\u2014' I began.\n\n'Jasper's agreed to foster it until he goes to university,' she interrupted brightly. 'The kennel was full, and no one seems to want to adopt it.'\n\n'You surprise me,' I said tartly. 'It nipped my ankles when it came in and it sheds so much hair it leaves a trail behind it across the carpet.'\n\n'I expect Jasper will give it a good brushing. You've still got all Harriet's stuff, haven't you?'\n\n'Yes, but I don't want another dog at the moment, and what if Jasper gets attached to it? He can't take it to university with him. You'll have to take it away with you right now!'\n\nPutting my glass down I went upstairs, determined to oust the creature before things went too far. Jasper's door was open just a crack and through it I saw him sitting on his bed, his face buried in the hairy haggis and his shoulders shaking.\n\nSilently I backed away and tiptoed downstairs.\n\n'It can stay for a couple of weeks,' I conceded to Annie, 'but that's it. You'll have to keep looking for a permanent home for it.'\n\n'OK,' she agreed. 'Unless you find you want to keep her, after all.'\n\n'I doubt it. I've got puncture marks in my ankle.'\n\nAnnie went home soon after that. She was going to come here straight after the church service the next day, instead of attending the interment, and organise the Women's Institute volunteers who are manning the buffet at the funeral feast in the greenhouse.\n\nAround three in the morning, entirely unable to sleep, I went downstairs and whipped up a batch of strawberries and custard bread-and-butter pudding \u00e0 la Lizzy Pharamond, and then Mimi wandered in out of the night, dressed in wellies and with a man's Burberry overcoat over her nightie.\n\n'Hello, dear, I've come for tea,' she said brightly, sitting down at the kitchen table. 'And to tell you that Tom's dead.'\n\n'I know,' I said, handing her a portion of bread-and-butter pudding and the cup of cocoa I was just about to drink myself.\n\nShe seemed very taken with the words, and was still repeating softly: 'Tom's dead, Tom's dead!' all the time I was walking her back up the dark drive to the Hall later, which was a little trying.\n\nWhen we got there, Juno had just discovered her absence and was frothing gently at the mouth. But there was no harm done, though the sooner her leg is healed so she can keep tabs on Mimi again, the better.\n\n## Chapter 9: Soul Food\n\nI had one of those confused moments standing at the edge of the grave, where I couldn't remember where I was \u2013 or even who I was \u2013 let alone who was six feet below me, tastefully attired in sustainable Norwegian pine. The coffin was crowned with a home-made wreath of dried hops (Tom had been a great devotee of real ale), bearing the handwritten epitaph: 'For the Tom we loved, from Lizzy and Jasper'. We had refrained from adding 'if he ever existed'.\n\nThe circle of eyes fringing the grave reminded me of a stargazy pie, except that they were not blank and dead, but expectant \u2013 and fixed on me. What could they want?\n\nThere was Nick's tall, broad-shouldered figure, his purple-grey eyes dark and brooding, possibly because his chic French wife was hanging tightly on to his arm, as she did to all her possessions.\n\nNext to him was his father, Nigel, in whom the strong Pharamond genes had surprisingly been subjugated by the more nondescript ones of his mother, his expensive suiting trying to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.\n\nDr Patel, Marian and Clive Potter and Faye, wearing a borrowed-looking black hat jammed over her dark curls and with her squarely-built, rosy-cheeked husband in tow. Miss Pym, nodding encouragingly at me, as if I were a recalcitrant four-year-old. A ragbag of Tom's old surfing chums, looking shifty. Polly Darke, wearing a short and inappropriate black chiffon garment cut low over the twin pink Zeppelins of her bosom, hovering uninvited and unwanted on the fringes of the crowd. Gareth, the new vicar, with his pale, interestingly knobbly face, bright red hair blowing in the slight breeze like a fiery halo...\n\nJasper nudged me with a bony elbow. 'Mum?'\n\nAs though his action had opened the sluice gate, a scummy dark tide of realisation rushed into my head: I was Lizzy Pharamond, widow, mother of the willowy youth next to me, and now expected to toss earth onto my late husband's remains like a cat tidying up after itself.\n\nThe husband who had once had a quirky sense of humour, until something dark, angry and increasingly nasty had slipped in to inhabit that space instead. I'd been mourning the loss of the old Tom for a long time, but now these last rites seemed to form an epilogue to our life together and a full stop.\n\n'Mum?' Jasper said again, more questioningly, draping a sinewy arm across my shoulders. For a teenage boy this was touchingly demonstrative and, for the first time that day, I felt painful tears at the back of my eyes, though earlier I'd struggled to suppress grossly unbecoming giggles during the vicar's eulogy, when he tried to reconcile wildly conflicting descriptions of Tom's character by using surfing as a metaphor for his journey through life and on into the great ocean that was Death.\n\nI remembered what was expected of me. Slowly I reached into my large, gaily embroidered shoulder bag and took out Tom's mobile phone and the TV remote control, then tossed them with a clatter into the open grave on top of the coffin. Grave goods: the things most dear to him \u2013 apart from his favourite surfboard, immolated by Jasper of course. But even that was here in spirit, for as I turned and left amid stunned silence, I stumbled over its effigy worked in wired flowers, with a card attached reading, 'Yo, dude! Catch a big one.'\n\nFrom behind me came the light patter of earth as the mourners hastened to cover up the evidence of my eccentricity, though I fear Tom will be gone but not entirely forgotten until the battery on his mobile runs out. He was always popular with his drinking companions.\n\nAt the end of the gravelled path stood Tom's white van, which had done duty today as his hearse, and I suddenly recalled how the six mismatched surfers and Mummers of Invention had earlier tried to shoulder the coffin before carrying it into the church.\n\nA hysterical bubble of laughter attempted to force its way up my throat, though I managed to stop it escaping by clamping my lips together. But two painful tears squeezed out and ran down my cheeks, compounded of laughter and sorrow, inextricably mixed together with an over-heavy seasoning of the guilt that seems to be an inescapable accompaniment to death.\n\n'Ow-do, missis,' Dave Naylor said. The proprietor of Deals on Wheels had driven Tom's van to the funeral and was now leaning against it, rolling a cigarette between scrubbed but darkly cracked fingers.\n\nAnother Naylor, you note \u2013 and also, on less official days, likely to address me as 'our Lizzy'. I really must do a bit of family research some time!\n\n'Bear up, lass. It's all sorted now and a great send-off it were, too. Them Mummers singing \"Amazing Grace\"?' He shook his head in slow wonderment. 'By heck, we'll never hear the likes of that again.'\n\n'Oh, I do hope not,' I agreed fervently. 'And thanks for driving the van, Dave. You are coming back to the cottage, aren't you?'\n\n'Aye, but I'll let the fancy cars go first. I'll take the van back to the garage with me afterwards and drop your new car off in the morning.'\n\n'That's fine \u2013 see you later,' I said gratefully, and carried on to where Roly Pharamond awaited me in his long black Daimler on the main pathway, having sensibly eschewed the interment in favour of a sit-down and a swift nip of brandy. His sister, Mimi, seemed to have eschewed the funeral altogether.\n\nJoe Gumball, husband of Roly's cook and jack of all trades up at the Hall, got out of the driver's seat and opened the door for me. He was wearing the hat and jacket of a chauffeur over faded blue dungarees and wellington boots.\n\nJasper, who was silently following me, got in the front and I slid onto the leather back seat, where Roly patted my hand with his thin, dry one and said gently, 'All done and dusted, my dear?'\n\n'All done and soon to be dust,' I agreed numbly. 'It seems so surreal \u2013 and the way everything keeps undulating slightly isn't helping,' I added. This underwater rippling feeling had been going on ever since I got the news of the accident, and nothing, not even the best elderberry wine, could entirely make it go away.\n\nHe shook his head sadly. 'I never thought to outlive Tom \u2013 but there, anyone can have an accident. Well, better get the bun fight over with, I suppose. Mimi should be along later with Juno.'\n\nJoe pulled out and headed for the cottage where, with the help of Annie and two ladies from the WI, the big, ramshackle greenhouse would have been turned by now into a venue for the funeral baked meats. Trestle tables and folding chairs had arrived this morning, borrowed from the village hall, along with tea and coffee urns.\n\nWe'd moved what plants there were towards the far end, but an aroma of tomatoes and moist earth scented the air. Still, I'd judged that better than holding it in Tom's wooden workshop, with its stale smell of dope, and the spray paint he used to customise the surfboards, several of which were propped in various stages of completion around the walls.\n\n'You know, I still expect to open his workshop door and find him there,' I said, following this train of thought. 'Just like all the other times when he vanished for a few days and turned up as though he'd never been away.'\n\nJasper turned around and looked anxiously at me, and I summoned a smile from somewhere. Luckily he couldn't hear us, because the sliding glass partition was shut and Joe was playing muted country-and-western music.\n\nWe drove over the hump-backed bridge crossing the stream, scattering the gaggle of five vicious geese, which had taken up residence there among all the innocently stupid ducks.\n\n'Must get something done about those creatures,' Roly said absently. 'The children are all too frightened to go to the playground, and I'm told you can't feed the ducks without being attacked.'\n\n'That local animal rights group, ARG, might have something to say about that,' I said. 'But the geese are getting more and more aggressive, and they leave such a mess behind them, too. Someone is bound to skid on it eventually and then there will be hell to pay, though I don't know who you can sue if no one owns them?'\n\n'Perhaps, since I own the green and the stream, I own them, too \u2013 or at any rate, the right to deal with them,' Roly suggested. 'I'll ask my solicitor \u2013 Smithers will know. Or perhaps I'll just get Caz Naylor to quietly round them up one night and move them somewhere else.'\n\n'How's he doing with the squirrels?'\n\n'Very well. Constantly patrols the exclusion zone, of course, but that's what you have to do, to keep the grey buggers out. Only way. Reds, that's what we have at Pharamond Hall. Always have, always will. On the coat of arms, even.'\n\nI thought this showed a touchingly Canute-like optimism, since the tide of grey squirrels seemed to have swept over most of Britain. But then, the reds had got Caz on their side.\n\n'I think the signs Caz has put up on the main pathways might have caused some talk,' I suggested. '\"Red or Dead!\" is a bit ambiguous and that new one just inside the gate that says, \"Warning! Keep to Path!! Trespassers May Be Unexpectedly Terminated!!!\" is a bit over the top.'\n\n'Only to outsiders \u2013 and what are they doing wandering all over my estate, that's what I want to know? Locals \u2013 yes. They know the score: keep to the public footpaths, don't wear grey.'\n\n'Are you still being targeted by ARG?' I asked. 'I don't seem to be bothered by them so much now, but I suspect that's because Caz's keeping an eye on the place.'\n\n'Well, family, aren't you?' Roly said vaguely. 'And they've eased up on the estate a bit since I put that piece in the parish magazine saying Caz uses humane live traps to catch the grey squirrels. Ingenious things: the reds can get out again, but the grey's too big.'\n\n'Mmm,' I said, because of course the question not to ask is: what does Caz do with the grey squirrels after he's caught them?\n\nWe passed between the impressively pineapple-finialed gateposts of Pharamond Hall, then turned sharp right onto the track that led down to Perseverance Cottage, which is just inside the estate boundary wall. I'd stuck a sign up earlier deflecting the mourners away from the Hall, but the ravening and curious horde would be hard on our heels, probably expecting an abundance of finger food and alcohol in a suitably sombre setting. Instead, they would find themselves in a huge glasshouse, eating home-made scones spread with jam and cream, strawberries and custard bread-and-butter pudding and other, even less usual, comestibles (I got a bit carried away yesterday), all washed down with tea or coffee.\n\nI'd noted the police presence at the funeral (PC Perkins and Little Boy Blue), but somehow their car had managed to arrive at the cottage first. As I got out, so did they, and Perkins came over and said they'd come to offer their condolences. But there was an underlying implication that she thought I was a merrier widow than I let on, and she'd been expecting me to cast myself onto the coffin with a last-minute confession. But perhaps I was becoming paranoid.\n\n'Do stay for refreshments in the greenhouse,' I said politely and, after a small, uncertain pause, she said they would follow us over. At least her colleague would have something to eat other than his fingernails.\n\n'How the wheel came off is destined to be one of life's great mysteries,' I mused aloud, as we walked across the cobbled yard. 'And why he didn't stop the car from going over the edge. Still, at least I know who Dark Heart is now, so that's one puzzle solved.'\n\n'Dark Heart?' Roly said. I'd quite forgotten he didn't know about Tom's affair.\n\n'Dark Heart's how the woman Dad was having an affair with signed herself,' Jasper explained helpfully. Roly was leaning on his arm as he picked his way over the smooth, slightly slippery stones. 'It's that novelist woman \u2013 Polly Darke. Would you believe it? She's got to be even older than Mum, and a complete hag.'\n\n'Thank you, darling,' I said. 'I think she is fashionably haggard, rather than a hag, really. And I'm sorry, Roly, I didn't mean to tell you about her. It just slipped out.'\n\n'Boy must have been mad!' Unks exclaimed, patting my arm. 'Wondered why she turned up to the funeral. Wearing a black see-through nightdress, too. Woman's got more bones than a picked chicken carcass!'\n\n'Was she in church? I didn't actually take in most of who was and who wasn't.'\n\n'She was there, Mum, but I thought Uncle Nick was going to throw her out when she tried to sit in one of the front pews. And it was a black chiffon dress, Unks \u2013 but she's, like, fifty years too old to wear it.'\n\nI think that might have been a slight exaggeration, but I didn't feel I was a winner in the sartorial stakes either. I didn't have any black, so was wearing a floaty, dark, paisley-patterned Indian dress over a long pink crinkle-cotton skirt, both borrowed from Annie. I'd belted it severely in around my waist, but I still looked like Widow Twankey.\n\n'Woman's got a nerve turning up at all, if she was carrying on with Tom! Well, well, it just goes to show you that the boy wasn't himself the last few years.' Roly shook his head.\n\n'His character had changed...' I began cautiously, and then broke off as the nose of Tom's white van appeared, followed by a cort\u00e8ge of assorted vehicles. 'Here they come! Dave must have got tired of waiting and decided to lead the way instead.'\n\n'Let's have a drink before battle commences, shall we?' Roly suggested.\n\n'It's only tea or coffee, Unks, unless you want Jasper to fetch you a glass of elderberry wine? I've hidden a few bottles under the table in the corner, just in case. I didn't want this to turn into some kind of drunken revel and go on for hours.'\n\n'Quite right, but I've got some brandy in my cane,' he said. 'Ah, Annie, my dear...!'\n\nWe established him in the greenhouse, on one of the chairs grouped before a veritable thicket of tomato plants and rampant bell peppers, and he unscrewed the top of his cane and poured a generous slug of brandy into his tea while I went and peeped out of the entrance.\n\nAs the cars arrived, people milled about in front of the cottage, so Jasper went out to usher them in the right direction and I retreated back to Unks. I expect I should have stood in the doorway and accepted their condolences as they came in, but I couldn't face it.\n\nThe mourners massed in the entrance like worried sheep, nearly balked and broke away, then came slowly in a surge towards me. At the last minute most of them sheered off and spread out to range up and down the trestle tables, probably looking for alcohol.\n\nI accepted a slug of brandy in my teacup from Roly and sat down.\n\n'That's it: let them come to you and do the polite,' Unks said. 'The ones with manners, anyway. Half of this lot weren't at the funeral \u2013 probably just after food and drink. Freeloaders!'\n\n'Weren't they? The church did seem to be full, though, and I thought the new vicar made a brave job of it.'\n\n'Not bad. Bit much to expect him to do a complete stranger's funeral two seconds after he arrives. Let's hope he lasts longer than the last vicar. Ah, here's Nigel.'\n\nRoly's portly retired stockbroker son was indeed forging towards us, though there was no sign of his wife. Still, I hadn't expected even Nigel, who didn't seem to care much for the North \u2013 or indeed Tom, for that matter, whom he considered a cuckoo in the nest \u2013 to make the effort to come today.\n\n'My son and heir,' Roly said drily in my ear. 'And unless Nick and that French woman get a move on, nearly the last in the line.' He nudged me with a sharp elbow. 'What do you think, Lizzy \u2013 is she past it?'\n\nLeila, chic in a vintage Chanel suit, bold red lipstick and with her hair drawn sleekly back like a bleached Paloma Picasso lookalike, stood poised in the doorway looking capable of anything, though the curl of her lip said exactly what she thought of her current location. Just wait till she saw the catering!\n\nNick, wearing his best sardonic Mr Rochester expression, loomed behind her.\n\n'I wouldn't get your hopes up, Unks,' I said.\n\n## Chapter 10: Cornish Mist\n\nI found myself mentally writing the recipe for a funeral feast, as though it was something I could put into one of the Chronicles.\n\nRecipe for a Fine Funeral Feast\n\nStep 1: In a large greenhouse mix together approximately sixty assorted mourners, half of them uninvited, several wearing wildly inappropriate surfer garments, and some that you're certain you've never met before in your entire life hovering furtively around the edges.\n\nStep 2: Add two police officers steeped in dark suspicions, a mad historical novelist dressed like the porno version of a Poldark widow, and a depleted folk\/rock group all wearing identical black 'Gaia Rocks!' T-shirts.\n\nStep 3: Gently fold in your best friend, trying valiantly to suppress her natural expression of cheerfulness; a mourning, lightly intoxicated nonagenarian great-uncle by marriage; a tall, dark and glowering chef and his acidulated and tangy French wife (soon to be ex and who might, or might not, have been having a fling with your late husband), and the man from the garage who'd volunteered to drive Tom to the funeral in his own white van with the 'Board Rigid' logo up the side.\n\nStep 4: Throw in a pompous stockbroker, the entire Mystery Play committee, including a nervous but well-meaning vicar and a furtive-looking youngish man in a strangely mossy green suit, who has forgotten to remove his Rambo-style headband.\n\nStep 5: Sprinkle with borrowed WI tea and coffee urns and crockery, garnish with triangular sandwiches, halved scones spread with clotted cream and home-made blackcurrant jam, trays of cubed chocolate Spudge on cocktail sticks, wedges of bread-and-butter pudding and bowls of Cornish Mist.\n\nStep 6: Stir well before it coagulates into clumps or \u2013 even worse \u2013 curdles.\n\nStep 7: Garnish with assorted hens, a three-legged whippet, and one yapping haggis-sized hairball that someone, probably Jasper, has let out of the cottage.\n\nStep 8: Stand back, since once warm the mixture could go up like a rocket \u2013 and down like the stick...\n\nBut now the Pharamond family (and one or two of the bolder hens) began slowly to converge on me from all directions. Nigel reached me first, but once he'd kissed my cheek and said he was very sorry he wandered off again, probably in search of non-existent sherry.\n\nGreat-aunt Mimi was pushing Juno in a wheelchair, though she'd told me last night she was hoping Dr Patel (not KP, but his daughter) was going to let her start walking again by the end of the week. The expression on her face was grimly stoical, at odds with the gaily frivolous arch of tissue-paper flowers Mimi'd attached to the back of the chair.\n\n'Isn't that the bower from the Adam and Eve temptation scene that the Infants' School made last year \u2013 the one that kept falling on the snake?' Annie asked.\n\n'Yes. Thought it would brighten things up,' Mimi agreed. 'Damned gloomy things, funerals,' she added. 'Better if he'd gone ages ago, because he was nowhere near as much fun, the last few years.'\n\n'Mimi!' protested Juno. 'What a thing to say!'\n\nI focused slightly (for the shot of brandy had been generous, on an empty stomach; I hadn't been able to eat anything before the funeral). 'Oh, did you notice that too, Mimi?'\n\nShe leaned over Juno's chair towards me. 'Possessed!' she hissed. 'The devil was looking out of his eyes!'\n\nJuno twisted her head upwards. 'Mimi, you haven't taken your pill today, have you? Where have you hidden it?'\n\nMimi backed off, looking guilty and slightly agitated. 'I didn't need it \u2013 why do I need it? Lizzy doesn't need one, and she's seen the devil looking out, too!'\n\n'She's quite right, I did,' I assured Juno. 'And Mimi seems fine to me. I'll get her a glass of elderberry wine, that'll do her good. I've hidden it under the end table, so the surfers and Mummers don't get drunk and silly. Sillier,' I added, for they seemed to have joined forces behind the tomato plants, together with some flagons and bottles I certainly hadn't supplied.\n\nAs well as the wine I collected a plate of food, since I was suddenly ravenous. One or two people spoke to me (including one of the WI ladies, who complimented me on the garnish of golden quail eggs, an effect I achieved by boiling them wrapped in onion skins), but I was glad I'd decided to dispense with the moving-about-graciously-thanking-everyone-for-coming thing, because I didn't feel at all thankful to most of them.\n\nThe Mummers of Invention \u2013 or what was left of them \u2013 now struck up a lively tune at one end of the greenhouse. The drippy girl (and I can only assume Tom was desperate when he slept with her) stuck one finger in her ear and started to drone a song. She'd have to do her own harmonising without Tom, but since she talks to herself worriedly all the time just like Alice's white rabbit, that shouldn't cause her any great problem.\n\nI gave Mimi her glass of wine and then sat next to Unks, eating steadily, as is my usual wont when stressed, unhappy, worried... or happy, cheerful and optimistic. Let's face it, I eat. That morning's fast was simply an aberration.\n\nLeila seemed to have the same thought. 'If you didn't do all that digging and outdoor work, you would be as fat as a pig,' she commented, coming to a halt in her stilettos in front of us, Nick right behind her like an attendant thundercloud. Then she kissed the air about an inch from Unks' cheek and said, 'Well Roland, how are you?'\n\n'Fine, Leila,' he said cautiously. 'Nick, you haven't heard how the two thirty at Haydock went, have you? Only I had a sure thing running. Happy Wave out of Surfer's Paradise \u2013 couldn't go wrong with that pedigree, could it?'\n\n'On a day like today, you can have no interest in horse racing!' Leila exclaimed, scandalised, and Roly looked slightly abashed.\n\n'Joe's probably listening to it on the car radio, Unks,' I said. 'I'll go and ask him in a minute. In fact,' I added slightly worriedly, 'I ought to go and see where Jasper is.'\n\n'It's all right, I saw him sitting on the Daimler running board talking to Joe when I came in,' Nick said. 'That's a weird-looking dog he's got! I thought you'd go for another lurcher, like Harriet.'\n\nI pulled a face. 'It's one of Annie's strays. We're only supposed to be fostering it, so it wasn't put down, but she and Jasper have taken a shine to each other. I'm going to end up looking after it when he goes to university, I can see.'\n\nOne more responsibility, when it came to leaving Perseverance Cottage and forging a new life on my own, too...\n\nLeila seemed to be thinking along the same lines, for after looking me over in her usual critical way, as though she found me wanting in all aspects (which she probably did), she said in her strongly Parisian-accented English, 'So, Lizzy, I expect you will be moving on, now? Those books are your only real source of income, are they not? And those you can write anywhere.'\n\n'But they are the Perseverance Chronicles,' Juno pointed out, 'about her life here in Perseverance Cottage \u2013 that's the whole point! All Lizzy's daily struggles \u2013 that's what her readers like.'\n\n'They'll certainly love the next volume, then, even though I'm ending on a happier note, before the tragedy. After that,' I shrugged, 'who knows?'\n\n'But you must keep writing them and including the wonderful recipes,' Juno enthused, her square, rather weather-beaten face animated. I hadn't realised she was a fan.\n\n'Oh God,' groaned Nick, temporarily distracted from silent thundercloud mode, 'don't remind me! Why anyone should find Lizzy's sugary, fatty recipes for nursery puddings and inedible bakes of any interest at all entirely beats me. And what's more, wasn't that bowl of yellow, lemon-flavoured stuff someone just offered me candyfloss?'\n\n'Cornish Mist,' I said automatically, and Leila snorted.\n\nRoly, who'd been sitting looking quietly baffled, suddenly put in, 'What did you mean, Leila, that Lizzy would be moving on? Moving on where?'\n\n'I suppose Leila meant that I would be looking for somewhere else to live, Unks.' I smiled at him affectionately. 'It's been wonderfully kind of you to let us have Perseverance Cottage all these years, when you might have rented it out for a decent amount, but I realise you'll have other plans for it now.'\n\n'That's right,' agreed Nigel belligerently. He'd suddenly reappeared behind his father and was swaying slightly, like a pot-bellied palm tree in a breeze. I couldn't imagine him hobnobbing with the Mummers and surfers, so he must have found the elderberry wine the way pigs find truffles. 'Told you it was stupid, not charging them rent all this time, Father \u2013 and Tom not even a real Pharamond! Besides, the place is too big for Lizzy on her own. I'd do it up and sell it \u2013 get a fortune for it, the way house prices are rising round here.'\n\n'Would you?' Unks said coldly. 'Perhaps you'd sell off the rest of the estate for housing too, while you were at it?'\n\n'Probably wouldn't get planning permission. Sodding red squirrels and trees are more important than people,' he slurred. 'But you could divide the Hall up into apartments \u2013 executive ones \u2013 and keep the best for yourself. Make a huge profit!' His eyes lit up with the fire of greed.\n\n'So, that's what you would do to the Pharamond estate, Nigel, is it?' Unks said. 'If you inherited it, of course.'\n\n'But he is the heir, is he not?' Leila said. 'And his ideas, they are eminently practical!'\n\n'Nigel shouldn't count his chickens before they are hatched. The entail on the estate was broken long ago, don't forget, so it is mine to leave to whoever I wish.'\n\nRoly turned his head and smiled at me: 'I told Tom that I was making Perseverance Cottage over to him and Lizzy, but now it will be Lizzy's home for as long as she needs it \u2013 and Jasper's, of course.'\n\n'Oh, thank you, Unks! That is so sweet of you!' I said, tears coming to my eyes, and kissed the top of his head.\n\n'It's been a pleasure having you living so close, my dear. And the boy's a Pharamond \u2013 he should grow up here and regard it as his home.'\n\n'But he isn't really a Pharamond, Father,' Nigel pointed out, swiftly sobered by the possibility of disinheritance.\n\n'Course he is,' Mimi said, leaning on the wheelchair and waving her empty glass emphatically, and Juno twisted her head round and gave her another anxious look. She would be getting a crick in it at this rate. 'Only have to look at him to know that. The boy's the spit of Nick.'\n\nThere was a small silence, which Unks broke by saying drily, 'Before anyone lets their imagination run riot, when Tom's mother asked me to take Tom on, she confessed to me that she was having an affair with Leo before her first husband died, and she was pretty sure Tom was his. I promised not to say anything, but I feel current circumstances absolve me from that now.'\n\n'His mother said that? Oh, I wish she'd told him!' I said indignantly. 'He always had a chip on his shoulder about not really being a Pharamond, but he wouldn't hear a word against her. Instead, he pretty well accused me of\u2014'\n\nI broke off hastily, meeting Nick's eyes, and went pink. 'Well, I just wish he'd known, that's all.'\n\n'I think you, Roland, are just saying this to cover up the truth! Jasper is Nick's child \u2013 Tom told me this himself,' Leila exclaimed unguardedly. 'They had an affair when they were very young, and then they picked it up again after she married Tom.'\n\n'Rubbish!' Unks said firmly. 'Boy-and-girl affair one summer and fought like cat and dog \u2013 and then Nick went off on his travels and that was that. Dare say they hardly even saw each other for years, and Lizzy was mad about Tom when they married, anyone could see that!'\n\n'Of course it isn't true,' I said hotly. 'Jasper is Tom's child. But I'm glad to have the truth I suspected come out at last, even if it is a bit late in the day.'\n\nNick was glaring at his wife. 'You mean, Tom told you that and you believed it? When did he tell you?'\n\n'Oh, years ago.'\n\n'It can't have been that many years ago. He only got that stupid idea after Jasper had meningitis,' I said.\n\n'I think we all know you've had a difficult time with him lately,' Roly remarked, to my surprise. 'I hear things \u2013 know more than you think.'\n\n'Yes, but I'm afraid it had got to the stage where I was going to leave him, Unks,' I confessed. 'I couldn't take any more. I was just waiting for Jasper to be settled at university.'\n\n'Well, now you don't have to,' Mimi said brightly. 'You can stay here and dear Jasper can come home in the holidays. Such a clever boy!' She took a bowl of Cornish Mist from a passing tray and dug in her pastry fork. 'Mmm!'\n\nThen, yellow-moustached, she looked up again at our rather silently thoughtful tableau. 'Where's Tom? He's missing all this lovely food and he is so fond of his stodgy puds.'\n\n'He's gone, Mimi,' Juno said shortly. 'I'll explain later.'\n\nMimi's brain had clearly done one of its little loops and shunted Tom's death into a siding. I wished mine would.\n\n'Oh, will you? Good,' she said, her eyes wandering around the very motley crowd. 'Look, that woman's wearing a black baby-doll nightdress! Should I have come in fancy dress too, Lizzy?'\n\n'Good grief, it's that Polly Darke woman! As if it wasn't bad enough her coming to the funeral, without turning up in your home, Lizzy!' Annie exclaimed, scandalised, appearing beside me suddenly with her bob of coppery hair attractively ruffled and her cheeks flushed \u2013 but then, it was getting slightly steamy in the greenhouse, in more ways than one.\n\nPolly had staggered backwards through the concealing tomato plants, where she'd presumably been drowning her sorrows with the surfers and Mummers. She regained her balance with an effort, turned, and then fixed her dark-ringed, sunken eyes on me. 'Lizzy! Not so much the grieving widow, I see! Maybe you're even celebrating, because it wouldn't surprise me if you loosened that wheel on purpose, and then told Tom to borrow your car!'\n\n'Polly, that's entirely stupid. And you watched me walk off into the woods that morning, don't forget! When would I have done it?'\n\n'You could have come back. You were probably hiding, waiting for me to leave.'\n\n'Do you all know Polly Darke?' I said resignedly. 'You can probably spot without my telling you that she's a novelist of the raunchier kind, but she was also Tom's mistress.'\n\n'Good grief!' Juno exclaimed incredulously. 'Was she really?'\n\n'More, much more, than that, Tom loved me! He had to get Lizzy to move out, so the split looked like her fault, and then Roly would leave him the cottage; but after that we were going to get married,' Polly cried, looking about her wildly, as though expecting a sympathy vote and not getting it.\n\n'You are quite mad \u2013 a fantasist!' Leila said, looking her up and down disgustedly. 'He would not have even a tiny affair with a woman such as you.'\n\n'I'm afraid he did have a mistress, but I've only just found out that it was Polly,' I told her. 'It was a shock to me, too!'\n\n'And me,' Unks said drily. 'Revelations, indeed!'\n\nLeila narrowed her eyes at Polly, like a snake. 'What could you possibly have to offer him?'\n\n'You'd be surprised,' I said darkly. 'I certainly was.'\n\n'This is fun, isn't it?' Mimi said brightly, but no one took any notice.\n\nLeila drew herself up. 'She is lying. It is true that Tom had a lover, yes \u2013 but it was me!'\n\nNick's hand closed in a vice-like grip on her arm. 'But you swore you'd never been more than friends with him! And you wouldn't agree to a divorce.'\n\nShe shrugged. 'He planned to move in with me eventually, but it is as this woman says: he wanted to keep in with his great-uncle, who is fond of Lizzy, and inherit the cottage, so he was forcing her out. She deserved it; she was still having an affair with you! Tom said even in hospital when Jasper was so ill, you couldn't keep your hands off each other.'\n\n'That is so not true,' I said hotly.\n\n'No, Lizzy isn't like that in the least,' Annie agreed loyally, 'and neither is Nick.'\n\nPolly, who'd been quiet, rallied again: 'Oh, I knew he had an old mistress who wouldn't accept that their affair was over. But it was me he loved \u2013 and me he spent his last night with!'\n\n'I don't believe you. He was with me only a few days before he died, and he swore he loved me and soon we would be together always,' Leila declared.\n\n'Presumably after I had obligingly died, and he had inherited the cottage?' queried Roly mildly.\n\n'You are ninety-two, Roland,' Leila said defensively. 'In France we are more practical about these things.'\n\n'Not practical enough, my dear. I was leaving the cottage to him for life only, then to Jasper after him, not outright.'\n\n'And you were going to tell me all this when, exactly?' Nick demanded of his wife in a voice that reverberated through the greenhouse like thunder. 'And why refuse me a divorce?'\n\n'I knew that you would try and take half my restaurant that I've worked for so hard \u2013 half my money. Why should I give you what is mine? I thought once Lizzy was free, you might be more reasonable about it, and I would wait. And I will fight you through the courts for every penny!'\n\n'I don't want your money \u2013 I don't want anything of yours, just my freedom!' Nick said furiously. 'I'll sign a statement to that effect any time you choose \u2013 would have done before, if I'd known what was worrying your mercenary little heart. You and Tom seem to have been made for each other!'\n\n'No they weren't. She's a lying cow and it's me he loved and wanted to spend his life with!' Polly said, quivering with rage. Then she entirely lost it and lobbed her plate of food at her rival. Half a scone daubed with cream and red jam clung to the side of Leila's face like some exotic wart, before sliding slowly down her cheek and dropping off, smearing her expensive suit on the way.\n\nMimi giggled, but Leila gave a scream of rage and lunged at Polly with her long, sharp red nails. I was just thinking that I'd put my money on Leila, when Nick seized her arms from behind and two of the surfers, who must have followed Polly through the tomato plants, leaped forward and grabbed her too.\n\n'Put them out!' Unks snapped. 'You!' he said to Polly. 'Whatever the truth of the matter, you should have had the decency to stay away. If you don't go now, I'll have you removed.'\n\nPolly went limp and started sobbing, and the two surfers let go of her arms. She stumbled towards the door on her extremely high heels and, as the crowd parted to let her through, I realised we had unwittingly been providing entertainment for everyone within ear-and eyeshot \u2013 which, in a greenhouse, is pretty well everyone who could cram in.\n\nThe only good thing was that the police and the vicar seemed to have left before the floorshow.\n\nNick, still grasping Leila's arms, snapped in my direction, 'Excuse us! Back later, Roly \u2013 hope your horse won.' And he marched her off. I would have liked to have been a fly in the car on the way back to London: Nick's invective can be quite inventive when he's in a rage.\n\nUnks looked pleased. 'Well, she was always a bitch,' he remarked happily. 'Don't know why he took up with her, except she was beautiful, I suppose, and they had the cooking stuff in common. Once he's over her, he can start again \u2013 with a sensible Lancashire lass this time, perhaps?'\n\n'They're both lying old bags!' quavered the small, pathetic voice of the drippy girl from the Mummers right next to me, and it was quite lucky from her viewpoint that neither of them was there to hear that description, because it would have been tantamount to staking a kid to attract tigresses. 'He loved me \u2013 and what's more, I'm having his baby!'\n\nWhite as a sheet and naturally rather pop-eyed, Ophelia Locke seemed an unlikely candidate for Tom's attentions, so I was probably the only person who believed her. Still, it was another reason to be glad the other two had gone. There was clearly a general feeling among the onlookers that this was a scene too far and we were into the farce; but then, before anyone could rally enough to say so, Ophelia fainted backwards.\n\nCaz Naylor stepped forward and caught her neatly, then slung her over his shoulder, where she dangled limp as a shot rabbit. 'Not right in't head, Mr Pharamond,' he said tersely.\n\n'Evidently, poor girl,' agreed Unks, looking rather taken aback.\n\nHanging upside down must have sent the blood rushing to Ophelia's head, for she revived enough to beat weakly on Caz's back and whimper, 'Put me down, you big bully!'\n\nCaz ignored her and carried her off, the crowd parting to let them through. There was a spontaneous spatter of applause.\n\nUnks unscrewed the top of his cane. 'Anybody want a shot of brandy? I certainly do! And wasn't that the girl I let an estate cottage to \u2013 makes handicrafts, or some such stuff?'\n\n'Barbola work?' suggested Mimi. 'And is Caz walking out with her?'\n\n'Smocks,' I said. 'Yes, Unks, that's the girl.'\n\n'Nobody does barbola work these days,' Juno said. 'And I shouldn't think she's Caz's type.'\n\n'Oh? Well, that was all just like a play!' Mimi said, still clapping her hands. 'Was it a play, Juno? Is that the end?'\n\n'Yes, time for us to go home,' she agreed. 'Come on, that gardening programme you like will be on by the time we get there.'\n\nMimi whirled the chair about with no more ado. 'Lovely party \u2013 thank you for having me!' she called politely over her shoulder. The remains of Polly's jam scone squidged under the wheels.\n\nThe excitement clearly over, some of the remaining guests followed them out, though the last two Mummers were still obliviously droning on in the background and I could see one of Tom's surfing chums stretched out under the trestle tables, snoring.\n\n'Jasper,' I said, as he finally came in, closely followed, nose to heel, by the little dog, 'Unks says we can live at Perseverance Cottage for as long as we want to. Isn't that kind?'\n\n'Really? Thanks, Unks. I was worrying what would happen to Mum when I went off to university, but now I won't need to any more.'\n\n'You don't have to worry about me at all!' I said indignantly. 'I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself.'\n\nJasper eyed me uncertainly. 'Are you all right, Mum? Only you look a bit strange.'\n\n'Strange? Why on earth should I look strange?' I demanded, though I could feel hysteria trying to tweak my mouth into an idiot's grin.\n\n'I think we're all tired and a bit overwrought,' Annie said quickly. 'What an exhausting day! All these scenes and revelations.'\n\n'What scenes and revelations?' asked Jasper, looking from one to the other of us.\n\n'I'll tell you later,' I promised, which I would have to, even if only the edited lowlights. 'I wonder how we can get rid of the last of the guests.'\n\n'I'll send Joe back to turf out the stragglers,' promised Unks, hoisting himself to his feet with Jasper's help. 'But most of them will go when they see me leaving.'\n\nHe advised me, before Joe drove him away, not to dwell on recent events, but instead remember Tom as he once was. He looked frail and tired, so I hoped it all hadn't taken too much out of him.\n\nI was fine \u2013 too numb and full of elderberry wine and brandy to feel anything except a desire for oblivion.\n\nIt was early evening before Joe Gumball loaded the last drunken surfer into the back of the taxi called to take them to their B&B in Mossedge, and finally persuaded the two Mummers to go away. They had been too drunk to notice the scene with Ophelia, or even question where she had vanished to. (And what had Caz done with her?)\n\nThe urns and crockery had long been efficiently removed by the WI ladies, with my grateful thanks, and Marian and Clive Potter had supervised the local Cubs and Brownies in carrying the trestles and chairs back to the village hall, so that was that.\n\nAnnie saw to the poultry, and then cooked us a meal we none of us really felt like, except the dogs, before going home.\n\nFinally alone with Jasper I felt almost too exhausted for the effort of explanation, but when I told him that he really was Unks' great-great-nephew he just said, 'Yes, I know. Unks told me ages ago, when I asked him why I looked more like Uncle Nick than Dad.'\n\n'You did?' I stared at him. Then I sighed tiredly, and decided to tell him about the other pretenders to the throne of love and get it all over with at once. 'Did you also know that your father was having an affair with Leila as well as Polly? They nearly came to blows this afternoon.'\n\n'Oh, so that's what she and Nick were arguing about when they left! He pushed her into his car and roared off, and then Polly came out and drove away too, though she didn't look fit to be behind the wheel. And another thing,' he added thoughtfully, 'why was Caz giving that Mummer girl a fireman's lift? She didn't seem to appreciate it.'\n\n'She fainted \u2013 right after declaring that it was really her your father loved, not the other two. And, Jasper, she says she's pregnant!'\n\nHis eyebrows rose. 'She does?'\n\n'I hope it isn't true, because goodness knows, things are complicated enough without that.'\n\n'Well, look on the bright side,' Jasper said, with the breezy insouciance of youth. 'At least there's no chance the baby's mine!'\n\n## Chapter 11: Popped Corks\n\nGinger Beer\n\nLet me give you a few words of wisdom culled from many years of making the stuff. (And you will find the recipe for making a ginger beer culture in Book 1 of The Perseverance Chronicles.)\n\n1. Ignore the Quatermass-experiment effect once the yeast starts working \u2013 whatever it may look like, the ginger culture will not take over the world... yet. And isn't it amazing that water and a bit of yeast and ginger scum can turn into something so delicious?\n\n2. Ask everyone to save their screw-top plastic pop and water bottles for you, because if you go the traditional route of glass bottles and corks, expect your house to explode at frequent intervals.\n\n3. Even with screw-top bottles, it is not a good idea to transport large quantities of ginger beer about, especially in a car. Nor should you be tempted to celebrate any special event by shaking the bottle before opening.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nI was woken early next morning by a thirteen-gun salute, which proved to be half my remaining stock of ginger beer exploding.\n\nAfter cleaning the sticky mess up and loosening the rest of the caps so I wouldn't lose all of it (Jasper and I are very partial to ginger beer), I went out to see to the poultry.\n\nThere appeared to be fewer quail. Presumably Caz had taken the opportunity the previous day to cull the male ones again, though I wasn't sure how he found the time, unless he'd popped back after taking Ophelia to... well, where had he been heading? So long as it wasn't to his giant freezer, I didn't suppose it really mattered. Perhaps he had just put her in a Mummer's car and left her to it. Or carried her home to her estate cottage, which is not far from his, protesting all the way? (Though I didn't think most local girls would protest if he wanted to carry them off, the foxy sheikh of the western Lancashire world.)\n\nI hadn't really thought of him in the knight-errant role before, even if he appeared to have been protecting me against the ARG activists. Perhaps he'd got something going with Ophelia. But then, that did seem a bit unlikely too, since he was definitely carnivore and I remembered Tom telling me once that all the other Mummers were vegan and wouldn't even wear leather shoes.\n\nThe quail, in their little pens, all made identical cheeping sounds. I'd never managed to tell one from the other, which was lucky since I didn't actually get attached to them, like I did to all the Honeys and Myrtles, and even the ducks. But sometimes even they were so nasty and vicious to each other that I stared to feel maybe their real destiny was to be on a plate with stuffing and gravy, or orange sauce. Nature is red in beak and feather, as well as tooth and claw \u2013 someone should tell ARG that.\n\nBut after wrapping a couple of dozen quail eggs in onion skins during the sleepless night watches before the funeral, I really didn't care if I never ate another one, let alone a quail itself... so I thought I'd get rid of them; find them another home.\n\nThe duck population was here before me and was pretty self-sufficient, but the hens could just naturally reduce as they died of old age \u2013 so long as I found the eggs before they hatched. After all, it was just going to be me here at Perseverance Cottage most of the time, and if I didn't produce much more food than I could eat, with the bit extra for barter, then I'd have time to throw myself into helping Annie expand Posh Pet-sitters, and earn some money. Barter worked well up to a point, but not with electricity bills and the Inland Revenue.\n\nYes, even the enormous, aluminium-framed glasshouse \u2013 relic of a doomed attempt at market gardening by a previous tenant \u2013 could go. There was a small one behind the cottage that did well enough for my needs. I decided to get Jasper to put it on Freecycle, where you can advertise anything you want to get rid of \u2013 but also get things you need, for free. I expect someone will want it. But what I was to do with Tom's workshop contents I couldn't imagine...\n\nBack at the cottage I was surprised to find Jasper up and getting ready to go to the dig, which on the whole I thought a good idea (though possibly not in the Diesel jeans that had cost me a fortune). I think we both had that spaced-out, anti climactic feeling, and the alternative was sitting about thinking unproductive thoughts.\n\n'Do you know how many eggs I had to sell to buy those jeans?' I demanded, but he took the question as rhetorical and carried on cutting multilayered doorstep sandwiches.\n\nI couldn't drive him there, since, even if the van hadn't been down at the garage, now it had done duty as a hearse neither of us fancied ever getting in it again. But Dave Naylor was coming that morning with the ancient but, he assured me, very practical Land Rover I had in a rash moment agreed to swap it for.\n\nSo Jasper cycled off to the dig with the furball (now called Ginny, short for Guinevere, though anything less like a Guinevere I never saw) in the carrier, together with a bowl and a big bottle of water. He said there was plenty of shade to tie her up in and he could walk her at lunchtime, though from what I could make out of her shape beneath the fuzz, rolling her about a bit would probably do just as well.\n\nDave brought my new old car about an hour later, after I'd drafted the advert for the quail. His son Gary, who played Jesus in the Mystery Play for the first time last year, followed him down the track in Tom's van, to save him the quarter-mile trek back. That damned van with the horribly apposite 'Board Rigid' logo seemed to be a recurring motif, and I'd be glad when it was resprayed and sold on, preferably away from the area. I'd managed to find the paperwork for the van, which I expected would soon reappear for sale on the garage forecourt after a quick makeover.\n\nThe Land Rover had obviously had a hard life, being battered, dented and with high mileage, but Dave assured me they lasted for ever and, as soon as I had mastered the rather unyielding clutch pedal, I would be fine.\n\nJasper thought the vehicle swap was a good idea and was looking forward to driving the Land Rover. It was fortunate I have a son who prefers antiquities. I tootled it around the yard and up the track, and it certainly felt more solid than my 2CV ever did. Later I steered it cautiously down to the post office and handed Marian the quail advert for the parish magazine. She said I was just in time for the next issue, which would be out at the end of the week, but that was sheer luck, since their publication dates are erratic and entirely depend on how Clive feels about it.\n\nIn the late morning one of Tom's surfer friends, who'd been a bearer at the funeral, phoned up and asked if he and his mate Jimbo could drop in.\n\n'That's nice of you, Freddie,' I said, assuming they wanted to say goodbye before setting off back down to Cornwall. It was amazingly thoughtful of them and, I would have previously said, totally out of character.\n\n'Well, we wanted to say goodbye, Lizzy, but we've also got a proposition.'\n\n'A proposition?'\n\n'Yes, we thought we might take on Tom's business and wanted to discuss it with you. If you've no other plans for it, of course.'\n\n'No, I haven't really had time to think of it. But of course you can come down and we can talk about it,' I said, for it would be a relief. I had no idea what to do with all his equipment and half-finished boards and stuff, and it would be rather nice if his friends carried on with Board Rigid.\n\nSo far as I could gather from male-bonding rituals, Freddie and Jimbo had been two of Tom's best friends. They'd all been at Rugby School together, dropped out of university and then washed up in Cornwall, bumming around on family money. But I suppose even that and the patience of your family is finite, and when a man is heading rapidly for his forties it's time to stop being the playboy of the western UK, and earn your own bread and wetsuits.\n\nI went into the workshop and opened the big front door to the sunshine for the first time since the accident, instead of the little Judas door.\n\nThings looked dusty already and there was that familiar smell of paint, varnish and dope (both kinds). Tom's wetsuit swung from a hook like the spent chrysalis of some strange creature: which I suppose it was, when I came to think about it.\n\nOne or two boards that were obviously commissions were almost finished, and there were several of the ones he bought in and painted to sell on through shops. I had a rough idea what they were worth and the people who had ordered boards had their names and phone numbers taped to the back: Tom's idea of paperwork. Mind you, the system seemed to work, which is more than could be said for his tax returns: I only hoped the Inland Revenue was not now going to fall on me like a ton of bricks.\n\nTom's friends turned up so quickly they must have phoned from a mobile up the lane and were very kind, kissing my cheek and hugging me as if they had always liked me, which they didn't. I was the wrong sort of girl: Tom should have married someone sea-sporty, acquiescent, well connected and, above all, rich.\n\nJimbo has a long body, stumpy legs and a big nose, but he didn't get his nickname from his appearance: his name is James Bow. Freddie is tall and skinny, with grey-blond hair fuzzing over a head like a bleached coconut. They must have to get their wetsuits made specially.\n\nAfter looking over the workshop as though it was a dubious garage sale, they um-ed and ah-ed a bit, then said they would take the worry of it off my hands for three hundred pounds, what did I say?\n\n'What, for the whole lot?' I gasped, thinking I hadn't heard right.\n\n'Well, let's say four hundred, to be fair. There's not much here, and we'd have to finish off the old orders and deliver them, of course,' Freddie pointed out, as if this would be a big favour.\n\n'But Tom's almost finished them, and he hasn't been paid yet. And the other boards that belong to him are worth more than that alone!' I protested, stunned.\n\nThey exchanged quick looks and I realised they hadn't expected me to know anything about the business or the value of it, and be too upset to think straight. I'd fallen among thieves.\n\n'Oh, no, Lizzy, they're not top-quality boards, you see,' Jimbo said quickly, 'and several are half-finished \u2013 you'd never sell them like that. Besides, you don't have the contacts, do you? But we do.'\n\nI looked at them: these were supposedly Tom's closest friends. He'd been to school with them, hung out with them over the years, and they were well off by my standards, even if they did look like bums most of the time. And now they wanted to make a quick profit by cheating his widow!\n\nThey were also cunning beach bums, for Freddie now produced a neatly printed agreement. I read it through a couple of times, noting the words 'sale to include everything pertaining to the business of Board Rigid', but my brain wasn't really up to coping with possible pitfalls.\n\n'Trust us \u2013 we're doing you a favour, Lizzy,' Jimbo said persuasively. 'I mean, who else would be interested?'\n\n'Take it all off your hands \u2013 one less thing to worry about,' agreed Freddie, shiftily avoiding my eyes.\n\nBut when I looked around the workshop again I discovered I didn't have any fight left in me. I really didn't care that much \u2013 and Tom wouldn't have seen it as anything other than a smart move by his friends.\n\nSo, reluctantly, I signed. They paid me cash from a wad of notes: I said they were rich. 'Do you want a pint or two of my blood as well?' I asked bitterly. 'Or a kidney, perhaps?'\n\n'Poor Lizzy,' Jimbo said sadly, 'I can see Tom's death was a huge shock to you. You're doing the best thing, putting all this behind you.'\n\n'Yes...' Freddie agreed, looking around again with more of a proprietorial air, 'once it's gone, you'll feel much happier, you'll see.'\n\n'Might as well load it up and take it all now,' Jimbo suggested. 'Where's the van parked, Lizzy?'\n\n'The van?' I repeated blankly.\n\n'Tom's van \u2013 the one we've just bought,' Jimbo said patiently.\n\n'But you didn't mention any van!'\n\n'Well, not as such, perhaps, but you did agree to sell us everything pertaining to the business, lock, stock and barrel.'\n\n'Two smoking barrels!' I said, woken out of apathy into indignation. 'Look, you've already screwed me over this deal, you can't possibly have expected to get Tom's van for four times that much!'\n\n'Lizzy, you don't know how big a favour we're doing you. Of course we only offered you that much money because of the van. It's worth more than the stuff in the shed,' Freddie began.\n\n'I know, because I bought it myself, out of the advance for the third of The Perseverance Chronicles! And anyway, you're too late: I've already disposed of it.'\n\nThey stared at me, aghast. 'Disposed!' they exclaimed as one.\n\n'If you're interested, it's down at Deals on Wheels.'\n\n'Deals on Wheels?' echoed Freddie.\n\n'The garage in the village. I swapped it for a Land Rover this morning, so the van is now the property of Dave Naylor. I suggest you go and talk to him, if you're still interested in it.'\n\nThey were not happy, but the van was legally my property and they couldn't do anything about my having already disposed of it, which certainly made me feel better. Eventually they stopped trying to browbeat me into getting it back and giving it to them, and went off to talk to Dave at the garage, saying they would be back later to empty the workshop.\n\n'Fine.'\n\n'Perhaps you could give us the key, so we don't have to disturb you again?'\n\n'Not until I've removed his personal things. The CD player and stuff like that.'\n\nBut when it came to it, there wasn't actually much in there that I cared to take, so when they came back again in Tom's van, which I'd hoped never to see again, I left them to it. I bet Dave struck a hard bargain, and serve them right, too.\n\nLater, I went to collect Jasper and Ginny in the Land Rover and when we got back the workshop doors swung open, and it was empty of life except for some curious hens, one of whom had laid an egg on the old easy chair among the burst stuffing.\n\nJasper and I have decided to sell Tom's insanely huge TV and buy a small one that he can take to university with him, along with his laptop \u2013 and I am going to put the money I got for Tom's workshop contents towards a computer and printer of my own.\n\n'Then you can bring me up to speed on using the internet and emailing before you go,' I suggested.\n\n'Good idea,' he agreed, 'your skills do need honing a bit. It's a pity we still only have dial-up connection, though, because it's really slow. Middlemoss must be the last area in Lancashire that hasn't got broadband yet.'\n\n'Miss Pym says we will get it by the New Year and anyway, slow suits me fine to start with,' I said, reflecting how much I had changed from the first days of my marriage when I hadn't even wanted a TV, to now carrying a mobile phone everywhere (even if I forgot to switch it on half the time) and accepting that a computer was going to have to be part of my everyday life.\n\nStill, adapt and survive...\n\nWhen it began to get dark I went out to shut everything up for the night and while coming back noticed that the light was on in the empty workshop.\n\nMy heart stopped dead for a moment, until reality set in and I thought it might be Freddie and Jimbo, returned in a fit of pique to make a thorough job of it. There were still the tattered old sofa and chairs, the ancient upright piano and the kettle, for instance. No resurrected Board Rigid van stood outside to load anything into, it was true, but I wouldn't have put it past them to have parked it on the road and sneaked in through the side gate.\n\nThen again, it could be Caz, curiosity stirred by the unlocked door; or ARG, setting dynamite charges. Even Mimi on the loose...\n\nI crept up to the open door and peeped in to find, to my astonishment, that the workshop was infested with Mummers. They weren't doing anything, just hanging about with an air of aimless expectancy, but when they saw me they drew together into a defensive, sheep-like huddle.\n\nOphelia was mumbling to herself as usual and I thought her pale froggy eyes were going to pop out altogether. 'Oh God! Oh God! It's her \u2013 she'll kill me \u2013 she'll kill me! Oh God!'\n\nI looked dispassionately at her. She was as limp and wet as seaweed and I was still finding it hard to square what Jasper had said about finding her and Tom in flagrante, with the reality of what she actually looked like. In fact, she has all the allure of a white blancmange, so it must have been simply availability allied with drink, or the demon weed. After the Leila\/Polly revelations it didn't seem of much moment anyway, unless she really was pregnant by him? Hard to tell, when she dresses in her own smocked garments most of the time.\n\n'Ophelia didn't mean what she said, yesterday,' Mick said hastily, his fingers fiddling with the blue feather in his hat. The three of them edged even closer together.\n\n'No, no-no-no!' whimpered Ophelia, while nodding rapidly.\n\n'She's not pregnant?'\n\n'No, she meant that bit.'\n\n'Tom loved me!' Ophelia said, but rather uncertainly.\n\n'Nah, we keep telling you \u2013 he just wanted a quick shag,' Jojo said brutally.\n\n'So the baby could be Tom's?' I asked him.\n\n'It could be anyone's \u2013 Caz Naylor's even.' They stared accusingly at her. 'Sleeping with the enemy!'\n\n'The enemy? Caz's your enemy?' I frowned over that one, but I suppose gamekeepers and rabid vegans are oil and water and shouldn't mix, though clearly at some point two of them had.\n\n'Well, come to that, it could be mine \u2013 or even yours,' Mick pointed out fair-mindedly to his friend.\n\n'Ooh!' moaned Ophelia, chewing her lip frantically like a mad albino rabbit, huge pink eyelids fluttering.\n\n'You've got around a bit,' I said to her, though feeling a bit sorry for her now Mick and Jojo were being so horrible. But Ophelia's having slept around was quite a good thing in a way from my point of view, because it seriously lessened the chances of the baby being Tom's. I supposed I would just have to await the outcome, and so would she.\n\n'Mr Pharamond's bound to put her out of her cottage, after what she said at the funeral,' Jojo suggested helpfully.\n\nOphelia wrung her hands and stared at me with the eyes of a mad martyr embracing her doom. 'Yes, yes, it's all my own fault and I deserve to be punished!'\n\nOh, good heavens, she wasn't another kinky one, was she? But then I sighed resignedly, for if there was any chance she was pregnant with Tom's child, I couldn't let her be turned out.\n\n'You two stop trying to stir things up,' I said severely to the men. 'Of course Roly won't give you notice, Ophelia \u2013 or at least not until after the baby's born. I'll speak to him about it, but I'm sure Mick and Jojo are quite wrong.'\n\n'Don't think he could do it, anyway,' Mick said belligerently. 'She's got her rights!'\n\n'Possibly not, but I don't think the question will arise. Anyway, what are you all doing here?'\n\nThey shifted uneasily again, looking around the near-empty workshop as though expecting something \u2013 or someone \u2013 to materialise out of the dark shadows.\n\n'He's not coming back, if that's what you're all waiting for,' I said evenly. 'Tom's played his last gig and you'll have to get a new singer: not that I thought he was much good, anyway.'\n\n'His voice harmonised with mine very well,' Ophelia blurted, then blushed as she caught my eye, like she usually did \u2013 as well she might. 'Oh God!'\n\n'And he wrote most of the lyrics to my tunes,' said Jojo, slowly turning the gold hoop in his ear as though tuning what remained of his brain.\n\n'No, actually, that was me,' I said incautiously and they stared. 'He used to hammer them out on the old piano and I'd try to fit words to them \u2013 just give you a base to work it up from, you know? I mean, they weren't really mine when you'd finished with them, because they evolved into something else \u2013 something better, usually.'\n\nFor at their best (after a pint or two of Mossbrown Ale), the Mummers sometimes acquired a near-Pentangle unity that was quite hypnotic. 'But the last couple of years, he didn't ask me to help him with them any more.'\n\n'Thought they'd gone off,' Mick, the one who looked like an escapee from The Clan of the Cave Bear, said. 'Can you sing, too?' he asked hopefully.\n\n'No.'\n\n'But\u2014'\n\n'Absolutely not,' I said firmly. 'Look, I don't mind if you want to come and keep using the workshop to practise in, as long as you don't bother me. But you'll have to find a new Mummer.' A thought struck me: 'Annie \u2013 you know Annie Vane, don't you?'\n\nThey nodded.\n\n'She pet-sits for an ex-pop singer who bought the old vicarage. Ritch Rainford, he's called and he's an actor now, playing a Victorian mill owner in that Cotton Common soap.'\n\n'Not Ritch Rainford from Climaxxx?' Miss Drippy said breathlessly. 'I thought that was just a story, that he'd bought the place. He's famous... but old,' she added belatedly.\n\n'Nah, he can't be much more than forty-five, at most,' Jojo said, giving her a dirty look and adjusting his bandanna over his bald spot to the point where it almost became a headscarf. It'd have to be the pirate look next, low down on the forehead. 'And he might want to keep his hand in, do a couple of gigs with us \u2013 worth asking... Good to talk to him, you know?'\n\n'You do that,' I agreed.\n\n'But would the Mysteries Committee let us play for them, if one of us wasn't from the Mosses?' said the girl. 'You know how stuffy they are about second-homers. I shouldn't think he lives here all the time.'\n\n'I don't know, Ophelia, but you could ask. It's not like you're performing in the plays and have to go to all the rehearsals, is it? Just incidental music and filling in between scenes.'\n\n'Olivia,' she corrected me.\n\n'What?'\n\n'My name's Olivia, not Ophelia.'\n\n'Oh?' That was a surprise, but I fear due to her water-dipped appearance she will forever remain Ophelia in my mind. It seemed to strike a chord with the other two as well.\n\n'Suits you,' Jojo said, and Mick agreed.\n\n'Why not change your name \u2013 new name, new start?'\n\n'Yeah! Ophelia Locke \u2013 cool,' she agreed, brightening slightly. 'I'll do it! Ophelia... Ophelia... Ophelia.'\n\nLoopy Locke, more like.\n\n'Looks different in here, somehow, without Tom,' Jojo remarked intelligently.\n\n'That's because I've sold the surfboard business and all the stuff's gone,' I said patiently. 'Look, Jojo, here's a key to the workshop \u2013 I've got a spare. It'll save you asking for it if it's locked, and you can leave equipment here safely if you want to.'\n\n'Thanks,' he said and, giving my arm an earnest squeeze, added, 'And, you know, anything you want \u2013 do anything we can...' He trailed off, made earnest eye contact and let me go.\n\n'Ophelia Locke...' whispered Miss Drippy in an ecstatic undertone. There were brown rabbits stencilled on the pockets of her smock.\n\nWatership Down has a lot to answer for.\n\n## Chapter 12: Just Desserts\n\nAs you will see in the preface, life took a sad turn here at Perseverance Cottage with the sudden loss of the Inconstant Gardener. However, my friends are all rallying round to divert my mind from unhappy thoughts, especially my fellow members of the Christmas Pudding Circle.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nLess than a week had passed since the funeral, yet with disconcerting rapidity summer had slid into September and what passed for normal life resumed. Even when Tom had been home he'd never played much part in the family rounds, so his absence was not really missed, insofar as you would miss a ticking time bomb.\n\nJasper seems to be feeling much the same, though it didn't help that half the time Mimi forgot what had happened and we had to explain it to her all over again.\n\nWe made an expedition to buy the laptop and printer Jasper thought I should have and then he set me up a little workstation in the window of the sitting room, which provided at least a temporary distraction for his thoughts.\n\nStill, at least Jasper could escape to the dig every day and I had way too much to do to brood, for the garden had taken advantage of my lack of attention to burgeon forth into a burst of flowerings and fruitings like a butterfly dancing along the edge of winter. I was harvesting and bartering the excess, bottling tomato chutney and pickling shallots.\n\nThis morning the members of the CPC all went to Faye's farm again for the meeting, since she wanted us to taste the Christmas ice creams she was developing \u2013 and it turned out she had also managed to produce the perfect brandy-butter one, too! I think it will be a lovely change with the Christmas pudding and we have all ordered a tub each.\n\n'Thank you all for helping me with the buffet for the funeral too,' I said, when we had settled down to the coffee and gossip part of things. 'I don't know how I would have managed without you.'\n\n'That's all right \u2013 what are friends for, if not to help each other?' Marian said, and the others murmured agreement.\n\n'There were certainly a few eye-opening revelations about Tom, weren't there?' Miss Pym said forthrightly. 'Neither that French wife of Nick Pharamond's nor Polly Darke appear to have any moral code whatsoever!'\n\n'Or Ophelia Locke,' Faye pointed out.\n\n'I don't think you can entirely blame Ophelia \u2013 she's obviously a sandwich short of a picnic,' Annie said generously.\n\n'No, and I do feel a bit sorry for her, even if she is exasperatingly silly,' I agreed. 'I've persuaded Unks not to evict her from her estate cottage.'\n\n'It's a pity it's not in his power to evict Polly Darke from her house though, isn't it?' Marian suggested. 'She's been seen everywhere, dressed in weirdest widow's black, playing for the sympathy vote.'\n\n'Well, she won't get it from any of us,' Annie said. 'In fact, she's not at all liked locally.'\n\n'She asks me every year if she can take part in the Mystery Play,' Marian said, 'and I turn her down. She's just attention-seeking.'\n\n'I'm glad my part is small,' Faye said, who was currently playing Mary Magdalen. 'I hate getting up in front of all those people.'\n\n'Me too,' I agreed. 'I saw Gary Naylor the other day and he said he was going to be Jesus again.'\n\n'Oh yes,' Marian said. 'He made quite a good job of it last year, once we'd persuaded him out of wearing black during his scenes, especially those big boots with all the metal studs.'\n\n'Jasper says he's an Emo,' I explained.\n\n'What's an Emo?' asked Faye.\n\n'Sort of a gloomier Goth, I think.'\n\n'Only a year older than Jasper, isn't he?' Miss Pym said. 'Expect he will grow out of it soon. He was a good boy at school... and speaking of which, term starts again next week, so I will soon be rehearsing the little animals for the Noah scene.'\n\nMiss Pym must be long past official retirement age and they are too afraid to tell her, but though she now only works part-time, she is still very much in control of the small infants' school and, I suspect, always will be.\n\nJasper and I agreed that there was nothing to beat a supper of globe artichokes with a little pot of melted butter for dipping, and fresh bread and cheese, with blackberry fluff and cream to follow.\n\nOne afternoon I was out in the garden waging a Canute-like attempt to assert my authority over Nature, when the vicar visited me.\n\nWhile Gareth ostensibly came to see how I was going on and offer comfort and a shoulder to cry on, should I need it, I quickly discerned that he really wanted to talk about Annie. So I told him all about our long friendship, dating back to our schooldays at St Mattie's, where she was hockey captain and my best subject was Nature Studies, and the French cookery course we did afterwards in London.\n\n'Neither of us was academic, you see. After the course we worked for a party catering firm for a couple of months, until I married Tom and she came home to live in Middlemoss.'\n\n'And now she has her own pet-minding business?'\n\n'Yes, and it's very successful,' I said, and told him what a lovely, trusting person Annie was, even after being jilted practically at the altar several years ago, when her fianc\u00e9 ran off with one of the prospective bridesmaids. Then I pointed out her many activities within the parish.\n\n'Of course,' I added casually, tossing a handful of weeds into the wheelbarrow, 'the way to Annie's heart is through her love of dogs. She even puts in several hours a week as a voluntary helper at the RSPCA kennels.'\n\nGareth left carrying bags of salad vegetables and runner beans, and looking thoughtful, so I hoped I'd planted some idea of how to win her affections: now the ball was in his court.\n\nHe was very nice in a serious and terribly good way, so I thought they would be very well suited. I couldn't give my best friend in marriage to just any old eligible bachelor, he had to be Mr Right. Or, in this case, Mr Bright.\n\nThis could be just the right moment for him to make his move, too, for I'd got the impression lately that Annie was finding Ritch Rainford disconcerting, now her initial bedazzlement was wearing off. She'd never had one of her fantasy men become flesh before.\n\nIf Gareth played his cards right, she could very well rebound quite happily into his arms.\n\nAnnie had managed all the Posh Pet-sitting stuff herself since the funeral, but I told her I could cope now if she needed help. So the following morning I walked Delphine Lake's three little dogs, who were very glad to see me, because Delphine's idea of a walk is from the car into the house.\n\nThen I went to collect a cat from the vet's surgery and returned it to the owner \u2013 or rather, the owner's au pair, who didn't seem very pleased to have it back. But I expect once it had got over its indignant rage at being confined in a carrying box it would soon calm down. How weirdly vocal Siamese cats are!\n\nOn the way home I popped in at Annie's little terraced cottage again to see if anything else needed doing, and found her making a chart of her Posh Pet-sitting for the next fortnight, with different coloured stars for the regular customers and fluorescent spots for the one-offs \u2013 very organised. Even the keys for houses where she lets herself in were starred and spotted to match.\n\n'I see Ritch Rainford's bagged all the gold stars,' I commented, having made us each a cup of coffee.\n\n'Well, he is our major celebrity so far,' she said defensively. 'And he seems to be turning into a regular customer, though he doesn't give me much notice. He's terribly casual \u2013 handed out the keys and the code for the burglar alarm to me and his new cleaning lady before he really knew us at all.'\n\n'Who has he got cleaning for him?'\n\n'Dora Tombs. She's a Naylor \u2013 niece or great-niece of Ted, the gardener up at the Hall.'\n\n'We Naylors get everywhere, like Mile-a-Minute.'\n\n'I think you're more of a rambling rose than a Russian Vine,' she said kindly.\n\nA brazen strand of hair fell into her eyes, and she pushed it back and clamped it down with a white Scottie dog hairslide. She has no taste: even the smock she was wearing over her cord trousers and T-shirt had dogs stencilled around the bottom and made her look like a pregnant bun loaf.\n\n'What on earth are you wearing?' I demanded. 'Isn't that one of Ophelia Locke's little creations?'\n\n'Yes. The big pockets are really useful and it wasn't expensive. She sells most of them at those historical re-enactment fairs, but she printed one with dogs as a special order for me.'\n\n'It does nothing for your figure,' I told her frankly.\n\n'I haven't got a figure.'\n\n'Yes, you have, an hourglass one with a very small waist. But that thing doesn't go in in the middle at all. You look entirely globular. Take it from me, it's a mistake.'\n\n'It's very practical, which is why I wanted it,' she said defensively. 'Anyway, no one is interested in my figure.' Then she blushed underneath all the little freckles.\n\n'Come clean, obviously someone's interested! Tell Auntie Lizzy,' I said encouragingly. Had Gareth actually made his move already?\n\n'They're \u2013 he \u2013 he's not really, it's just that he can't seem to take his eyes off my bust when I'm wearing a T-shirt,' she confessed. 'So I feel happier covered up.'\n\n'What, the vicar?' I exclaimed.\n\nShe looked at me as if I'd run mad. 'The vicar? Of course not, Lizzy! No, I meant Ritch Rainford. I thought he was lovely at first, so charming and amazingly handsome. Only there's something in his eyes when he's talking to me and everything he says seems to have some kind of innuendo in it... and... well, I'm simply not used to that kind of thing. It makes me feel very gauche and uncomfortable, though I'm sure he doesn't mean anything by his manner, it's just his way.'\n\n'Oh? So he's turned out to be mad, bad and dangerous to know?'\n\n'It's just me being silly and not knowing what to say back, I expect. For instance, when I was bending over patting Flo the other day he walked into the kitchen and stared at my chest, then said, \"You don't get many of those to the pound!\" I simply didn't know where to put myself.'\n\nI choked. 'Oh dear! That was very rude and un-PC of him.'\n\n'Yes, but you would have known what to say to him, wouldn't you?'\n\n'Probably. Or socked him one.'\n\n'I find I just \u2013 just don't want to go there any more in case he's in, although Flo is a very nice dog.'\n\n'Then don't go! I'll do his pet-sitting instead. He knows you've got an assistant, doesn't he?'\n\n'Oh, yes. But, Lizzy, he might be even worse with you, because you're so pretty!'\n\n'I'm not pretty at all, you daft lump,' I said, surprised. 'My hair is a really boring light brown colour and I'm way too tall! So don't worry, I can deal with him, no problem. Some of Tom's friends were rather oddball too, don't forget. So hand over his keys and pass on any requests for pet-sitting \u2013 I'll sort him.'\n\n'Well, actually, Lizzy, he wants me to go in to walk and feed Flo tonight, because he's out at some party until late. But then Gareth \u2013 the vicar \u2013 suddenly asked me to dinner and I said yes without thinking, so now I don't know what to do.'\n\n'He has? There, I knew he fancied you. I could tell at the Mystery Play Committee meeting, and he made a beeline for you at the funeral feast!'\n\n'No, of course he doesn't fancy me,' she protested, blushing again. 'I can't imagine how you got that idea!'\n\n'So, why has he invited you to dinner, then?'\n\n'We just sort of got chatting earlier. He was admiring Trinny and said he would love another dog \u2013 his last one died of old age just before he moved here. Isn't that sad? Only he's out such a lot he doesn't feel it would be fair just at the moment. So I told him about the kennels and the rescue dogs and how they always needed people to walk them, and he said he would come with me whenever he has time. So then he asked me if I would have dinner with him and help him understand what he's supposed to be doing with the Mystery Play and village things like that. There's a lot for him to take in, coming into somewhere like Middlemoss.'\n\n'There certainly is,' I agreed, 'especially pitchforked straight into a stranger's funeral, poor man. But he's quite right; who better than the former vicar's daughter to help him make sense of it? But don't wear the smock.'\n\n'Of course not!' she protested, then added thoughtfully, 'He's very good-looking, isn't he?'\n\nWhile I was glad to see she'd stopped mooning over Ritch Rainford and transferred her interest to Gareth, I couldn't help but feel that calling him good-looking was pushing it a bit, unless you particularly fancied knobbly, flame-haired, blue-eyed, lanky men who didn't seem to be fully in control of their limbs.\n\nIf something comes of this, their children will all be ginger-nuts (though perhaps they will raise a family of rescue dogs instead).\n\n'He's delightful,' I agreed, hastily banishing my mental picture of their possible progeny. 'And don't worry about Mr Rainford: I'm not afraid of the big bad wolf.'\n\nWhen I got home the latest Mosses Messenger with my advert in it had been pushed through the door, and there were two messages on the answering machine. I seemed very popular, suddenly.\n\nThe first was from Nick, saying he was finally returning from London, though why he thought I would be interested in his movements I don't know. Or what he thought I would do with the postcard of Camden Lock, with 'Sorry!' and a recipe for jellied eels scrawled on the back, which arrived the other day. I couldn't possibly eat eels \u2013 they're too snaky. And what was he sorry about? Leila and the permanently absent Tom are the ones who should be sorry!\n\n'Hi, Lizzy, I'm on my way back,' Nick's deep voice said. 'Things took longer than I expected because I couldn't persuade Leila I really didn't want any of her precious assets, even after her solicitor drew up an agreement for me to sign, until I stuck his ebony paperknife in my thumb and signed in blood. A bit melodramatic, perhaps, but it seemed to do the trick.'\n\nThere was a pause, then his voice resumed with just a hint of rueful laughter in it, 'OK, very melodramatic. And the solicitor didn't seem to want the knife back \u2013 said I could keep it as a souvenir. Anyway, the divorce is on its way, a clean split, and no claims on each other's property or earnings. We never shared anything anyway, so that makes it easier. Oh, and it's all given me an idea for a recipe. Got any raspberries, or am I too late?' The message clicked off.\n\nRaspberries?\n\nThe second message, from my agent, Senga McDonald, was short and to the point. After drumming her fingers and humming a brief snatch of 'Will ye no' come back again?' she said, 'Lizzy? Can you send me the new Chronicle, pronto? Only Crange and Snicket want it right now, and your sales figures aren't so good that you can afford to miss your deadlines. You did say you'd finished it and it just needed a polish, so slap it into the post right this minute!'\n\nWell, don't stop the carnival on my account, even if I have only been widowed for five minutes! I thought.\n\nStill, it was as finished as it would ever be. I only needed to read through it and make final corrections before it went off. But I was starting to wonder if I would ever finish another Chronicle, because I was not exactly hitting my target of four pages a day any more and said as much to Senga when she rang me back later to make sure I'd got her message, and was obeying orders.\n\n'Oh, don't worry your wee head about that one just now. I've had a brainwave and sold Crange and Snicket on the idea of a collected book of your recipes and hints, with the odd anecdote thrown in. They think it's a great idea \u2013 they're going to call it Just Desserts. Shouldn't take you too long to do, should it? Toss in some new recipes to liven it up.'\n\nI stared at the receiver as if it had bitten me, while her voice rolled inexorably on.\n\n'What? When? I mean, when do they want it?' I broke in urgently, when she stopped for breath.\n\n'Oh, not until early next year \u2013 January, say. Loads of time. Now, have you put that manuscript in the post?'\n\n'Tomorrow,' I promised. 'I'm just making final corrections and I might have to reprint a few pages later.'\n\n'See you do \u2013 I'll be expecting it. Send a copy directly to Crange and Snicket, too.'\n\n'I've got my own computer now and I'm getting going with it, so I'll be able to email the next book to you, instead of posting it,' I told her, because she'd made it pretty plain that she and the publishers would prefer my books that way, rather than printed out and posted. I'd simply have to move with the times if I want to stay published.\n\n'Well, welcome to the twenty-first century at last!' she said sarcastically and rang off.\n\nIt was just as well I would be able to print my own pages off, too, because I'd just remembered that Jasper wasn't going to be home until late. He was going straight to Liverpool with a friend after he finished work at the dig.\n\nNot, of course, that he'd ever objected to my using his laptop and printer; it had just seemed like a personal intrusion to use them when he wasn't there.\n\nI wandered rather aimlessly round the kitchen for a few minutes, then dolloped clotted cream and raspberry jam onto some meringue halves I made yesterday with leftover egg whites.\n\nThey were so yummy I ate six, and I think I'll put them in the latest Chronicle and Just Desserts as an alternative to scone cream teas.\n\nI did try to read through the manuscript, but I just couldn't concentrate and found myself staring blankly at the same page. Eventually I gave up temporarily and went to do a bit of gardening instead. I picked loads of strawberries and even a few raspberries \u2013 everything was still burgeoning forth like nobody's business. I wished someone would tell my garden it was time to start winding down into autumn and taking it easy.\n\nAs I worked I thought about Ophelia Locke, also burgeoning forth with a baby that might just possibly be Tom's. But whoever the father proved to be, the poor little thing was trying to grow on a vegan diet and I wasn't sure Ophelia was capable of seeing it got enough of the right nutrients.\n\nWith a resigned sigh I fetched a big wicker basket from the outbuilding, and began to pack it with fresh fruit and salad vegetables, a bunch of baby carrots, eggs and ripe tomatoes. Then I set off up through the woods to Ophelia's estate cottage.\n\nLike me, she lives right next to the boundary wall of the estate, so it would have been quicker to walk up the road, but not as pretty as the woodland paths, or as cool. The sky was a brazen blue and it was Indian summer hot.\n\nOphelia had attached a nameplate to her front door that said 'Whitesmocks', but whether she meant that as a name or a description of her way of making a living, was unclear. There was unlikely to be any passing trade interested in purchasing antique-style clothing down here anyway, since her only next-door neighbour was the old and very deaf gardener who was Mimi's sparring partner and occasional accomplice in plant larceny, and I couldn't see Ted taking to smocks. Caz's cottage was quite nearby, only set further back in the woods in isolation, on the other side of a small stream bridged by mossy, ancient slabs of stone.\n\n'Oh God!' Ophelia said predictably, opening the door and staring at me, 'Oh, no, oh God!' and fell to chewing her lower lip.\n\nOh, my ears and whiskers!\n\n'Hello, Ophelia,' I said bracingly. 'Can I come in? Only I've brought you some spare fruit, vegetables and salad stuff, which will do you good. And eggs, though I wasn't sure if you ate those.'\n\nShe fell back rather reluctantly and I stepped straight down the one worn step into the tiny living room. It smelled of unbleached calico and herbal tea. A sewing machine was set up by the window, and white material was festooned everywhere. A clothes rack on castors crammed with the finished product swayed slightly in the breeze from the open door.\n\n'That's kind \u2013 that's so kind!' she said, and for a horrible moment I thought she was going to burst into tears or embrace me, or something equally embarrassing. Instead, she wrung her hands and stared at me despairingly. 'But Ted, the old gardener next door, he says that Mr Pharamond will give me notice to quit the cottage because I was... well, he won't want me here.'\n\n'No, didn't you get my message? I've spoken to him and he's no intention of throwing you out, so you don't need to worry about that. We'll see what happens after the baby arrives \u2013 which will be when, do you think?'\n\n'I don't know really \u2013 January, maybe?' she said vaguely. 'I didn't realise I was pregnant for ages and then I thought I'd just sort of wait and see...'\n\nI frowned. 'Wait and see what? Have you visited your doctor?'\n\n'Oh, no! I believe nature should take its course. One of my friends will come for the birthing.'\n\n'The birthing? Come on, Ophelia, this isn't the Dark Ages! You need to see a doctor and have the baby in hospital. Nature's way may turn out to be pre-eclampsia, or something like that.'\n\nShe stopped chewing her lower lip and looked stubborn.\n\n'I hope you're eating well, anyway? Couldn't you give up the vegan stuff for the duration?'\n\n'Vegan is healthy. There are lots of vegan mothers.'\n\n'Then make sure you vary your diet as much as you can. I'll keep leaving you fresh fruit and vegetables on your doorstep every week, a bit like one of those organic delivery services.'\n\n'You don't have to,' she began, blinking nervously. Her big pink eyelids reminded me of those festooned blinds.\n\n'No, but I want to. Whatever you did isn't the baby's fault, is it?'\n\n'Noooo...' she muttered, walking backwards until she was half-enveloped among the hanging smocks. 'No, no, no!'\n\n'There you are then, that's settled,' I said soothingly, following her and thrusting the basket into her arms.\n\n'I'll \u2013 I'll unload this, so you can have it back!' she gasped and, fighting her way out of the folds of material, escaped into the lean-to kitchen.\n\nI looked in from the doorway. Although basic, it was at least clean and tidy, though yet more eternal rabbits had been stencilled everywhere. On the little gate-leg table lay a roll of familiar-looking recycled yellow paper, a big black felt-tip pen and a coil of silvery gaffer tape \u2013 and something clicked in my head.\n\n'Ophelia, when Jojo and Mick said you'd been sleeping with the enemy, meaning Caz Naylor, did they mean because you three are all members of ARG?'\n\nShe dropped the bunch of baby carrots. 'No, no no... not me. Not us. No, I\u2014'\n\n'You're a terrible liar,' I said dispassionately. 'I recognise the paper on the table from the posters you put on my barn and my car \u2013 and even over my front door!'\n\n'No, no, no!' she jabbered, backing away, her prominent eyes starting. It is a pity she didn't say 'no' more often when men were around; it would have saved her a lot of trouble.\n\n'Yes, yes, yes,' I said firmly, quite certain now. 'So, Ophelia, let's get this straight: you're living here on the Pharamond estate and, as a member of ARG, targeting not only the owner of that estate but also his gamekeeper, with whom you've been having an affair?'\n\n'Oh, no! He \u2013 we didn't! Or only once, when Caz caught me putting up a banner on the Hall gates and... and I don't know what came over me! But I said I wouldn't go with him again, because he was evil and persecuted the poor woodland creatures!' she whimpered.\n\n'Once?'\n\n'Or... maybe twice... three times,' she conceded, which reminded me of the joke about only being unfaithful once, with the Household Cavalry. 'And Caz's not really murdering the grey squirrels, he catches them and takes them away!' she said earnestly. 'I still have to put the posters up, though, because the Pharamonds are on the ARG hit list, but Caz takes them straight back down again, like he was doing with the ones at your place.'\n\n'I suppose you might have some kind of case for targeting Caz and the estate, though it's a pretty shaky one to my way of thinking, but none at all for me. I mean, there are battery hen farmers and goodness knows what else in the area. Why?'\n\n'S-someone said that you were cruelly exploiting your hens and the poor little quail, but when I said I wouldn't do it unless ARG told me to, this person made me do it...'\n\nI frowned, while she stood there wringing the feathery stems of the carrots between her hands. I'm not entirely sure I'd trust her with a small baby when she's overwrought. 'So someone made you target me? Who? And how? Do they know something about you?'\n\n'No \u2013 yes, oh God!' Ophelia went white. 'If ARG find out I've been targeting someone not on the hit list, I'll be expelled from the organisation!'\n\n'Jolly good idea, especially in your condition. Who exactly is this person with a spite against me?'\n\nShe pressed her lips together firmly and said nothing.\n\n'You know,' I said to her severely, 'there are better and perfectly legal ways of campaigning for animal rights, aimed at the people who really do abuse animals...'\n\nThen I remembered something I'd read in the local paper. 'Ophelia, were you involved in that big raid at the end of last year, on the lab rat farm over near Skem?'\n\nIf possible, she went even paler. 'Nooo...' she moaned. 'I wasn't there \u2013 she didn't see me \u2013 there wasn't any proof!'\n\n'Ah, I see. So it's a she, and she knows you were involved in that raid?'\n\nShe moaned again. 'I was the last into the back of the van and her headlights caught me.'\n\n'Don't you all wear masks, or something?'\n\n'I forgot my balaclava and the scarf slipped,' she said rather sulkily. 'But now Caz says I don't have to do anything she says any more, because he's got something on her, so she can't make me \u2013 and now I know the truth about her, I wouldn't anyway!'\n\n'So Caz knows all about it, and who this person threatening you is?' I said, trying to disentangle her sometimes cryptic and convoluted utterances. I had a growing suspicion that I knew who it was now, too.\n\n'He already knew most of it, he'd been watching me... following me! He made me tell him everything,' she said, blushing.\n\nI didn't ask how. 'At least Caz seems willing to take some responsibility for you.'\n\nShe went pink and looked away. 'He's not so bad really \u2013 not now I know what he does with the squirrels.'\n\n'What does he do with the squirrels?' I asked, then added quickly: 'No, don't tell me, I don't really want to know!'\n\nShe snivelled. 'I thought Tom loved me, I really did, but I see now it's just like Jojo and Mick said: I was a handy bonk.'\n\n'At least you seem to have grasped the realities of the situation,' I agreed. 'I suppose it's none of my business, but since Caz rescued you the other day after the funeral, he must care about you.'\n\n'He's furious with me for making a scene and saying that about... about Tom,' she whispered, twisting a strand of dishwater-blond hair around her fingers. 'Only I was so angry, hearing those two going on as if they meant something to him, when I was the one who was pregnant!'\n\n'And did Tom really say he loved you?' I asked curiously.\n\n'He said I knew how he felt about me, and so I thought he meant he loved me. But he wasn't any different to me afterwards \u2013 and sometimes he could be very cruel, even though he didn't really mean it!'\n\n'Yes, I know.' I wondered how many times Jojo, Mick and Caz had... No, even I couldn't ask that, though it seemed that the odds on it being Tom's baby were at least three to one. We would just have to await the birth and guess. Or do DNA tests, or something. If it were Caz's, I suspect the entire Naylor clan would instantly know it anyway, in a very Midwich cuckoo way, just like they recognised me the second they saw me.\n\nI walked home, thoughtfully swinging the basket. Someone had been angry or jealous enough of me to force Ophelia to include Perseverance Cottage in the ARG campaign, which was an act of petty spitefulness. And when it came down to it, I could only think of one likely person.\n\nI'd love to know what Caz has got on her, but I don't suppose he would tell me even if I asked.\n\n## Chapter 13: Raspberries\n\nSeptember means the last of the late-fruiting raspberries and picking blackberries for jams, crumbles and wines, and the making of damson gin by Miss Pym, one of the CPC members, to a secret family recipe. It is so delicious that the barter rate is very high!\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nWhen I got home Nick's car was there and he was just walking out of one of the outbuildings, brushing light-coloured feathers off his sleeve. When he saw me he stopped dead and looked slightly taken aback, though goodness knows why: it was my house, after all.\n\n'Oh, hi, Lizzy! I was just talking to Caz.'\n\nI expect he meant that literally, since he was unlikely to get a complete sentence in exchange, let alone a conversation. Caz often makes me feel like a Shakespearean actor embarking on a long monologue, although of course he does nod, shake his head or scratch his nose from time to time.\n\n'It was kind of you to let him have that big freezer to store stuff in,' he added, carefully closing the door behind him.\n\n'Well, why not? I wasn't using it any more now I don't grow so much. The other one in the larder is quite enough.' I turned to lead the way to the cottage, since I was hot and thirsty after my walk. 'God knows what he puts in it, but I've a horrible feeling it might be all those grey squirrels from the humane traps.'\n\n'Oh, no, not squirrels,' he assured me, so I assume Caz had let him see into it, which was quite a relief, really. I expect it is just rabbits and stuff, for the pot. (And I thought again what a strange mismatch it was that vegan, animal rights Ophelia and carnivore Caz should ever have come together!)\n\n'I've been downsizing the fruit and vegetable production for nearly two years, ever since I realised I was going to have to leave Perseverance Cottage. Only now, of course, I don't have to. Unks is so kind.'\n\nHe followed me into the kitchen and leaned against the fridge, arms folded and glowering darkly, like Mr Rochester in a strop. 'I hadn't realised things were quite so bad between you. You should have told me. Caz says when he's been down here in the evenings he's heard Tom being really abusive.'\n\nThat accounts for the feeling I often got that our arguments had an audience \u2013 and also why Unks was not surprised that I had intended to leave Tom, because Caz must have given him a hint. I really should draw the downstairs curtains more, though you tend to forget when other houses don't overlook you. But who knows when Caz might be flitting past on his nocturnal activities?\n\n'I was suspicious when you had that bruise on your face and were so evasive about how you got it,' Nick said.\n\n'That wasn't intentional! He was never physically violent \u2013 what sort of doormat do you take me for? I'd have left immediately with Jasper if he'd tried anything like that,' I said indignantly.\n\n'No, sorry, I expect you would. But I also thought you might have told me what was going on.'\n\n'It was none of your business. What could you have done?'\n\n'Probably made things worse,' he admitted ruefully. 'It was pretty clear that Tom didn't want me around here the last few years, so I thought you both might patch things up if I gave you a wide berth.'\n\n'No, things just steadily got worse. Do you want some ginger beer?' I offered, as a peace-making gesture. The top came off and it fizzed gently into glasses. I simply love the sensation when the bubbles get up the back of your nose and ginger explodes in your head.\n\n'I still think you could have told me things were so bad that you were going to leave him, Lizzy.'\n\n'Like when?' I demanded. 'I could hardly have bellowed out the information while we were all sitting round the dining table up at the Hall over a Sunday lunch, with Tom turning on the charm for Roly's benefit, and you in and out of the kitchen worrying over the roast beef and whether the horseradish sauce was just a trifle too \"piquant\". Maybe I should have sent you a postcard?'\n\nHe ran a hand through his black hair so that it stood up like a cockatoo's crest and said more reasonably, 'After what you said at the hospital, I thought it was best to distance myself a bit \u2013 especially after Tom accused me of having had an affair with you.'\n\n'He did? I hadn't realised... But did you also know he suspected Jasper was yours?'\n\n'Yes, but I told him he was mad, so I hoped he'd quickly come to his senses.'\n\n'Well, you might have told me that you knew.'\n\n'I wasn't sure how much he'd said to you, so I thought it better not. And, of course, I didn't know then that my wife was having an affair with him,' Nick added. 'But when I found him in Leila's restaurant that night it all sort of clicked into place, even though she denied it.' He looked sombrely at me. 'Perhaps he only started the affair in the first place to get revenge on me for something he imagined I'd done \u2013 and I'm sorry she made that scene at the funeral, Lizzy.'\n\n'Well, it wasn't your fault, was it?'\n\n'No, but I brought her, and I knew she was still lying when she insisted there was nothing between them, although I didn't know then why she wouldn't agree to the divorce.'\n\n'And then it turns out she was sharing Tom with Polly Darke, and Ophelia Locke was the slightly wilted side salad! Oh \u2013 you did hear about Ophelia's revelations \u2013 the pregnancy?'\n\nHe nodded. 'Roly says she's deranged and invented it.'\n\n'No, but she deluded herself into thinking a quickie meant something deeper. She seems very naive for her age. There's a good chance the baby isn't Tom's, though. We'll have to wait and see.'\n\n'She's spread her favours a bit?'\n\n'I don't think she's capable of saying no. But at least Ophelia is just credulous and silly, while with Polly and Leila it all boils down to greed and self-interest, doesn't it?' I said sadly. 'And the ironic thing is that Tom thought Unks was going to leave him the cottage outright when he died, and even I could have told him that he would never have split the estate up like that!'\n\n'No, and I'm afraid my poor father scuppered his chances of inheriting by giving us his plans for turning Pharamond Hall into apartments,' Nick said ruefully.\n\n'I expect Unks will leave it to you, because you wouldn't do that to it, would you?'\n\n'No, of course not! I love it the way it is. And actually, Roly says he is leaving it to me, though keep that to yourself. Which means that I do have every right to worry about your welfare, if only because you live on the estate,' he added. 'And that, I suppose, puts Jasper in line as next heir, by rights, since it's not entailed.'\n\nI stared at him. 'Don't you dare put that idea into his head! You'll remarry, probably to some young, skinny model type like that photographer who came to the Hall last year for that feature on you \u2013 Lydia, was it? \u2013 and have a multitude of children.'\n\n'I don't think so,' he said shortly.\n\n'Famous last words. Well, I'm certainly not getting married again. It's the single life for me from now on. Pretty much as before, really, only without the threat of intermittent verbal abuse hanging over me.'\n\n'And I married a woman who was so territorially defensive she insisted on keeping her own flat on and pencilled me into her schedule if I wanted to see her! But now Leila and I are divorcing, I'll be spending most of my time up here in Middlemoss. I might even sell my London flat, because Roly never uses it, he prefers his club. I send most of my work in by email these days, so I can base myself anywhere.'\n\nNick picked up his glass and absently drank his ginger beer down in one go, which made his eyes water because it's good, strong, peppery stuff. 'My God, you are just so Enid Blyton at times, Lizzy! Aren't you going to offer me a sticky bun and an adventure, too?'\n\n'No, but there are Choconut Consolations in that tin, if you want one?'\n\n'No, thanks, you know I don't like sugary stuff much.' He finally sat down, uninvited, on a spindly old kitchen chair that groaned slightly. 'Lizzy, didn't it occur to you that Unks would have been sympathetic if you'd told him what was going on? He would certainly have helped you and Jasper to find somewhere else to live, for instance.'\n\n'Since Tom was always his old, charming self to me whenever Unks or anyone else was around, I wasn't sure he would believe me! And I didn't want to tell him about the affair, especially since I had no idea who it was... and \u2013 Oh, Nick, I'm so sorry!' I exclaimed. 'I keep forgetting it was Leila.'\n\n'Among others. And I don't really care any more, except on your account. I've been trying to get her to agree to a divorce for ages, so one good thing has come out of all this.'\n\n'The last couple of years with Tom have been fairly hellish, but all's well that ends well... though I suppose I shouldn't say that when it is Tom's death that's made everything come right. It makes me feel so mixed up \u2013 guilty and relieved and sad, all at once...' I sniffed and took a gulp of ginger beer.\n\nBeing Nick, he didn't rush to comfort me, but instead said bracingly, 'Time to move on, for both of us. And since I'm going to be around a whole lot more from now on, if you want any help with anything, you only have to ask.'\n\n'Thank you, that's very kind. But I do most of the work here myself and, as I said, I've scaled things down. In fact, Jasper's put the details of the big greenhouse up on the Freecycle website to see if anyone will dismantle it and take it away, and I've put an advert in the parish magazine about the quail. I'm selling that enormous TV of Tom's, too.'\n\n'Didn't you throw the TV controller into Tom's grave?'\n\n'Yes, but Jasper had one of those universal ones all the time, so he could watch the History Channel on the big screen when Tom was away.'\n\nI took another sip of ginger beer and reached for the biscuit tin. 'At least I got rid of the goats years ago, when they learned how to climb trees.'\n\nHe gave me a scathing look. 'Goats can't climb trees, Lizzy!'\n\n'You obviously don't know much about goats. And you wouldn't believe how strong they are! If a goat sets its mind on going somewhere, there's not a lot you can do to stop it. Anyway, I never did get used to goat-flavoured milk and yoghurt and I thought the cheese tasted like brown soap.'\n\n'What are you going to do with Tom's business?'\n\n'That's already sorted,' I said, taking a crunchy bite of Choconut Consolation. 'The day after the funeral two of Tom's friends, Jimbo and Freddie \u2013 do you remember them? \u2013 came and made me an offer for everything, and I accepted it. I could have got much more, but I wanted to... well, I wanted to just get rid of it all! They got a really good deal, but the funny thing is that they assumed Tom's van was included, only I'd already swapped it with Dave Naylor for that Land Rover in the yard, so they had to go and buy it back!'\n\n'Really, Lizzy, you should have left all that to me. I'd have got you a good price for everything!' he said, not seeming at all amused.\n\n'It's none of your business,' I said tartly as a few faint, plangent notes wafted across the courtyard and through the open kitchen door.\n\n'What the hell's that?' he demanded, startled. 'It seems to be coming from the workshop!'\n\n'It's just the Mummers of Invention, Nick. I let them carry on using the workshop to practise in. I wasn't using it.'\n\nHe gazed blankly at me. 'But Ophelia Locke is\u2014'\n\n'Pregnant with Tom's child? Chances are it isn't his, but I think she was more sinned against than sinning because she's so very easy and persuadable. Gullible, even. I've just been up to her cottage to take her some spare fruit and veg to build her up a bit, but if I'd known she was coming down here tonight she could have taken it back with her.'\n\n'You're crackers!'\n\nThis didn't seem to be the moment to tell him she was also one of the members of ARG who'd been targeting my cottage and the estate. Anyway, she'd said she'd stopped now and I expect Caz would make sure she did.\n\n'Strangely enough, I suspect Ophelia's half in love with Caz, only she doesn't want to admit it,' I said, following that train of thought.\n\n'Is she? Well, they do say that opposites attract! Maybe we could have made a go of it all those years ago, if you hadn't suddenly decided to marry Tom on the rebound after we split up.'\n\n'I did not marry Tom on the rebound. We fell in love months afterwards!' I said hotly. 'And we only split up because you decided to go off on a world recipe-finding mission for a year, don't forget.'\n\n'You should have understood \u2013 and waited. I wrote to you.'\n\n'No you didn't, you only sent me recipes on postcards!'\n\n'That's the same thing.'\n\nHis eyes, the purple-grey of wet Welsh slate, were baffled.\n\n'Well, whatever,' I said. 'It's pointless having post-mortems at this stage, isn't it? We married other people and moved on.'\n\nThere was a tap on the door and a shadow darkened the threshold. 'Hello!' called a deep and attractive male voice. 'Mrs Pharamond?'\n\nThe man, who was tall with curling blond hair and a ruggedly attractive face, stopped halfway through the door. 'Oh, sorry if I'm disturbing you,' he said, with a charmingly apologetic smile. 'I'm Ritch, you know \u2013 Ritch Rainford?'\n\nAs my eyes met his incredibly blue ones, it struck me that Annie's description of his charms had been wildly understated. A force field could not have held me faster at that moment and I fear I might even have been drooling \u2013 but then, he did make me think of slabs of golden-brown Honeycomb Crunch...\n\nHis gaze released mine and he looked enquiringly at Nick, who was sitting there with his arms crossed like a terribly gloomy wooden Indian.\n\n'You're not interrupting anything,' I said, managing to get my voice back. 'This is my late husband's cousin, Nick Pharamond.'\n\n'Hi,' Ritch said in a friendly manner, but the two men seemed to me to be eyeing each other in a very sizing-up-for-battle way. It reminded me of a film I once saw of bull elephants fighting, probably a territorial thing. They were both big, fit men, so I wouldn't know which one to put my money on.\n\n'I just wanted to say how kind it was of you to let the group continue practising in the workshop, Mrs Pharamond, and to let you know I'll be up here jamming with them sometimes. So if you see a stranger around the place, it's me.'\n\n'Do call me Lizzy,' I said. 'And actually, I'll be the stranger round at your place tonight, if you still want Posh Pet-sitters to come, because I'm Annie's assistant and I'll be seeing to Flo.'\n\nHe gave me another warm \u2013 very warm \u2013 smile, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners, and I could see what Annie meant, because there was just something about his expression that made you feel hot under the collar (or the smock, in her case).\n\n'Great, I can see she'll be in good hands. Well, better get back to the gang, I suppose. Not my sort of music, really, but it's good to keep my hand in!'\n\nAnother one-hundred-and-fifty-watt smile and he was gone. I sighed involuntarily, watching his retreating, lithe figure until it vanished into the workshop. Ophelia might think he was old, but I bet that was before she saw him in the flesh.\n\n'Well, you do seem to be managing everything very well without my help,' Nick said, abruptly getting up and banging his head on the ceiling light, which swayed alarmingly. 'Bloody hell!'\n\n'Jasper's started doing that too, now he's over six foot. I must shorten the chain, or something. Thanks for coming though, Nick. Jasper will be sorry to have missed you.'\n\n'He's at the dig?'\n\n'Yes, and then his friend was going to pick him up and they were going over to talk to the owner of the student house his friend's brother rents with a couple of others. Jasper's taking that dog that Annie dumped on us, and thinks he can sweet-talk the landlady into letting him keep it in the house, even though it's supposed to be no pets. He'll be home late. But it's probably just as well, because I need to read through my new book tonight \u2013 if I can bring myself to concentrate on it for long enough to spot any mistakes!'\n\nHe gestured at the dog-eared heap at the end of the table. 'Is that what all this stuff is? Yet another glorious Perseverance Chronicle?'\n\n'Yes, and possibly the last. I'm not sure I'll be able to finish the next, because I'm only managing to write about a paragraph most days instead of four pages. And I tried to go through the manuscript earlier, but my brain got stuck and I read the same page over and over,' I said despairingly. 'My agent will kill me if it isn't in the post tomorrow.'\n\n'I'll read it for you,' he offered, to my surprise.\n\n'What \u2013 you?'\n\n'Why not? I'm literate and I've nothing in particular to do for the rest of the day. It's not that big a manuscript, so it won't take me long. I'll red-pen any mistakes and drop it back later.'\n\nIt was amazingly kind of Nick, but perhaps he just wanted to do something to help, so I pushed it all into a manila folder and handed it to him thankfully. 'That is such a weight off my mind! I'll be out around seven to see to Mr Rainford's dog, but you know where the key is if I'm out, don't you?'\n\n'Raspberries,' he said.\n\n'What?'\n\n'I left you a message earlier. Do you have any?'\n\n'Oh yes, there's a September-fruiting bush behind the greenhouse, but there aren't an awful lot of them. I put them aside for you in the small barn.'\n\n'That's OK. I bought some supermarket ones too, just in case, though they don't have the same flavour. I can mix them together.'\n\n'What are you making?'\n\n'A variation on liquorice ice cream, with a raspberry coulis.'\n\nI looked at him doubtfully, but he seemed to be serious. Then he stunned me by stooping and swiftly kissing me on the mouth, which he absolutely never does, and left with my manuscript under his arm.\n\nMy lips tingled. I supposed we were kissing cousins, if only by marriage... but I wouldn't have described that as an affectionate peck on the cheek! Also, since he was the sort of man who gets a five o'clock shadow five minutes after he'd shaved, I got a free exfoliation into the bargain.\n\nStaring after his car as he drove off (and it was very nearly pressed duck for dinner), I realised what I hadn't admitted to myself before: that in recent years I'd really, really missed our invigorating exchanges of opinion. Every life, especially one so literally down to earth as mine, needs just a little vinegar in the mix.\n\nBut Ritch Rainford, now \u2013 he was more of a sweet treat...\n\nGoing back in, I slightly loosened all the caps on the ginger beer bottles, just in case, then looked out the Honeycomb Crunch recipe. It is much the same as cinder toffee, really \u2013 sugar, white vinegar, water and bicarbonate of soda, only with added butter and golden syrup. It's the mixture of bicarb and vinegar that makes them go all bubbly.\n\nI added that thought to the current chapter of the next Chronicle, before the inspiration bubbles went flat again.\n\n## Chapter 14: Slightly Curdled\n\nAfter making Honeycomb Crunch, it occurred to me that if you crumbled it up, it would make a wonderful topping for home-made vanilla ice cream. You could wrap a chunk in a plastic bag and hit it with a rolling pin \u2013 that would do the trick.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nJasper phoned to tell me his new landlady had agreed that Ginny could take up residence in the rented house with him and his friends at the end of the month, so that was sorted. I would have preferred him to live in a student hall of residence for the first year, but the whole point of your children going away to university is so they can live their lives, not yours, so I would just have to go along with his decision.\n\nThe thought of my little boy exposed to all the big city temptations of drugs, unprotected sex and being knifed in the street... well, I had to swallow hard before I could say brightly, 'Oh good, I'm so glad, darling. That will be great, living with your friends and having Ginny with you. What time will you be back tonight?'\n\n'Chris's mum is going to drop me off, probably about eleven. She doesn't like him driving late at night \u2013 she's nearly as bad as you are for fussing.'\n\n'Jasper, I don't fuss! How can you say I fuss?' I demanded indignantly. But then, despite my best intentions, asked, after a moment's pause, 'What are you doing tonight?'\n\n'Sex, drugs, tattooing our arms with old syringes off the street, that kind of thing,' he said good-naturedly.\n\n'Jasper!'\n\n'Watching DVDs, making popcorn, drinking beer,' he amended.\n\n'I'm going into the village in a minute, to pet-sit an actor's dog \u2013 Ritch Rainford. He used to be some kind of pop star in the eighties.'\n\n'Never heard of him,' he said, unimpressed. Had it been a bosomy model from one of the boys' magazines I expected he would have been much keener, but the only creature with artificially inflated breasts in the Mosses is Polly Darke, and I knew he classed her with the pensioners.\n\nHow can silicone be sexy? Isn't it peculiar that many men find artificial breasts just as much of a turn-on as real ones? Another one of life's strange mysteries to ponder when you are examining your marrows.\n\nI ate a generous portion of my own version of Lancashire hotpot \u2013 good and peppery, with rich gravy and a shortcrust topping \u2013 and read the rest of the latest issue of the Mosses Messenger, before going out.\n\nAccording to 'The Verger's Village Round-up', Caz Naylor had 'kindly volunteered to resolve the goose situation in Middlemoss, because children and the elderly were being terrorised, and the mess they left was proving a danger to life and limb. Caz has therefore now caught and rehomed them to somewhere more suitable, a solution we know will be acceptable to all interested parties.'\n\nThere was also a notice that rehearsals for the Mystery Play would be starting in the village hall on the fourteenth, Tuesdays (generally acts 1\u20139) and Thursdays (acts 10\u201322). Luckily, we've filled the vacancies for Moses and Lazarus without any trouble, and Miss Pym, who is a dab hand with papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 after a lifetime spent teaching infants, is making a new Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery commandment tablet.\n\nI set off for the old vicarage just before seven, since it's only a short walk, but first I changed into a pair of decent, clean jeans and a pale green T-shirt with pretty old buttons sewn in a border all round the neck, an idea I got from one of Annie's magazines. I sewed them onto my best Indian leather toe-post sandals too, though they kept getting ripped off.\n\nWhen I rigorously brushed all the knots out of my hair it went into a ripply light-brown mass round my head like something Rossetti would have painted, though thankfully sans the sulky Pre-Raphaelite trout-pout.\n\nThe T-shirt brought out the green in my eyes, and my face looked glowingly healthy for a recent widow. I wondered about applying a bit of make-up (I often think about make-up, but rarely bother to do anything about it), but then suddenly thought, what the hell am I doing, getting all duded up to walk Ritch Rainford's dog? Am I crackers? Do I think Flo is going to give her master my marks out of ten for effort and appearance when he staggers home from his party?\n\nBut it was too late to change, so I set off as I was. As I passed the vicarage bungalow, I wondered how Annie and Gareth were getting on. It seemed very daring of him to invite a single lady to dine with him alone. Well, I assumed they were alone (apart from Trinny), unless he's invited half the village round for support?\n\nThe old vicarage now sported the new name of Vicar's End. I unlocked the front door with the key Annie had given me and stepped inside. It was always unlocked when Annie's father was vicar, so that seemed odd in itself. And somehow, I still expected the cool, tiled hall to smell of lavender, floor polish and beeswax, just like it used to, rather than of some exotic artificial household fragrance mixed with slightly acrid cigarette smoke.\n\nThe old hallstand had been replaced by a glass-topped console table bearing an indecent bronze sculpture and a severely tailored arrangement of decayed-looking black orchids among spiky foliage. I was just touching them to see if they were real (they were), when, with a clatter of claws, Flo hurtled down the hall to meet me, velvet coat rippling and tail thrashing about. Annie had said she would be delighted to see me, even though I was a total stranger, and she was quite right. In fact, had I been a burglar, I expect she would have been equally pleased.\n\n'Good girl, Flo!' I said, patting her. 'Good girl!'\n\nMy instructions were to let her into the garden and feed her, then hand her a chewy rawhide bone and shut her in the kitchen on departing. I thought I would feed her first, since she didn't seem particularly interested in going out.\n\nWhat happy, smiley faces white bull terriers have! 'Come on then, Flo, din-dins,' I said, and had just started towards the door at the back of the hall that led into the kitchen, when a deep, instantly recognisable masculine voice from above called out, 'Tobe, is that you? I'm on my way!'\n\nHe was, too: leaping athletically down the stairs two steps at a time, Ritch Rainford landed in the hall almost at my feet, though an advance wave of expensively intrusive aftershave just beat him to it.\n\n'Yark!' I squawked inelegantly.\n\nHe looked equally surprised for a moment, then smiled. 'Sorry, thought you were my lift! Did I startle you, Lizzy?'\n\n'Well, yes,' I said, swallowing. 'I thought you'd have been long gone.' Despite myself I was answering that effulgent smile, drowning dizzily in the depths of his cerulean-blue eyes...\n\n'I'm so glad I wasn't,' he said, to which I couldn't think of a thing to say.\n\nWas he flirting? My flirting abilities were not great, even in my youth, and by now had atrophied to the point of no return. I looked at him doubtfully, but decided it was just his usual manner and got a grip on myself. I even started breathing again: in, out \u2013 it was quite easy now I'd remembered how to do it.\n\n'No... well, since you are still here, you won't need me to see to Flo, will you? You can do it before you go,' I suggested.\n\nA horn sounded: 'No time \u2013 that's Toby. You know Toby Little, plays Rufus Grace in Cotton Common?'\n\n'No, I'm afraid not, I haven't seen it,' I confessed. 'I don't watch much TV. I quite like gardening and cookery programmes, but anything else just doesn't seem to hold my concentration, probably because it isn't real. Life's much more interesting, isn't it?'\n\n'Is it?' he said, looking at me curiously. The horn hooted again, impatiently. 'Look, Lizzy, why don't I tell Tobe to hang on a couple of minutes while we sort Flo, and then you could come with me, meet some of the cast, come on to the party?' he suggested.\n\n'What \u2013 me? Oh, no, thanks, I couldn't! Jasper \u2013 my son \u2013 is coming home later...' I began, automatically stammering out excuses, though secretly a little bit of me was rather tempted by the idea in a fascinated-by-a-snake kind of way.\n\n'Isn't he grown up? I don't suppose he needs his mum on the doorstep, waiting for him,' Ritch said, with another dangerously beguiling smile.\n\nHow did he know that? Did he know all about me?\n\nHe turned serious again, blue eyes concerned and sincere. 'But I'm sorry \u2013 you were very recently widowed \u2013 what was I thinking of? Of course you don't want to go to parties yet!'\n\n'No,' I agreed, having entirely forgotten about Tom until that point. 'And his cousin, Nick \u2013 you met him earlier \u2013 is coming back this evening too. He kindly offered to correct the manuscript of my next book, which needs to be posted off tomorrow, so it would be very rude of me not to be there. Sorry.'\n\n'Your book? Are you another novelist, like Polly Darke?'\n\n'Ah, yes, our Trollope of the North,' I said sourly. 'No, I write sort of autobiographical books with recipes. Do you know Polly?'\n\n'Met her around a few times,' he said vaguely. 'She had a fling with a friend of mine. Apparently she's pretty fit \u2013 does some weird yoga stuff. Muscles like knots on string, he said.'\n\n'Really? I've never seen her arms, she always wears long sleeves. I thought she might be on drugs or something.'\n\nHe shrugged, then his eyes flicked over me and he gave me a slow, sexy smile. 'I prefer natural, curvy women to skinny ones with monster boob jobs, every time.'\n\n'That must make you fairly unique,' I said tartly, and he grinned.\n\nThe front door was thrust open and a voice bellowed: 'Ritch, what the hell are you doing, you bastard? Are you coming or what?'\n\n'On my way out!' Ritch called back. Then he turned to me, 'Well, see you later, then. Be good, Flo.' And off he went.\n\nWas he actually flirting with me, Lizzy Pharamond, mature (even overripe) Middlemoss tomboy, or was he like that with all women? I could quite see why he'd disconcerted Annie, though, because I felt slightly and interestingly singed around the edges. The words 'moth' and 'flame' came vividly to mind.\n\nSizzle, sizzle.\n\nIf he comes across on the TV like that, no wonder Cotton Common's ratings have risen drastically since he joined the cast \u2013 he's trouble at t'mill!\n\nI spent almost an hour with Flo, who is a delightful dog and will fetch a thrown rubber ball indefinitely, though she seemed quite sanguine about swapping my company for a chewy bone when I left.\n\nHalfway home, while sauntering past the eerily quiet, goose-free green, I suddenly remembered about Nick and broke into a guilty run.\n\nHe'd obviously been at the cottage for some time, since he'd let himself in and there was an empty coffee cup on the kitchen table.\n\n'Oh, sorry, Nick \u2013 have you been here long?' I said, panting slightly. 'I was playing with the dog and didn't notice the time.'\n\nHe rose to his feet, heavy brows practically meeting across his impressive nose, and snapped, 'You look pretty smart for dog-sitting. Going somewhere?'\n\n'No,' I snapped right back, flushing. 'I don't spend all day, every day, in gardening clothes, you know!'\n\nHe took me in with his slaty, sardonic eyes, from gold sandals to waving, if now dishevelled, hair. 'You always did scrub up well. Hope your client appreciated it.'\n\n'How did you know Ritch was still there?' I gasped, startled, then felt myself going pink again.\n\n'You just told me!'\n\n'Well, he was, though on his way out. And don't call him a client in that tone of voice, like I was a hooker!'\n\n'Sorry!' he said, but didn't sound it. 'I'll be on my way. Didn't find too much wrong with your manuscript, except a bit of tailoring of the truth.'\n\n'I have to. Nobody would believe the real things that happen. They're much too incredible, and anyway, it would be too depressing. My misfortunes are supposed to be funny.'\n\n'Yes, your formula for success with your readers does seem to be a series of pratfalls linked with nursery-pudding suggestions,' he said unkindly.\n\n'You offered to read through it, I didn't make you!' I said indignantly.\n\n'I wanted to help.' He ran a hand through his black hair, which stood up on end. 'Look, seeing you're all gussied up, why don't you come out somewhere quiet for a drink with me? I'll even give you some pudding ideas for your new recipe book.'\n\nThe poet Wendy Cope puts it so well about men being like buses: there isn't one for ages and then two come along at once, flashing their signals. (Not that that necessarily means they're going to stop.) And I didn't even want to catch one!\n\n'That's kind of you, Nick, but I really don't feel like going out tonight and I need to make those alterations to the manuscript and pack it up. Anyway, we'd only argue like we usually do.'\n\n'Not necessarily, but please yourself,' he said, and walked out.\n\nI stared after him, which was well worthwhile, because his rear view was just as good, if not better, than Ritch's.\n\nI thought he was just trying to be kind to me in his way, but Nick's kindness moves in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform.\n\nIt was still just about light when Clive Potter cycled up for some tomatoes and to tell me that Adam (as played by a local farmer) had given himself a hernia while lifting bales, and had to drop out of the Mystery Play.\n\n'We'll have to audition for a new one, I'm afraid, Lizzy, unless anyone comes forward.'\n\nI had a sudden mental vision of playing my Eve to Ritch Rainford's Adam, but firmly suppressed it: an innocent in the Garden of Eden he certainly was not. More like the snake.\n\nHe displayed even more snake-like tendencies later, when he phoned from somewhere noisy to invite me to his house-warming party at Vicar's End on Friday night!\n\n'Just a few people \u2013 you could come to that, couldn't you?' he said persuasively, and I won't say I wasn't tempted for a minute, before common sense reasserted itself and I politely declined.\n\nIt got me thinking about Honeycomb Crunch all over again, though, and I decided to try using it in a variation of Eton Mess. I called it Cinder Cream and I thought I was on to a winner.\n\nWhile I worked away putting in the corrections to the manuscript that Nick had marked, I thought how odd it seemed in the cottage without Jasper there... but I supposed it was a foretaste of what was to come and I'd just have to get used to it.\n\n## Chapter 15: Drink Me\n\nI was up early, picking sound, firm apples for storing. I don't know the names of the varieties of all the old trees that were already here when we came, but by now do know by trial and error which will keep and which are best eaten or cooked straight away. I thought I might do baked apples filled with mincemeat and drizzled with cream for dessert that night, always a favourite.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nNext day Annie relayed a request from Ritch that I take Flo to the Mossedge canine beautician for nail clipping and a bit of pampering.\n\nShe'd been quite right about the Posh Pet-sitting taking off, because I was already down to look after two cats in a converted barn over at Mossrow for two days, plus a couple more one-off jobs. I'd be so busy that weeds would soon outnumber vegetables in my garden and the finished crops would remain uncleared.\n\nI managed to fit in a visit to the cats while Flo was being done, and then returned her to Vicar's End, where Ritch was flirting with his cleaning lady, Dora Tombs, whom he called 'Dorable'.\n\n'Get away with you!' was her standard response to each sally.\n\n'Morning, our Lizzy!' she said, as I went in (being a Naylor, and so distantly related). 'Keep that dog off my clean floor until it's dried \u2013 and the same goes for you,' she added, jabbing at Ritch's feet with her mop.\n\nRitch took a step back and gave me a lazy, glinting smile that took me in from top to bottom, lingering thoughtfully on the way.\n\n'Flo's clean as a whistle, Mrs T,' I assured her. Flo skittered and slid over to her bowl and started wolfing biscuits as though she was famished.\n\n'They said at Doggy Heaven that she was good as gold,' I told Ritch, adding severely, 'and you could have taken her yourself, if you're not going to work, and saved some money!'\n\n'Ah, but then I wouldn't have had two beautiful women at my beck and call, would I?'\n\n'Get away with you, you daft bugger!' Dora said. 'You're all mouth and trousers, you!'\n\n'Don't you ever work?' I asked, unimpressed.\n\n'Actually yes, and I'm on my way. Just waiting for the car.'\n\n'You don't drive?'\n\n'Lost my licence and I've got another twelve months before I get it back again,' he said ruefully, but I didn't feel sympathetic because I expect it was drink driving, which in my opinion is a criminally stupid thing to do.\n\n'Tough luck,' I said, but when he smiled at me I found myself smiling back. He's clearly as self-centred as most of the male race, besides being unable to resist flirting with any female who comes within range, but I must admit he is extremely attractive.\n\n'I could use a part-time chauffeur?' he suggested, raising a questioning eyebrow.\n\n'I've got enough to do. My garden will be an impenetrable jungle if I don't spend more time at home.'\n\nA horn beeped outside. 'Pity \u2013 and there's my car. See you later, girls!'\n\nAfter he'd gone, seeming to take the sun with him, Mrs T put the kettle on and we had tea, toast and gossip.\n\nShe's also Polly Darke's cleaner, which was fascinating: apparently she had a whole room devoted to some weird kind of yoga, and worked out in there twice a day.\n\n'Fit as a flea and strong as an ox,' Mrs T averred, crunching toast. 'Wouldn't think it to look at her, would you? And I'm that sorry about your troubles,' she added, which is as close as anyone's got to mentioning the goings-on at the funeral feast. 'I could tell sometimes she'd had a man in the house, but if I'd known who it was, I'd have told you.'\n\n'Oh, thanks,' I said. 'But it's all water under the bridge now, and I'm trying to move on and put it all behind me.'\n\n'That's right \u2013 and I'm sure Mr Nick will help you sort everything out. He's a proper man.'\n\n'A proper man as compared to what?' I asked curiously.\n\nShe gave me a Mona Lisa smile. 'Eva Gumball says he's divorcing that foreign woman and going to be living up there at the Hall most of the time, now. His granddad's that made up about it!'\n\nInformation in the Mosses travels as fast as thought. 'I'm glad for Uncle Roly's sake that Nick will be spending more time in Middlemoss, but I certainly don't need anyone to help me sort things out,' I said firmly.\n\n'That Polly Darke's turned a whole bedroom into a walk-in wardrobe, too,' Mrs T said, changing the subject back.\n\nOn Friday night I felt restless, especially after I'd popped into Delphine Lake's earlier to walk her dogs, and she'd said she was going to Ritch's party.\n\n'For cocktails at eight, dear. But us old ones will clear off early and then I expect it will go on until the small hours!'\n\nI don't actually like parties, except family ones, so I can't imagine why I felt left out... All right, perhaps I did, because my mind kept presenting me with scenarios involving Ritch that were quite unbecoming to a widow of such recent date.\n\nI had an unsettled night and then, when I went downstairs early next morning, I found Mimi fast asleep on the sofa in the sitting room.\n\nWhy do I even bother locking my front door when absolutely everyone seems to know where I hide the spare key?\n\nJuno, who was now allowed on her feet again, arrived in search almost immediately, limping gamely. 'I wish you'd stay in your bed at nights!' she scolded Mimi, who simply gazed blandly at her like a comfortable cat.\n\n'Stay to breakfast?' I invited. 'Jasper's getting up \u2013 he's going to the dig.' Thuds and yapping from above were evidence that Ginny was doing her best to help. The ceiling light swayed gently and small flakes of plaster drifted down, like the grey-white feathers Nick had been brushing off his sleeve when he came out of the small barn the other day...\n\nIf Caz hadn't fitted a padlock to his freezer, I'd have had a quick snoop by now!\n\n'No, thanks, we must get back. Mrs Gumball always cooks enough for twelve, and think of the waste!' Juno said, propelling the reluctant Mimi away.\n\nI didn't think Mimi would be terribly hungry anyway, because when I opened the fridge to get the milk, I discovered that half a bowl of experimental Cinder Cream had been eaten, and it's surprisingly filling.\n\n'Come up to the Hall later \u2013 around eleven!' Mimi said, clinging to the doorframe with both hands and smiling at me. 'Nick's invited us all to try out some ice cream he's making \u2013 yummy!'\n\n'He invited me, too?' I asked doubtfully.\n\n'Especially,' Mimi confirmed, still beaming but losing her grip on the gloss paint, and then was borne away until her cracked soprano singing, 'Hokey pokey, a penny a lump!' faded into the distance.\n\n'You've just missed Mimi and Juno,' I told Jasper when he finally came down. Ginny shot past my ankles and scattered the chickens in the yard, but unintentionally, I think. She probably couldn't see them for all the hair in her eyes.\n\n'I know, I heard. Mimi sounded happy.'\n\n'She mostly does. Oh, there's the phone.'\n\nI should have said, rather, 'where's' the phone, since I couldn't find it until I traced the long flex from the kitchen into the sitting room. Mimi seemed to have built a nest for it with all the cushions.\n\nBy the time I got to it, it had stopped ringing, but the caller had left a message: Ritch, sounding very gin-and-cigarettes gravelly. 'Lizzy? If you get this, come round and sort Flo out right away, will you? I'm feeling a bit rough this morning and she keeps yapping... I don't think Dora's coming until this afternoon... just let yourself in.'\n\nI could hear faint barking, and then Ritch groaned (rather sexily, it has to be said) and put the phone down.\n\nWell, he might at least have let the poor dog out, even if he did have a hangover! It would be nearly an hour until I could get there, since I wanted to drop Jasper off at the dig first, so by that time he would probably have given in and done it himself. And didn't he have to go to work every day? I know nothing about these things; perhaps they record the shows in batches or something? Or not on Saturdays?\n\nThe phone rang again while I was carrying it back into the kitchen, but it was just a man who had spotted the greenhouse last night on Freecycle and asked me for my phone number, wanting to arrange to come and look at it.\n\n'You're very popular this morning, Mum,' Jasper commented. 'And a bit pink,' he added, but I ignored that. I'd already let the hens out and fed them, collected the eggs, watered the garden and greenhouse, put a load of washing in the machine, made an especially nice packed lunch for Jasper and cooked bacon and eggs. Who wouldn't look flushed?\n\nWhen I cautiously let myself into Vicar's End, there was no sign of life other than a muffled barking from the kitchen.\n\nPoor Flo had been unable to keep all four legs crossed and left a puddle by the door, about which she seemed to feel apologetic, though it was not her fault, as I told her while I let her out before finding the mop and disinfectant and cleaning it up.\n\nThen I filled her bowl with fresh water and put a few crunchy dog biscuits down to keep her going for a while. I didn't know what Ritch wanted me to do, but I was quite sure he could afford the Posh Pet-sitter prices, so after that I took Flo for a nice long walk. It had rained in the night, so she wasn't such a clean, white and glossy creature on our return, though she was a very much happier one.\n\nI hadn't even started out clean and glossy, being back to gardening jeans and old T-shirts, Nick's remarks having rankled slightly.\n\nWhile I was still rubbing Flo with a tartan towel helpfully inscribed 'DOG' that I found hanging in the scullery next to her lead, Ritch wandered into the kitchen, obviously fresh from the shower, in gilt-edged designer stubble and a very short white towelling robe. Clearly he's a natural blond, because the hair on his legs was golden right up to the hem. He was carrying a glass beaker of straw-coloured liquid, which he set down on the counter.\n\n'Morning. I could do with a rub down too,' he said with a wicked if rueful smile. Then, opening the fridge, he bent over and rummaged around. I looked away hastily.\n\n'Thanks for coming,' he said, emerging with an opened carton of milk. 'Don't know what we were drinking last night \u2013 that's the trouble with cocktails, and after a couple you don't care any more \u2013 but today I feel like hell.' He picked up the glass beaker again. 'I'll just finish this, and then make some coffee: want some?'\n\n'What is it?' I asked cautiously.\n\nHe grinned. 'I meant, do you want some coffee! I don't think you'd want any of this, though I could be wrong \u2013 it's pee.'\n\nHe drained the last drops and put the glass in the dishwasher. Did he say pee? Eeeugh!\n\n'Er, no,' I said, backing away slightly. 'Did you say you were drinking...?'\n\n'My own urine? Yeah, every morning \u2013 everyone's doing it. It's good for you.'\n\nAfter last night I should think his pee was at least forty per cent proof. 'I... hadn't heard about that,' I said, wondering if he was quite mad. 'How interesting!'\n\nHe gave me a wicked smile, but it wasn't working any more. 'It cures anything. That and frequent sex are all a man needs to keep healthy.'\n\n'Really?' I felt as if some miraculously attractive bubble had burst and taken all the rainbows with it, but managed with an effort to gather my wits together: 'I've taken Flo for a walk and changed her water, so she's OK. I'd better go now \u2013 I've got things to do.'\n\n'Sure you can't stay awhile?' He switched on one of those espresso machines that look as if you need a whole generator and a degree in engineering to make them work.\n\n'No, really.' I wasn't drinking any more coffee out of any of his cups, now I knew about his habits.\n\n'Shall I settle up with you now, or do you want to send me a bill?'\n\n'Oh, Annie will send you one at the end of the month, if that's OK? I put it all down on her chart and she does the bookwork. Bye, Flo.'\n\nI bent to fondle her smooth, velvety head and, when I rose to go, Ritch followed close behind me up the hall and reached out a long arm to open the front door, brushing casually against me as he did so.\n\n'Oh \u2013 thanks,' I said, unnerved by the proximity of all that naked male flesh, and shuffled past into the sunlight just as Annie, towed by four large hounds, was passing the end of the drive. Unable to wave, she began to smile, then caught sight of Ritch lounging in the doorway in his mini-robe. The smile wavered, she went pink and hurried on.\n\nI dashed after her, calling out: 'Hey, Annie, wait for me!'\n\nShe turned reluctantly. 'Lizzy!'\n\n'That was not what it looked like,' I said severely. 'Honestly! You should know me better by now! He phoned me this morning and asked me to go and sort Flo out, because he had a hangover.'\n\nActually, in that bathrobe it was almost a hang under, so it's just as well it was only Annie who spotted us, because she's probably the only one who would have believed me. I took two of the dog leads.\n\n'He simply couldn't be bothered to let Flo out this morning, which is terribly selfish, and has put me right off him.'\n\n'I should think so, too,' she said indignantly. 'The dog must have been desperate!'\n\n'She'd made a puddle, but as close to the back door as she could, poor thing. But speaking of pee, Annie, you'll never believe what Ritch does with his!'\n\nAnd I was right: she didn't believe me and insisted he must have been joking, though I'm sure he wasn't. It's not a fad likely to catch on in Middlemoss.\n\n'So, how did you and Gareth get on the other night?' I asked, changing the subject. 'You never really said.'\n\nShe blushed under her freckles. 'Fine... he is so nice. But he can't cook, so it was just reheated ready-meals. I told him about the French cookery course we did after we left school and I'm going to get him a slow cooker like mine and show him how to use it.'\n\n'You should invite him back to dinner at your place, only early enough so he can help you cook it,' I suggested. Cooking together is, I think, a very intimate thing to do.\n\n'That's a good idea. Something simple but nice, like that chicken in white wine thing you do, or a risotto.'\n\n'And a stodgy pud. Bet he likes those \u2013 most men do.' Even Nick, though he pretends he doesn't, just to wind me up.\n\n'Yes, he'd bought a chocolate gateau,' she agreed, 'and he ate quite a bit of it. Oh, well, must go and take these dogs back. I'll put the extra Ritch pet-sitting on the chart for you when I get home... and Lizzy,' she added anxiously, 'you aren't falling for him, are you?'\n\n'No, though he's very attractive \u2013 or was, until I got grossed out by his habits! But even were I looking for another man, one who thinks pee and hot, casual sex will cure anything is obviously operating on a different wavelength from mine.'\n\n'Gosh, yes!' she agreed, innocent blue-grey eyes open wide. Ritch is not the only one in Middlemoss operating on a different wavelength from me, but I love her anyway.\n\n'I've served my time in the prison of love, though I might get another dog later, once Jasper's taken Ginny off to university with him.'\n\n'Tell me when, and I'll find you a nice stray,' she promised, beaming. 'Is Ginny going to university with Jasper?'\n\n'Yes, he's persuaded the landlady of a student house to let him keep her with him, but don't ask me how.'\n\n'Oh, he can be just as charming as Tom was, when he wants to be,' she said. 'Only of course, he is much more solid, reliable and kind.'\n\nThe church clock struck eleven, galvanising my memory. 'Oh, must fly, Annie! I'm supposed to be up at the Hall tasting some ice cream Nick's made, and Mimi said he invited me especially, so he'll be cross if I don't go.'\n\nThrusting the dog leads back into her hands, I rushed off.\n\nIn fact, Nick seemed totally surprised, but not displeased, to see me. He was wearing a blue-striped apron, a smudge of sugar and a streak of raspberry, and looked good enough to eat... if you liked that kind of thing, of course.\n\nI looked at Mimi suspiciously and she waved her spoon at me and called gaily, 'Just in time!'\n\n'Hello, my dear,' Unks said. 'I didn't know you were coming. This is going to be a treat, isn't it?'\n\nHe, Mimi, Juno, Mrs Gumball and even Caz Naylor, half-concealed by the shadow of the inglenook, were all sitting round the kitchen table, spoons poised.\n\n'Here, have mine, Lizzy, and I'll get some more,' Nick said, and I took the proffered bowl and sat down, looking at it dubiously. The ice cream was sort of grey, like town snow turned to slush, and the blood-red raspberry coulis swirling over it contrasted strangely.\n\n'It tastes better than it looks,' Mimi remarked. 'I love liquorice! Yum!'\n\nShe was right. Nick sat down again next to me, long legs brushing mine. 'What do you think?'\n\n'It looks horrible in a sophisticated sort of way, but tastes great.' I turned to see what Caz was making of it, but he'd quietly stolen away, leaving only an empty dish behind, which was tribute enough, I suppose. 'It's the opposite of coffee granita, which I always expect to be delicious, but never quite comes up to expectations.'\n\n'Oh? I'll have to see what I can do about that.' His eyes gleamed.\n\n'Nothing I haven't already tried!' I snapped.\n\n'You want to take a bet on that?'\n\nI might have been tempted to rub ice cream into that superior smile, if I hadn't already eaten it all.\n\nMrs Gumball was still daintily spooning hers in. 'What that boy will think of next!' she said, shaking her head so that all the silvery-grey curls, tied up on top of her head in a skittish whale spout effect, quivered.\n\n'Great,' Juno said, laying down her spoon. 'Mimi, don't lick the bowl!'\n\n'Why not, when we're just family?' she demanded indignantly.\n\n'It's still not polite.'\n\n'Roly eats roast duck with his fingers and then licks them.'\n\n'Would you like to go for a drive?' Juno asked, in an attempted diversion. 'I think my leg's up to it now, if we don't go too far.'\n\nMimi clapped her hands. 'Martin Mere to feed the ducks!'\n\n'Oh good, good,' Unks said. 'Bit of fresh air will do you both good.' He got up. 'Must go and study the form a bit \u2013 got a horse racing on Saturday. Snowy Sunday.'\n\n'Not in September, surely?' I said, puzzled.\n\n'Name of the horse. Snowy Sunday out of Weekend Blizzard.'\n\nUnks has shares in three racehorses, but they usually seem to fall over, or go backwards, or do something that doesn't involve getting past the post.\n\n'Cold lunch in the dining room at one,' Mrs Gumball said, heaving herself to her feet. 'I'm just off to see to my Joe's dinner. Mind my kitchen's clean and tidy again when I get back, Nick Pharamond!'\n\n'Don't I always clear up after my cooking?' he demanded indignantly.\n\n'I'll load the dishwasher myself,' I promised her.\n\nOne by one they went, and Nick and I quickly sorted out the kitchen in fairly amicable silence.\n\n'That's that,' I said finally, looking round to see if we'd missed anything. Nick is a very messy cook and it was surprising how many pots and pans he had used just to produce ice cream and sauce. 'I'll have to go, I've got someone coming to look at the greenhouse and he said around lunchtime.'\n\n'You have? Someone you know?'\n\n'No, a stranger who saw the ad on the Freecycle website.'\n\nHe frowned. 'I'd better come and deal with him for you. You should get me to do this sort of thing. Anyone might turn up on your doorstep.'\n\n'I can handle it! I mean, I'm only selling an old greenhouse, not the crown jewels,' I said firmly. I'm used to doing everything myself, so why would I suddenly need a man to do it for me?\n\n'I'll walk down with you anyway, just make sure\u2014' he began to insist, as though I were some frail little flower; then his BlackBerry went off and while he answered it I slid quietly away home.\n\nThe man was waiting for me in the yard outside the cottage, leaning against an old pick-up truck and smoking a roll-up, and I instantly rather regretted refusing Nick's offer so hastily, because there was just something about him I didn't like, even apart from the aroma of stale alcohol.\n\n'Had a bit of trouble finding you,' he said, straightening with a leer and running bloodshot eyes over me as though I were a dubious filly. 'Lonely down here, isn't it?'\n\n'Not really, people go past on the main road all the time and my family live up the drive,' I said briskly. 'So, Mr...'\n\n'Roach,' he slurred.\n\n'So, you're interested in having the greenhouse?'\n\n'Well I was, but I took the liberty of having a look at it while I was waiting, and it's in pretty poor condition.'\n\n'The supports are fine and it should dismantle easily. Anyway, what were you expecting for nothing?'\n\n'It'll cost you a fortune to pay someone to take it away for you,' he said. 'But I don't suppose a lady like you would know about that. Recent widow, aren't you? Bet you miss having a man about the place.'\n\nHe came a bit closer, flicking his cigarette onto the cobbles.\n\n'Look, are you interested or not?' I demanded, ignoring the innuendo but backing off slightly. The yard brush was leaning against the wall behind me and I reckoned that if desperate, I could always beat him into submission with it: it was a good, sturdy one.\n\n'Perhaps I might be,' he said, with what was definitely a leer. 'Maybe you'd like to discuss it somewhere more comfortable? I wouldn't say no if you invited me in.'\n\n'Oh, Nick!' I exclaimed thankfully, as his tall, broad-shouldered figure appeared round the end of the barn. He looked from one to the other of us from under dark brows and I took his arm and squeezed it meaningfully. 'This is Mr Roach. He came to look at the greenhouse.'\n\n'Loach,' the man corrected me, backing off warily. 'But I've had second thoughts. It's not quite what I wanted. Doubt it's what anyone wants,' he added. 'Well, see you!'\n\nHe climbed back into the cab of his pick-up and drove off with a bit of unnecessarily macho revving and tyre screeching.\n\nNick looked at me with one raised eyebrow, but nobly refrained from saying, 'I told you so.'\n\nRealising I was still clinging to his arm, I hastily let go and moved away.\n\n'Do you want to come in?' I asked. 'Or go back for lunch? I'm going to have ham and split-pea soup and home-made bread.'\n\n'I'll stay, but only if you promise to let me handle anything else you want to get rid of. I'm sure Roly will back me on this one \u2013 and the cottage is part of the estate.'\n\n'Oh, all right!' I agreed. 'But don't think I couldn't have handled that horrible man without you, because I could! I've already had much nastier people chasing me up for money they say Tom owed them, when they don't seem to have the least bit of proof.'\n\n'You haven't paid them, have you?'\n\n'Despite what you think, I'm not entirely stupid,' I said with dignity. 'I asked Unks' advice, and he told me to pass them all on to his solicitor, Smithers, and he would deal with them for me and let me know which were the genuine ones that had to be settled.'\n\n'I don't think you're stupid,' he said, following me into the cottage. 'You just take independence a little too far sometimes, that's all.'\n\n'Did you come down just to lecture me, or did you want something?' I asked pointedly.\n\nHe smiled innocently and said, 'I just wanted to know what recipe you'd already tried for the coffee granita?'\n\n'One you sent me from Italy on a postcard of the Leaning Tower of Pisa,' I said with satisfaction. I hauled out the postcard album to look for it and he seemed amazed that I'd not only kept them all, but also carefully put them into a book. However, show me anyone interested in cooking who wouldn't have hoarded the recipes.\n\nWe ended up looking through the album for almost a whole hour without arguing, which must be a record. Maybe he was mellowing.\n\n'I'll see you at the first Mystery Play rehearsal on Tuesday night,' were his surprise parting words before striding off whistling, the sun glinting on his blue-black hair.\n\nWhat could he mean? Had he volunteered to help Clive?\n\nRitch phoned and invited me for a quiet drink at the caf\u00e9-bar in the former Pharamond's Biscuit factory on Tuesday night, so he could 'get to know me better'! He said he was tied up until then, which gave me a bad moment because I remembered that note from Polly Darke I found in Tom's pocket just before he died...\n\nI told him I couldn't go, since I had a Mystery Play meeting and the cast tended to go to the village pub afterwards, but he said that was OK, he would meet me and come along too, and I simply couldn't think of a way of telling him not to on the spot.\n\nI looked long and hard in the mirror and was at a loss to understand why, unless he was currently desperately short of another woman for his frequent, healthy sex rota.\n\nHe probably wouldn't bother after all, but if he did, I'd just have to hide behind the crowd and hope avid Cotton Common fans mobbed him, which seemed quite likely.\n\nI tried out two varieties of coffee granita on Jasper, later, but although he said they were delicious I still felt they lacked that little extra something...\n\nOn the other hand, some mincemeat fudge turned out really well.\n\n## Chapter 16: Unrehearsed Entrances\n\nI tried out my mincemeat fudge on the members of the Christmas Pudding Circle yesterday and it went down a treat, as did Marian's variation on gingerbread biscuits for hanging on the Christmas tree. She had cut out an inner star and placed a crushed boiled sweet in the middle, which melted during the baking process to form a stained-glass effect. I used to do something similar for Jasper when he was little \u2013 traffic light biscuits. We are all busy cooking for the annual Autumn F\u00eate next Saturday too, where there will be much friendly rivalry for the various prizes. Annie has asked me to make some bags of candyfloss and will collect them on Friday...\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nI was a little late setting off for the first Mystery Play rehearsal on the Tuesday evening, because I'd spent the afternoon making a start on my Christmas cake \u2013 and not just my own, but the six small ones that each member of the CPC makes for the local Senior Citizens Christmas Hampers, to be distributed by Marian and the rest of the Mosses Women's Institute.\n\nI like to soak the fruit in dark rum for about five days \u2013 no faffing around pouring alcohol into holes in the base for me! \u2013 so, after an afternoon of chopping and mixing, I had three enormous covered bowls sitting in the larder gently marinating, and an aching arm.\n\nWhen I got to the village hall the actors were standing about in groups, chatting. Acts 1 to 9 of the Mystery Play rehearsal would be supervised by me, the vicar, Miss Pym and Marian, whose husband, Clive, was, as usual, overall director. Roly, Voice of God in perpetuity, never put in an appearance until the final performance, since having played the role for so many years he could do it in his sleep. On the actual day he sits in a corner of the courtyard in a little striped canvas pavilion like something from a jousting field, well wrapped up and with a warm brazier, and speaks his lines into a mike connected to the speaker just inside the barn door.\n\nClive was putting cardboard signs up in the parts of the room where the different acts were to gather and I found Marian filling the boiler in the kitchen area behind the hatch, ready for its long, slow journey towards the tea break.\n\nI was just handing her my offering of treacle flapjacks, to go with what was left of her experimental gingerbread biscuits, when Nick loomed up beside me.\n\n'Hi, Lizzy: should I have brought something to eat, too?'\n\nI nearly dropped the box: he moved disconcertingly quietly for such a big man. 'Oh, hello Nick!'\n\n'No, that's all right. These of Lizzy's are just extras, because I always bring a tin of Teatime Assortment with me,' Marian said, 'though the current one's down to them pink wafer things, which no one seems to go for. But nice of you to offer, Nick \u2013 and that lamb recipe of yours in the Sunday supplement was a right cracker! I'd never have thought of doing that with olives.'\n\n'Oh, thanks, Mrs Potter,' Nick said modestly with one of his most charming smiles, and she blushed. I was quite sure he knew the devastating effect these had, like silvery sunshine breaking out from behind lowering, purplish storm clouds.\n\nClive, clipboard in hand, bustled up. 'Ah, Nick, you've told Lizzy you've volunteered?' he beamed.\n\n'To help out?' I asked. 'Continuity man? Props?'\n\n'To be Adam to your Eve,' Nick told me blandly. 'Delving while you spin. Giving in to your temptations. Eating the apple from your hand.' He looked down at me quite seriously, though one eyebrow was quizzically raised. 'Passing you the fig leaves.'\n\n'You?'\n\n'I'm sure we're all delighted,' Clive said. 'I hadn't thought to ask him before, because he's been here so infrequently in recent years, but now he'll be able to make most of the rehearsals, so that's all right. And it's only one fairly short scene, isn't it?'\n\n'Er \u2013 yes,' I agreed, still taken aback.\n\n'If I do miss any rehearsals, Lizzy can put me through my paces at home,' Nick suggested. 'I'll be based up at the Hall from now on.'\n\n'I'm sure we're all very glad to hear that,' Marian said warmly.\n\n'Oh, there's Annie,' I exclaimed, spotting her walking in. 'I thought she'd be going to the other rehearsals on Thursdays?'\n\n'She's very kindly going to assist the vicar, too, since he hasn't done this before,' Clive said, then clapped his hands and announced into the resultant silence, 'To your places, please!'\n\nEveryone separated to his or her group. Mine was small, since I was in charge of only the Fall of Satan, the Creation and my own scene in the Garden of Eden.\n\nWe began with the Fall of Satan, which is basically just the Voice of God (which I read, in Roly's absence) and Lucifer, plus nine entirely silent angels.\n\nAs always, God has the last word: 'I am reet disappointed in thee, Lucifer, thou art too sharp for thine own good. I loved thee like a son, yet thou art naught but a foul fiend, fit only for t'pit of damnation. Get thee gone!'\n\nAfter this, Lucifer vanishes in a puff of yellow smoke, signifying the sulphurous fumes of Hell, with a receding wail \u2013 or in some years a shriek, depending on the interpretation of the role. At any rate, he vanishes. We ran through it a couple of times, then I released the angels to go over to the vicar's corner, where they were required during the Nativity to join with the shepherds and Three Wise Men in a stirring rendition of 'Silent Neet, 'Oly Neet' around the manger.\n\nThe Creation is a monologue by the Voice of God, with sound effects off, and after I'd read through that I handed over the directing to Lucifer while I put Nick through his paces as Adam. He refused a script and had evidently been studying the video of last year's Mystery, because he was word perfect and you couldn't fault his Lancashire accent.\n\nIt went smoothly right up to the point where he asked, 'What are thou eating, Eve?'\n\nI replied: ''Tis a fruit the snake told me were reet tasty \u2013 and see, yonder birds peck at it and come to no ill. Dost thou want a bite, flower?'\n\nI offered him an imaginary apple and he said warmly, 'From you, darling, anything!'\n\n'That's not in the script,' Lucifer objected.\n\n'I thought we could change the script if we liked?' Nick said innocently.\n\n'Only if it's an improvement \u2013 this is serious,' I said severely. 'Stop messing about.'\n\n'I was serious,' he protested, and Lucifer grinned. I was just glad I'd sent the angels away, reducing the audience by nine in one stroke.\n\n'And don't think me coy, but on the night, how do we preserve our modesty, Lizzy? I've forgotten.'\n\n'In my case, with a very long wig and a bodystocking. The last Adam wore a pair of beige swimming trunks and carried a strategically placed leather bucket. Apparently, in the old days Adam and Eve used to speak their lines standing behind boards painted to look like bushes.'\n\n'I'll see what I can do,' he said gravely. 'Is it a big bucket?'\n\nI gave him a stern look: we seemed to be rapidly reverting to the innuendo and sparring of our teenage years, and this was a Nick I'd pretty well forgotten ever existed. Perhaps the euphoria of pending divorce had brought it out in him again?\n\n'Thou hath tasted t'fruit of knowledge that wor forbidden thee and found it sweet \u2013 yet shall it be bitter henceforth on thy tongue!' read Lucifer, in his temporary role as Voice of God, though still grinning. We stopped for refreshments after that, before I ran everyone through their lines again: I would work on the movements and check the props and costumes during later rehearsals.\n\n'That'll do for tonight,' I said finally, and went to see how Annie and Gareth were getting on with the Nativity cycle.\n\nDave Naylor from the garage, as Joseph, was wheeling Mary to Bethlehem on the back of an old-fashioned butcher's boy bike. On the night of the performance a star lantern is hauled slowly across the stage on a wire, a very pretty effect.\n\n'Not far to go now, luv. Bethlehem's on t'horizon, ower yonder.'\n\nMary, who was inspecting her fuchsia-painted fingernails, replied absently, 'The sooner the better, chuck, for my time's close \u2013 but will we find a place t'lay our heads?'\n\n'I'll find thee a roof ower thy head this night, flower,' Joseph promised, 'no matter what, don't thee worry thi'sen.'\n\n'So,' the vicar said to Annie, 'the bike represents the donkey. But there is a real donkey on the night, is there?'\n\n'Not any more. We stick to the bike for the performance, too.'\n\nGareth looked baffled.\n\n'We used to have a donkey,' I chipped in, 'but it was more trouble than it was worth, and when it died of old age someone suggested the bike. The rack on the front is really handy for carrying baby Jesus on the flight into Egypt later, too.'\n\n'Er... yes,' he agreed. 'I suppose it would be.'\n\nI looked critically at Mary, who worked at the hairdresser's in Mossedge. 'I hope Kylie's going to lose the false fingernails and not chew gum on the actual night.'\n\n'Yes, she's really taking it very seriously,' Annie assured me. 'She said she was going to put that cushion up her T-shirt tonight even though it's not a costume rehearsal, so she'd get the right posture for sitting on the bike.'\n\n'That's the spirit,' Nick said, having followed me over.\n\nClive clapped his hands again, thanked everyone for coming and said he would see them every Tuesday until Christmas.\n\n'Now we all go and unwind in the pub,' Annie informed Gareth.\n\n'Oh, do we?' He was looking a little dazed, as well he might, but his eyes when they rested on Annie were almost dog-like in their devotion, which was bound to appeal to her.\n\n'Where's Jasper tonight?' Nick asked me as we left.\n\n'At home. One of his friends is staying over and I left them pizza ready to heat up, and some strawberries dipped in chocolate as a treat.'\n\n'You're a good \u2013 if weird \u2013 mother,' he commented, as we all trooped out of the door onto the green, where Ritch Rainford stood leaning against a tree, smoking.\n\nMarlboro man.\n\nUntil that moment I'd entirely forgotten what he'd said about turning up \u2013 not that I'd really thought he'd meant it in the first place. I stopped dead and Nick practically fell over me.\n\nRitch ground the cigarette out under his heel and walked over rather beautifully, as if the cameras were on him. 'Hi Lizzy, good rehearsal?'\n\nHe glanced around at the others, smiling generally, like warm sunshine. 'Lizzy said she thought you wouldn't mind if I tagged on tonight to the pub?'\n\n'No, I didn't!' I muttered half under my breath, though clearly Nick thought it was an assignation because he gave me a dirty look. I couldn't see what it'd got to do with him anyway, though, even if I had been making assignations with Ritch, except, I suppose, that it was a bit early for his cousin's widow to be involved with another man.\n\nBut I wasn't involved, and I was sure Ritch couldn't be seriously interested in me, so perhaps he just wanted to get out and meet the locals.\n\n'I'm Ritch Rainford, you know,' he told everyone. 'I've just moved into the village.'\n\nFortunately, most of them did know who he was and swept him along with us. Some of the locals were certainly glad to meet him: Kylie was hanging on to his every word, and she's terribly pretty despite two nose rings and shocking pink hair, so I might well be worrying needlessly.\n\nAt the pub, which was rather full, I managed to slide onto a bench seat next to Annie. She had Gareth on her other side and he was looking about him as if he'd never been in such a place before, which for all I know he hadn't, an innocent abroad. But he was in safe hands.\n\nRitch's arrival had caused a minor sensation and, even if he'd wanted to sit by me, which I dare say he didn't, by the time he'd disentangled himself from his admirers Nick had got there first.\n\nHe rang the bell on the wall behind my head. 'This has got to be one of the few pubs left where you can ring for service and have your drinks brought over,' he said with satisfaction. 'That way, you don't lose your seat when you get up.'\n\nRitch pulled up a chair opposite and, leaning over, said in his warm, intimate, liquid-chocolate voice, 'So... rehearsals go well, Lizzy? What part are you playing?'\n\n'Eve, and yes, we made a good start.'\n\n'And Nick is playing Adam, Annie tells me, now the original actor has had to drop out,' Gareth said. 'Keeping it in the Pharamond family!' He smiled around genially.\n\n'Really? I wish I'd known about it because I'd have loved to have played Adam to Lizzy's Eve!' Ritch said. 'She could tempt me to anything!'\n\n'I'm sure you'd have been brilliant, but the actors need to be local people, because of the commitment,' Annie explained diplomatically. 'I expect you're much too busy to give up all that time!'\n\nWhen our drinks came, the barmaid also apologetically handed me a folded paper. 'Landlord says he's sorry to bother you, Mrs Pharamond, but if you could see your way to settling up this bill, he'd be very grateful.'\n\nI unfolded it and glanced at the total, which was pretty huge. Nick leaned over and took it from my hand, though I tried to snatch it back. 'Tom's bar tab? I'll take it back with me to add to the rest, for Roly to settle.'\n\n'I wish you'd give it back! I don't see why Roly should have to settle all Tom's bills \u2013 and for goodness' sake, how many more are there?' I added despairingly.\n\n'Oh, I should think that's about the last,' he said, tucking it into his jeans pocket, from where I certainly wasn't going to try to retrieve it.\n\nI glowered at him, but he smiled blandly and turned to talk to Marian Potter. Kylie had cornered Ritch's attention again \u2013 he was either giving her his autograph or his phone number, or possibly both. On my other side, Annie and Gareth were totally engrossed in their own conversation.\n\nThe noise level in the packed bar was now so high it was hard to hear what anyone who wasn't right next to you was saying, though I nodded and smiled at friends who seemed to be mouthing in my direction. After a while, feeling I'd had enough, I nudged Nick in the ribs with my elbow.\n\nHe grunted and turned.\n\n'Do you think you could let me out? I'd like to go home.'\n\nRitch caught my eye and, leaning forward until his golden head practically touched mine, said, 'Are you going, Lizzy? I'll walk you home.'\n\n'No need,' Nick said, draining his pint and slamming down the empty tankard, 'I'm going the same way.'\n\n'But I'd like to,' Ritch said stubbornly, half-rising to his feet.\n\n'Do stay, Ritch!' I said hastily. 'Nick has to walk right past my cottage to get to the Hall anyway, so we might as well go together.'\n\nBetter the devil you know, after all.\n\nRitch looked at me, eyes bluer than cornflowers and, I'm sure, as sincere as a quagmire. 'Right... well, I'll ring you, then.'\n\n'Ring you about what?' Nick demanded as soon as we were outside in the blessedly cool, quiet evening.\n\n'Pet-sitting Flo, his bull terrier \u2013 and I'm so sorry to drag you away from your long and clearly engrossing conversation with Marian.'\n\n'I wanted the secret ingredient in her Lancashire hotpot recipe,' he said simply.\n\n'Oh.'\n\nThere was a silence as we walked up the quiet village street and along the lane. Then, as we turned through the stone gateposts of the Hall, I said, following my somewhat tortuous train of thought, 'What do you think about drinking your own pee?'\n\nHe stopped dead, though it was a bit too dark to make out his expression. 'What? You do say the damnedest things! Do you mean like on the Bounty, when they ran out of water and there was nothing else? At least, I think it was the Bounty.'\n\n'No, it's some health thing \u2013 supposed to be good for you.'\n\n'I do vaguely remember reading about it, now I come to think about it,' he said slowly, 'but I don't think it's likely to take off, Lizzy! You aren't thinking of trying it, are you?'\n\n'God no!' I shuddered. 'Horrible thought.'\n\n'Why are we talking about it, then?' he asked reasonably.\n\n'I know someone who does it and I just wondered. It seems very odd to me.'\n\n'It seems very odd to me, too,' he agreed. 'Lizzy\u2014'\n\n'What?'\n\n'Nothing!' he snapped abruptly and, abandoning me outside the cottage, turned and strode off into the darkness, back towards the drive.\n\n'Hi, Mum, nice night?' Jasper asked as I staggered wearily in. He was collecting Cokes and an indigestible assortment of snacks out of the fridge.\n\n'Don't ask!'\n\nHe grinned. 'We're playing computer games in my room. OK if we drop Stu home on the way to the dig in the morning? It's not far out of the way.'\n\n'If you can get him up that early,' I agreed. 'And me. I'm off to bed, I'm shattered!'\n\nI did look for the chocolate strawberries first, though, but they'd all gone. I ate a slice of cold cheese and onion pizza instead, followed by a frozen banana dipped in maple syrup and chopped nuts.\n\nIt's no wonder I had bad dreams.\n\n## Chapter 17: Tart\n\nMost villages have a summer f\u00eate but in Middlemoss, for reasons long forgotten, we have ours in mid-September. Despite this, the weather is always Indian summer good, which is generally thought to be a reward from on high for performing our local Mystery Play so faithfully every year.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nAnnie and the vicar were also helping with the second Mystery Play rehearsal and I popped down under the pretext of dropping off the bags of candyfloss she'd asked me to make for the fete, though really I was simply curious to see how the other scenes were going.\n\nI arrived just as Satan was tempting Jesus. 'Si'thee, Jesus, tha's been biding here in t'wilderness some time now,' he said. 'Art though not famished? Would thee not like a bite of Hovis and a sup of brew?'\n\n'Nay, gi'ower \u2013 there's nowt thou can tempt me wi', for thy beautiful face hides a foul heart,' responded Dave Naylor's son Gary, bringing an interesting touch of Goth gloom to the part. 'Man can't live b'bread alone and I want none of thy offerings \u2013 get thee gone!'\n\n'I don't remember anyone mentioning Hovis before,' I commented to Annie, handing her the bags of candyfloss.\n\n'No, I think that's a touch of Gary's own,' she agreed. 'I only hope he doesn't turn the water into Alcopop during the Miracles!'\n\nThen the actors were called for the Resurrection and I left before Marian could rope me in for anything.\n\nMost of the indigent population spent the week before the f\u00eate polishing their marrows, arranging flowers, baking, or labelling jars of preserves and pickles, for the various prizes were always strongly contested. Annie and I were no exceptions: her cheese scones always swept the board and her fruit tea bread was legendary.\n\nI enter only a few categories (but usually win them), among them Best Plate Apple Pie and Best Middlemoss Marchpane, the latter being a local delicacy consisting of an open mincemeat tart in an almond pastry case, the top water-iced and criss-crossed with marzipan strips. Yummy.\n\nAs expected, on Saturday morning the warm sun shone down on the small field next to the village hall where two marquees had been erected. They were the same ones used to keep the local sheep dry during lambing and they are also hired out for wedding receptions, so we've all come to associate the smell of damp wool with celebrations.\n\nThe f\u00eate is always run with military precision by Marian and Clive, who I'm sure would both spontaneously combust from sheer, pent-up excess energy if they did not have the entire management of every activity that goes on in the Mosses.\n\nOne or two of the minor celebrities now living amongst us had probably half-expected to be asked to open the f\u00eate, but Mimi always does it, having assumed the role as of right on the death of Unks' wife years ago. It would certainly be more than the Potters' lives were worth to attempt to change something so fixed in her head.\n\nWearing a drab cotton safari skirt suit sporting many pockets, slightly muddy Gertrude Jekyll boots and incongruously lacy cotton gloves, Mimi briskly admonished the gathered throng to spend lots of money, because the church roof had seen better days and, with no more ado, declared the f\u00eate open.\n\nThen she leaped from the podium with surprising agility and trotted over to the plant stall, which she appeared to think was some kind of free lucky dip for gardeners, snatching up anything that took her fancy and leaving poor Juno to pay for (and carry) it all, like a royal lady-in-waiting.\n\nTed, the old gardener who helps her up at the Hall, hovered at her elbow, offering unwanted advice in an agonised bleat: 'You don't want that, Miss Mimi! That won't do well, Miss Mimi, not in our soil it won't \u2013 and who's going t'plant all of 'em, that's wor I'd like t'know?'\n\nHe gloomed away unheeded until Juno suggested he help carry everything to the Daimler, at which point he switched to the subject of his bad back and melted away into the crowd, so I gave her a hand instead.\n\nI thought I might as well, since I felt at rather a loose end: Jasper was at his dig, which meant that this was the first year I'd come here alone, and it felt odd... but it was something I was quickly going to have to get used to. In fact, he'd probably just been good-naturedly humouring me the last year or two by coming with me!\n\nThe sudden realisation that life wasn't ever going to be the Lizzy and Jasper Show again was almost unbearably poignant. How thin and near-transparent the folds of time are! I could almost step through them into another dimension, where the child Jasper would put his hot, sticky small hand in mine, dragging me towards the swingboats, or to ride his favourite giraffe on the little roundabout... I could see him excitedly dipping into the bran tub, or clutching some cheap, hideous, furry toy I'd spent pounds winning for him.\n\nI'm a sentimental idiot: even the smell of the toffee apples made the tears come to my eyes.\n\nWhen I'd helped load Mimi's haul into the Daimler I did a stint behind the counter of the hoopla stall, where the bags of candyfloss I'd made were hung up as prizes. (I'd given the borrowed candyfloss maker back to Annie, because it was such fun I'd splashed out on one of my own.)\n\nAnnie usually got roped into organising the children's races, where she was very popular, since she could always be guaranteed to have pockets bulging with little prizes for any disconsolate losers \u2013 sherbet dabs, jelly worms and flying saucers.\n\nI had quite a good view of the goings-on from the hoopla stall, but there was no sign of Nick, who is so tall that his dark head can usually be spotted above any crowd. And Ritch must have been working, for once, for otherwise I was sure he wouldn't have been able to resist treating the peasantry to the sight of his golden magnificence.\n\nBut Polly, brazen as ever, was there with a group of rowdy friends, though I noticed she avoided me \u2013 and Caz, when he emerged from the shadows of the beer tent to perform his part, with silent and ferocious concentration, among the morris dancers.\n\nThe Mosses morris team eschew the traditional white clothes, hats and streamers in favour of all-black outfits, including leather waistcoats, and you really wouldn't want to try to tie a bell on any of them.\n\nAfter this, Caz applied his skills to the coconut shy, awarding the resultant pink teddy bear to Ophelia, who seemed to be constantly near him while looking as if she didn't know quite why. She also suddenly appeared very pregnant, even under the bunny smock.\n\nI noticed the way Annie and the vicar gravitated together between their various duties like those magnetic ladybirds \u2013 so it must be love, love, love! But if so, it's a strange, old-fashioned, Jane Austen-ish love, with no declarations or physical contact whatsoever.\n\nWhile I'm sure they think their passion is a big secret (and it certainly seems to be a secret from each other), I expect the whole parish is indulgently watching the progress of their romance with almost the same avidity they confer on the twice-weekly episodes of Cotton Common.\n\nAnnie's cookery lessons now seemed to take place most evenings when Gareth wasn't otherwise engaged, and they'd been seen together walking rescue dogs up near the RSPCA kennels. But they had not been observed holding hands, or engaging in any other lover-like activities.\n\nIn the absence of her parents, I could see I'd soon have to ask him if his intentions were honourable, or this state of affairs could go on indefinitely. And if they married, that would be yet another change: for though of course Annie and I would always be best friends, since she had fallen in love with Gareth I already saw much less of her than I used to.\n\nEver felt totally isolated in a crowd? I was just wallowing in a murky trough of self-pity when I was distracted by spotting something that made me doubt the evidence of my own eyes. So when Jojo and Mick came to try their hands at the hoopla (they were useless, but I gave them a bag of candyfloss each anyway), I said curiously, 'I didn't just see Caz and Ophelia sharing a hot dog, did I?'\n\n'Caz told her there wasn't any meat in hot dogs,' Jojo said, 'and the stupid bat believed him, so God knows what she thinks they make them out of. ARG's thrown her out. I shopped her \u2013 living with a gamekeeper on the hit list!' He looked around furtively to see if anyone could overhear.\n\n'Your secrets are safe with me, Jojo,' I assured him. 'I'm glad ARG's thrown Ophelia out and I hope you two aren't going to do any more silly things. Can't you just join the Green Party, and Friends of the Earth and that kind of thing, and lobby peacefully for what you want?'\n\nMick gave me a pitying look but didn't deign to answer this question. 'I expect it's just the pregnancy that's made her go weird,' he suggested. 'She might be all right afterwards.'\n\n'Doesn't that depend on how you define \"weird\"?'\n\n'Nah,' Jojo said, 'she'll be shacked up with him by then. He's already got her twisted round his little finger. He even hangs around your cottage on the nights when we're practising, so he can take her home.'\n\nI could see there was a bit of jealousy going on, but you could hardly blame Caz for keeping tabs on a girl who so notoriously found it difficult to say no to other men. Somebody needed to.\n\n'He hangs around my cottage anyway,' I said. 'He has the use of the freezer in one of the outbuildings, and also it's part of the estate, so he keeps an eye on things.'\n\n'He's certainly keeping an eye on Ophelia,' Mick said.\n\n'Are they really going to move in together?'\n\n'They pretty nearly are already \u2013 matter of time,' said Jojo disgustedly.\n\n'Mum's the word about ARG,' Mick said, tapping his nose as they moved away.\n\n'Mummer's the word,' I amended, watching them shamble off. At least, unlike Tom's avaricious surfer friends, they were mostly harmless. I didn't feel any need to shop them to anyone, including Nick, because I was sure they'd given up targeting the estate for the moment, and targeting me had been all Ophelia's doing.\n\n'We're going home,' Juno said, suddenly bobbing up next to me out of the throng, Mimi in tow carrying bags of popcorn, candyfloss and a half-eaten hot dog. 'Forgot to mention, Nick said to tell you he was coming, but he'd be late.'\n\n'If he doesn't come soon it'll all be over,' I said. 'And I can't see why he thought it mattered to me whether he was coming or not. I don't care.'\n\n'Don't care was made to care,' Mimi chanted. 'My governess used to say that.'\n\n'Well, come along \u2013 you're overexcited,' Juno said firmly. 'Tears before bedtime!'\n\n'She used to say that, too,' Mimi said, being borne away in the direction of the car. I would have said 'sick before bedtime' was more likely than tears.\n\nThe flaps of the marquees had been firmly closed while the vicar and two other local worthies judged the exhibits, but were now thrown back. I felt fairly complacent about the outcome. After several years of walking off with golds in two or three categories, I was already counting my book tokens and debating whether to give them to Jasper, or blow them on myself for a change.\n\nSo, when I was relieved of duty on the stall, I strolled over there, prepared to be gracious and modest as I collected my prizes. And I had won Best Fruit Chutney and Best Middlemoss Marchpane \u2013 but Nick, a surprise late entry, had beaten me into second place for Best Plate Apple Pie.\n\nI stared at the gilt-edged card with his name on, feeling surprisingly infuriated, as though he had performed a mean and underhand trick. Several local ladies were looking secretly pleased to see me pipped for gold this time, and there was some nudging and whispering as Nick, doing his silently materialising trick, reached past me and collected his prize.\n\n'Congratulations,' I said through gritted teeth, while fanning myself slightly ostentatiously with my own handful of cards. 'Was that Mrs Gumball's recipe?'\n\n'No, a variation of my own,' he said, smiling modestly, then was engulfed in a tide of congratulatory and admiring women. I stalked out of the tent.\n\nNext year he wouldn't find it so easy, as I told him when he walked home with me. Not that I wanted him to walk home with me: I pretended not to hear him when he called out, 'Wait for me, Lizzy!'\n\nCatching up, he demanded, 'Are you sulking?'\n\n'Why on earth should I sulk? And anyway, I never sulk!'\n\n'Oh, no? Isn't this the cold shoulder because I won the pie prize? Do you have to be the queen of all the puddings?'\n\n'Don't be silly,' I said, striding briskly off again.\n\n'You show me yours and I'll show you mine?' he said suggestively.\n\n'What?' I exclaimed, coming to a stop and turning to stare at him.\n\n'Apple pie recipe,' he explained innocently.\n\n'No way!' I snapped.\n\nApart from popping out to do a couple of pet-sitting jobs for Annie, I spent most of that Sunday making Christmas cakes: one big one for us and the little ones for the Senior Citizens' hampers. I knew I would need to pass on the small cake tins to someone else at the CPC next day, since we were all to make six each.\n\nMy arm certainly ached after all that stirring, but the cottage smelled totally delicious, and Jasper scraped the mixing bowls out with a teaspoon, just the way he'd always done.\n\n'What gift is the WI giving the Senior Citizens along with the hampers this year?' I asked Marian at the CPC meeting.\n\n'It's some kind of fleecy blanket with arms to snuggle into while watching the telly, called a Slanket.'\n\n'I like the sound of that, I wouldn't mind one myself,' Annie said.\n\n'I never seem to sit down long enough to make it worthwhile,' I said.\n\n'Me neither,' agreed Faye. 'Coming to the CPC meetings is the only time off I ever seem to get.'\n\n'If I feel at all chilly when I sit down with my bedtime tot of whisky to watch the news at ten, then I wrap myself in my pashmina,' Miss Pym said. 'It is light, but warm.'\n\nI certainly couldn't imagine her wrapped in anything going by such an inelegant name as a Slanket!\n\nI handed over the little cake tins to Faye, who was next on the rota, and then we discussed what extra treats to make for the hampers \u2013 rum truffles, peppermint creams, petits fours and things like that. I already make most of those anyway, for ourselves and for gifts, so it would be no trouble to make extra.\n\nAfterwards, when everyone had gone, I rang Unks to remind him to get his solicitor, Smithers, to tell me how much Tom's debts came to once he had wound up his affairs, but he said it would be a while yet, and not to worry about it.\n\nTom really didn't have any affairs to wind up, so I suspected Roly was going to take care of it and not tell me at all, but he was vague about it and hard to pin down.\n\nStill, after many delays, the insurance company had disbursed a paltry sum to compensate me for my lost 2CV \u2013 barely enough to buy a decent bicycle, let alone another car. Just as well I had had Tom's van to swap for the Land Rover.\n\nBut I used some of the money to order knitted silk long johns and a vest at off-season prices \u2013 quite a bargain. They were white and so I would have to tint them flesh pink when they arrived, so they wouldn't look too obvious from a distance under my Eve bodystocking, wig and figleaves. This year, I would be a very well-padded Eve.\n\nThey'd be useful afterwards in winter for gardening too, though not sexy, but since I wasn't intending to show my underwear to anyone, sexy was entirely irrelevant. Anyway, I wouldn't have the time or energy, since suddenly we were into the peak season of mellow fruitfulness so for the foreseeable future I'd be jamming, freezing, salting, chutneying, bottling and cordial making as though Famine were just outside waiting to knock on the door. Dried apple rings were already hanging in festoons above the stove; wine bubbled in every corner and bunches of onions, lavender and bay leaves dangled from the wooden rack above the kitchen table.\n\nI always felt much happier \u2013 sort of safer \u2013 once the cottage was full to bursting with a huge store of food and drink. I must naturally have a siege mentality.\n\nI dashed out between jobs to see to Ritch's dog. He wasn't there, but I had seen him once or twice on the evenings when he'd turned up to jam with the Mummers in Tom's old workshop. He'd taken to calling into the cottage kitchen afterwards, where I plied him with food and drink while I worked, just like everyone else who dropped by.\n\nI rather liked the company. Jasper was out much more in the evenings, another foretaste of my solitary existence soon to come \u2013 and I didn't mind the flirting now I knew it was just his manner, nothing personal. Besides, he was decorative to have around and he said it would be impossible to make a better apple pie than mine, it was perfect.\n\nWhile I was seeing to Flo, Dora Tombs told me Kylie had been spotted sneaking out of Ritch's house at the crack of dawn, and said he'd better watch out when her soldier fianc\u00e9 comes home on leave.\n\n'And she's not the only one!' she added darkly. 'A regular harem, he seems to be running. He's a charmer \u2013 like honey to humming birds, he is.'\n\n'That's terribly poetic, Mrs T!'\n\n'Saw them when I went over to Canada, to see our Sara,' she explained. 'Vancouver Island \u2013 wings whizzing round like bike wheels.'\n\n'Ritch reminded me of Honeycomb Crunch the very first time I saw him. You know, a bit like cinder toffee?'\n\nShe gave me a sharp look. 'And what does Mr Nick remind you of, then?'\n\n'Nick?' I said, surprised. 'Oh, hot spicy curry every time!'\n\n'Better for you than toffee,' she remarked cryptically. 'Honey or not.'\n\nClive and Marian Potter had got to hear the rumour about Kylie, and confided to me at the second Mystery Play rehearsal that they thought it conduct unbecoming, considering her role.\n\n'Just look at her over there, playing the Virgin Mary,' Marian said, scandalised. 'Butter wouldn't melt!'\n\n'Mary, thou art chosen as the mother of the Son of God, so think thisen lucky,' the Angel Gabriel was telling her.\n\n'By heck, then, thee'd better have words with my Joseph smartish and explain t'matter,' she riposted forthrightly, 'or t'wedding's off!'\n\n'It's probably just gossip,' I told Marian and Clive, but when Ritch, who was waiting for us outside again, swooped down and kissed me a smacker right on the lips, they exchanged meaningful glances as if to say, 'What, you too, Eve?'\n\nActually, I thought the way he and Kylie avoided each other in public was much more obvious than if they'd been entwined for the whole evening. I was sure they had an assignation set up for later, because although Ritch sat next to me and flirted outrageously, when I got up to go he didn't offer to walk me home this time \u2013 I went alone.\n\nNick had already left, much earlier. Maybe he'd got the Lancashire hotpot recipe out of Marian? Mission accomplished.\n\nJasper was home when I got there, eating cheese on toast with Ginny snuffling hopefully round his feet for crumbs. He said Nick had phoned to say he'd found a taker for the big greenhouse, and it was to be dismantled tomorrow morning and removed on a lorry.\n\n'I don't see why he didn't tell me that earlier!'\n\n'He said even with your clothes on he found you so distracting as Eve that he forgot, and goodness knows what he would be like at the actual performance.'\n\n'He did? What kind of thing is that to say to my son?' I demanded, scandalised.\n\nJasper grinned.\n\n'And he doesn't mean it either,' I said snappily. 'He's just being sarcastic and horrible.'\n\n'No, he's not: he likes you, Mum.'\n\n'I think I know your uncle Nick by now and all his little ways,' I said firmly.\n\nAfter dropping Jasper and Ginny off bright and early at the dig next morning, I went home and changed into my oldest jeans, ready to help dismantle the greenhouse.\n\nBut the new owner proved to be one of those men who doesn't recognise any woman's existence in a business deal and so addressed himself totally to Nick, who was hanging around looking taciturn. I returned to the kitchen and my jam making.\n\nWhen they had gone and I went out, I found my little domain totally changed, with the last plants that had been inside it pathetically huddling together in the open, as if for warmth.\n\nIt was another thing sorted out, though \u2013 and the huge TV has already gone, after I put a card in the post office window. On the proceeds, Jasper had chosen a small one with an integral DVD player to take to university with him. I only hoped he was going to work and not spend his entire student loan on films, drink and stuff.\n\nI'd begun to notice that if Jasper was home when Ritch called by, he seemed to be in and out of the kitchen all the time, and having six foot of sardonic teenage youth critically observing him rather cramped Ritch's flirting. I didn't know why Jasper disliked him, unless he had joined the ranks of those trying to pair me up with Nick (I was not blind to all the hints various people, including Juno and Mimi, had been dropping), though I could tell them right then that this was only wishful thinking and not a horse that was ever going to run.\n\nBut clearly everyone saw Ritch as some kind of threat, to either my heart or my virtue (or both), for when Jasper wasn't there, Caz seemed to be hanging about the yard until Ritch left, instead.\n\nAnd I was forever finding Nick wandering about the place, as if he owned it... which I supposed he sort of did, come to think of it, though he didn't own me.\n\nIn fact, my cottage seemed suddenly to have become one of the most popular spots in the Mosses.\n\nI invented a recipe for potato and nut biscuits, which came out so well I tried making chocolate flapjacks with mash, too.\n\nHowever, Jasper said they were more like 'mudflaps', so a little more experimentation was clearly in order.\n\n## Chapter 18: Simmering Gently\n\nI've been potting hyacinth bulbs and putting them away in a dark cupboard today \u2013 pink, blue and white. It seems indulgent to take the time, when there's so much to do in the garden and the blackberries still cluster thickly on the brambles, begging to be picked and turned into wine, jelly and jam. But when they flower, they'll be like a breathy promise of spring to come.\n\nAnd we might need it, for a heavy crop of berries on all the bushes means a hard winter, according to old country lore.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nThe skiing underwear I'd ordered was sitting in a neat brown parcel on my doorstep when I got back from dropping Jasper at the dig one morning, so I went straight upstairs to try it on.\n\nIt fitted tightly, but I had quite a job getting the old, stewed-tea-coloured bodystocking on over it (one of us was losing our stretch with age \u2013 or maybe both of us).\n\nWhen I looked in the mirror I saw that I presented a strangely padded and seamed appearance, like an unsuccessful home-made Cabbage Patch doll, especially once I got the totally unrealistic flaxen wig out of its storage box and completed the ensemble.\n\nSexy it was not, and when I heard someone walk into the hall downstairs I nearly died: my heart certainly stopped and I went still as a mouse. There was no way I was going to let anyone see me like this!\n\n'Lizzy?' called a familiar voice.\n\n'Oh, thank God!' I muttered devoutly. I'd quite forgotten I'd arranged for Annie to come over and help me sort out Tom's clothes and personal stuff, a task I'd been cravenly putting off.\n\n'Come up \u2013 I'm in the bedroom,' I called.\n\nShe clumped upstairs and I turned to face the door, striking a soulful pose and twiddling one long gold ringlet round my fingers.\n\n'Have you already started?' she was saying as she walked in. 'I'm a bit late, I\u2014'\n\nHer jaw dropped and her stunned expression sent me into near hysteria. After a dumbstruck minute she started to giggle too and soon we were both entirely incoherent.\n\n'So,' I said finally, trying to wipe the tears from my face with a long tress and finding that nylon wasn't very absorbent, 'you don't think I should play the Eve part for laughs, then?'\n\n'Oh, Lizzy, can you imagine Nick's face if he walked on and saw you like that?' she said, sitting down on the bed, limp with laughter.\n\n'I could \u2013 but I'd rather freeze to death first!'\n\n'Well, you can't possibly, anyway. But perhaps if you bought a new Spandex bodystocking it might be warmer than that old one?'\n\n'It hardly seems worth the expense when this is the last year I'll play Eve.'\n\n'Never mind, you looked stunning, even in the old outfit, last year,' she said loyally, 'though quite indecent from a distance!'\n\n'Speaking of indecent, I don't know what Nick intends wearing, if anything. Do you?'\n\n'I asked him, in case he hadn't given it any thought,' Annie said innocently. 'He said he'd ordered footless tights from a ballet-clothing place and would wear his cricket box under them to protect his modesty.'\n\nThat conjured up quite a vision... which I hastily dispelled, though not without some difficulty. 'He'll freeze,' I said with conviction. 'We both will!'\n\n'I expect he'll be all right, because it's only a few minutes, the Garden scene, isn't it? Then you can rush into one of the loose boxes and put your warm clothes back on.'\n\n'Still, that does it \u2013 if he's going to be half-naked, then I'm not going out there padded up like Michelin woman! A new Spandex outfit it is. I've still got some car insurance money.'\n\nI thought I might even go completely mad and get myself a pretty frock, too, for Christmas dinner, which we always had up at Pharamond Hall. I couldn't remember when I'd last bought myself something new to wear that wasn't vital, like jeans.\n\nI changed back into ordinary clothes and then we got down to sorting out Tom's stuff, which I'd collected up and pushed into his wardrobe or drawers out of sight.\n\n'Jasper's taken a couple of things \u2013 cufflinks, mostly \u2013 but the rest can go to the charity shop, or in the recycling bin.'\n\n'I'll take it all down to the Animal Shelter shop,' she offered. 'I brought the car up rather than walk, in case.'\n\nTom didn't have a huge wardrobe of clothes, so it didn't take long. I was so glad I wasn't doing it alone, though, because memories, mostly painful, tended to tumble out of every open door and drawer.\n\n'How are you and Gareth getting on, Annie? You're seen almost everywhere together, like Siamese twins,' I teased, once we'd loaded her car and retired to the kitchen for a well-earned cup of coffee and a restorative plate of chocolate slab cake. 'And the cookery lessons too! Is he teaching you anything in return?'\n\n'No,' she said, her face clouding over. 'Lizzy, I enjoy being with him, but I think he's just being friendly. I'm that type of girl, aren't I? Men don't think of me romantically at all, so I expect I'm exactly like a sister to him!'\n\n'You daft bat!' I said, regarding her incredulously. 'He's absolutely dotty about you! When he looks at you he has that soppy sheep expression in his eyes, and every time he speaks to you he goes red as a beetroot. And he told me he thought you were very pretty!'\n\n'He didn't!' Annie went pink with pleasure.\n\n'He did.'\n\nShe looked at me doubtfully. 'Then why...? I mean, you must be wrong, Lizzy!'\n\n'Oh, I'm sure he's just shy. Encourage him a bit.'\n\n'I couldn't possibly! What if he only wants to be friends? Think how embarrassing it would be if I'd made a fool of myself and we had to go on meeting as if nothing had happened...'\n\n'But you do fancy him, don't you, Annie? I mean, this is love's young dream and all that?'\n\n'More love's not-so-young dream,' she said ruefully.\n\n'Rubbish, we're still thirty-somethings, and that's a very good age for love.'\n\n'It might be, but I daren't risk destroying my friendship with Gareth to find out.'\n\n'You won't. You wait and see.'\n\n'You aren't going to do anything, are you?' Her soft, blue-grey eyes looked at me anxiously.\n\n'No, of course not,' I reassured her quite untruthfully. 'I'll await events to prove me right and then I expect to be matron of honour at the wedding, in a mid-calf-length puce taffeta dress with those puffed shoulders that make you look five feet wide.'\n\n'Not puce,' she said seriously. 'The church carpet and hassocks are scarlet, so it would clash.' Then she sighed, her eyes refocusing, as though abandoning a beautiful dream. 'Anyway, enough of my boring affairs, Lizzy \u2013 what about you? The whole village is talking about the way Ritch Rainford flirts with you!'\n\n'Oh, come on, you must have realised I'm just a smokescreen for the women he is having affairs with, Kylie among others. But I do like him, and I enjoy flirting with him. At least he makes me feel I'm still attractive.'\n\n'Perhaps, but it's making Nick jealous, haven't you noticed?'\n\nI stared at her. 'Well, yes, but not jealous of me personally \u2013 he simply doesn't like Ritch paying attentions to his cousin's widow. Come to that, he just doesn't seem to like Ritch. But I'm sure his attitude's mainly a territorial thing.'\n\n'I think you're wrong, and he's fond of you,' she said earnestly.\n\n'Annie! It's bad enough Juno and Mimi \u2013 and now even Jasper \u2013 trying to matchmake, without you joining in!'\n\n'Do they? I hadn't realised. But there, you see \u2013 even the family think it would be a good thing if you got together!'\n\n'Annie, it's not going to happen \u2013 and it would certainly be a marriage made in hell, not heaven.'\n\n'I don't think Nick would agree with you,' she persisted stubbornly.\n\nI considered it seriously for a minute, remembering the way he'd kissed me once or twice in a most uncousinly manner, and how he'd referred back to our short-lived romance as if he couldn't understand why it hadn't worked out... But apart from that, there wasn't anything to suggest he was harbouring an undying passion for me.\n\n'No,' I said firmly, 'we bicker more than we agree, and drive each other mad: too many cooks again. He might still fancy me \u2013 I don't know \u2013 but he isn't in love with me.'\n\n'So you're just friends \u2013 like Gareth and me?'\n\n'Well, not quite. More sparring partners. The family \u2013 and probably the whole village, going by the hints Dora Tombs has been letting fall \u2013 just wants a neat and tidy ending: you in the parsonage, me in the Hall, all's well that ends well. Only life isn't like that.'\n\n'I suppose not.'\n\nShe sighed sadly, but I was determined that at least her romance would turn out right. All Gareth needed was a bit of encouragement.\n\nThat evening Ophelia came round, driven by Caz in his ancient Land Rover (even more ancient than mine and painted with camouflage, just like him sometimes), and to my astonishment asked me if she could buy the quail!\n\n'You haven't anywhere to keep them,' I pointed out, 'and anyway, what would you do with them? You won't eat them or the eggs, so you'll be overrun with male quail in no time.'\n\n'No she won't, then,' Caz drawled, leaning against the bonnet, his khaki hat tipped over his nose.\n\nReally, he's getting almost loquacious! It must be love. Anyone would think it was spring, the way Cupid's fiery darts are flying in all directions.\n\n'There's the old piggery behind my cottage \u2013 I can keep them in that for now,' Ophelia said, rabbited at her lower lip a bit and added, 'I've decided to become vegetarian while I'm pregnant, and eat fish and eggs.'\n\n'Good idea!'\n\nShe gave Caz a half-defiant look: 'But not flesh of any kind!'\n\nWhat does she think fish are made of?\n\n'Right, I'll start including more eggs in your basket of fruit and vegetables. I wasn't sure if you were eating them or not.'\n\n'No, no, no, you shouldn't! It's too kind and... and I don't see why you should be kind,' she muttered, her bulging eyes taking on that sainted martyr look. 'I don't deserve it.'\n\n'You may not, but we have to think of the baby. It needs good wholesome food to grow properly.'\n\n'But you carry it all the way up to my cottage and it must be really heavy!' She wrung her hands in an anguished sort of way. Let's hope she is never holding a quail \u2013 or, indeed, the baby \u2013 when she's in one of these states. 'Don't \u2013 please don't do it any more. Caz says he'll fetch it.'\n\n'OK \u2013 that will be good. I'll leave the basket near the eggs in the outbuilding on Monday mornings, how about that?'\n\nI couldn't really see Caz in the Little Red Riding Hood role with a basket, but that was his problem. Maybe he'd bring a backpack.\n\nShe nodded like a car mascot and then added, after another of her lip-chewing ruminations, 'Thank you for the bottled tomatoes.'\n\n'I didn't give you any bottled tomatoes!'\n\nShe blinked slowly. 'Yes, you did. They were on the doorstep last night, with that yellow checked material tied over the lid, like all your jars of stuff.'\n\n'Gingham? I bought a whole roll of it years ago, and never got to the end of it. But I didn't leave any jars of anything on your doorstep.'\n\n'But... it must be you. I don't know anyone else who bottles tomatoes.'\n\nI had a sudden horrible thought. 'I know someone who tried to,' I said grimly. 'Polly Darke! And they gave me botulism or something equally ghastly.'\n\n'But she's not... she isn't... she wouldn't...' Ophelia trailed off, and then wrung her skinny hands together again distractedly, her eyelids frantically fluttering.\n\n'Look, I guessed she was the one who made you do the ARG stuff to me, out of sheer spiteful jealousy. There was no one else it could have been.'\n\n'But Caz made her stop, so perhaps she's sorry now, and this is a present?' Ophelia suggested. 'But I don't want her peace offering!'\n\n'If it is a peace offering. We know she's spiteful enough to do something nasty. I'd throw it away, just in case, if I were you.'\n\n'I'll do that,' Caz said, the stony expression on his face boding ill for Polly \u2013 though would she have tried something that might have harmed Ophelia's baby? I thought back to what I knew of her, which, due to my avoiding her as much as possible, was not a lot.\n\n'I could be quite wrong about her, but it is odd that I was the only one who got the dodgy jar of tomatoes when she was handing them out to half the village that time,' I said slowly. 'And another thing: although I've only been to her house once for a book launch party, I was horribly sick afterwards, though I didn't hear of anyone else being taken ill.'\n\n'Toadstool,' Caz said meaningfully.\n\n'Toadstool?' For a minute I thought he'd run mad, then I remembered: 'You mean that poisonous one you showed me \u2013 was it in the basket of field mushrooms Polly brought me to swap for eggs?'\n\nHe nodded grimly.\n\n'And wasn't it the kind you only get in woods, not open fields?'\n\nHe nodded again.\n\n'Could she be that jealous and vindictive? It's so downright nasty!'\n\nCaz shrugged.\n\n'Well, if it is true, let's hope she doesn't present any more little gifts to other people disguised as my offerings! I'd better tell Marian Potter tomorrow that someone is maliciously leaving tainted jars of food that look just like mine on doorsteps and she will spread the word. And I'll stop covering the jars with anything except Cellophane from now on, even if they don't look as pretty!'\n\nOphelia had lost interest by now and wandered off to commune with the quail by means of little cheeping noises. She seemed to be frighteningly at one with them mentally, which didn't bode well for the intellect of her future offspring.\n\nI followed over. 'So, what are you going to do with the quail?'\n\n'Give them a happy life and I can sell the eggs, too. I think that's all right,' she said earnestly.\n\n'OK, they're yours,' I agreed.\n\nShe was totally impractical, but I expected Caz would just quietly go in and do what had to be done with the birds when she wasn't looking.\n\nThey seemed to be settling down into a pair, though an odd couple they made. Maybe knowing secrets about each other forms a bond, for he was aware she was in ARG, and he'd told her what he did with the grey squirrels he caught. And Ophelia seemed very malleable, apart from a bit of occasional stubbornness, so I expected he'd slowly bend her into the shape he wanted over time.\n\nWhy did that make me think of brandy snaps?\n\nCaz found some cardboard boxes, which he punched holes into, and loaded the quail up then and there, dismantling the pens and taking those, too, since I would have no further use for them.\n\nWhat with the big bare space where the greenhouse used to be, and the lack of cheeping, moving feathers in the barn, things were looking quite deserted, apart from the hens and ducks. They'd all sheered off while Caz and Ophelia were there, but now came back looking for any pickings.\n\nWith a sigh, I went back into the cottage and looked out my recipe for brandy snaps, even though trying to wind them round the handle of a wooden spoon is such a pain that I couldn't usually be bothered.\n\nNext day when I was on my way back from a spot of pet-sitting duty, I spotted Caz and Nick in the woods near the drive. Caz seemed to be talking, or at least, replying, which was amazing! Then they shook hands...\n\nWhat was that all about? Had some kind of deal been done?\n\nOn Sunday we were invited up to lunch at the Hall. Actually, we had an open invitation, but sometimes I was too busy, or wanted to go out with Jasper for the day while I'd still got him.\n\nNick was cooking, as he often did because he said it gave Mrs Gumball a rest. Though she protested at having her kitchen taken over, I think she was quite pleased really: she was no spring chicken any more, after all.\n\nHe was in and out of the kitchen when I got there and spurned my offer of help, though he accepted Jasper's even though he only knows the theory of cooking and not the practicalities. So I left him to stew in his own jus and sat down at the dining table with the others.\n\nUnks smiled at me fondly, then went back to reading the sports section of the Sunday paper.\n\n'We're going on a garden tour by coach,' Mimi informed me chattily.\n\nI stared at Juno. 'Is that a good idea?'\n\n'Don't see why not \u2013 I'm fully fit again. I'll frisk her for knives, scissors and plastic bags before we set off, and I won't take my eyes off her for a minute within fifty paces of anything green. It's a late-booking bargain.'\n\nMimi smiled innocently.\n\n'I don't think you will get a lot out of it, Juno,' I said. 'You could do with a more restful holiday, after your accident.'\n\n'There are entertainments in the evenings at the various hotels,' Mimi said. 'It'll be fun. But Juno and me have got to share a room. People will think we're an odd couple.' She giggled.\n\n'Pity, I was hoping to pick up a toyboy,' Juno said, 'preferably a rich one who could whisk me away from this madhouse.'\n\n'She doesn't mean it,' Mimi confided to me. 'Her heart belongs to Sean Connery.'\n\n'I've never been one of those romantics,' agreed Juno, 'but I like a man to be a man.'\n\n'Do you think Nick is a macho man, Lizzy?' Mimi asked, with one of her disconcertingly clear looks, just as the man himself strode into the room carrying the soup tureen, with Jasper following up behind with a silver basket of bread.\n\n'If macho is big, male and overbearingly bossy, yes,' I said sweetly.\n\nNick gave me one of his slaty looks, the purple-edged sort.\n\nIt was good soup, followed by roast beef and perfect Yorkshire puddings, and he'd made one of his apple pies for dessert, which I have to admit was delicious, though I certainly wasn't going to tell him so. Instead, I said the pastry was a little dry and asked for more cream.\n\nJasper and Nick were talking quietly in the kitchen when I carried through the dessert plates, and I hoped it was serious male stuff, because my attempt to discuss Safe Sex and STDs with Jasper certainly hadn't gone down too well.\n\nNick seems to be Confidant of the Moment \u2013 but not mine. Been there, done that, and once was enough!\n\nI was stuffed to bursting point after the coffee, but then Nick practically dragged me back into the kitchen and made me taste three different coffee granitas before I left. When I said I didn't think any of them had that extra something, he went very sulky, even though (unlike what I said about the apple pie) it was quite true.\n\nOn the way home Jasper said I'd hurt Nick's feelings and I should have pretended one of the granitas was great, and I said, astonished, 'Why should I, when he's always so rude about my cooking?'\n\n'But you know he doesn't mean it. He's just joking \u2013 it's affectionate.'\n\n'I'm not so sure about that,' I said darkly.\n\nAnyway, I'm never again going to tell a man something is wonderful when it's not. It's my un-New Year resolution.\n\n## Chapter 19: Stirring\n\nWe're heading towards October and I'm catching up with the garden: clearing away the finished crops and storing layers of carrots in boxes for the winter. At the Christmas Pudding Circle the small cake tins changed hands yet again and soon we will have enough for all the Senior Citizens' hampers. When Marian first suggested we bake the cakes we also offered to make individual Christmas puddings; but it turned out that when the WI asked them for likes and dislikes, they all preferred bought microwavable puddings and cartons of ready-made custard.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nI passed on the warning about gifts of possibly tainted bottled goods being left on doorsteps by the simple method of mentioning it one morning at the Christmas Pudding Circle meeting. Marian especially is permanently plugged into the local grapevine via the post office, so by afternoon everyone within a five-mile radius would know, like dropping a pebble into a pond and watching the ripples spread.\n\nAfter that I hadn't intended to give the matter much further thought. In fact, I was half inclined to think Ophelia's jar of tomatoes had been a gift from some well-meaning villager, who'd simply reused a gingham circle from something of mine. Goodness knows, I've supplied enough preserves and pickles to village fairs, f\u00eates and bazaars over the years!\n\nBut then Leila phoned me out of the blue in mid-afternoon while I was making a carrot cake and, to my complete astonishment, apologised for what she'd said at the funeral.\n\n'Of course, much of it was true, but it was not the time or place for such matters. I had come simply to pay my last respects.'\n\n'Quite... and... thank you,' I replied cautiously, though not sure quite what I was thanking her for.\n\n'I see clearly now I was deceived by Tom and also, perhaps, by Nick. But that is life, so now I am resolved to stay single. Nick says he will still review my restaurant in his articles; it will not make a difference, our divorce,' she added, sounding surprised and slightly scornful of his magnanimity. 'So, we should all bury the hatchet and move on, yes?'\n\n'Er, yes... and it's nice of you to phone me,' I said doubtfully, wondering if there was a catch, for example, exactly where she meant to bury the hatchet.\n\n'I could do no less, after you sent me the peace offering, though a pot of blackberry jam, that is not sensible to put in the post, even packed so well.'\n\n'Jam?'\n\n'It says \"Blackberry Jam: Middlemoss Autumn F\u00eate\" on the label, so I knew it must come from you.'\n\nI'd provided some to be raffled off for charity, so it must be one of those. 'You haven't eaten any, have you?' I demanded urgently.\n\n'No. I do not eat jam, it is not in my diet regime.'\n\n'Then don't! I didn't send it, someone else did \u2013 and I'm afraid it might be... tainted.'\n\n'Tainted? You mean poisoned? Someone is trying to kill me? But that is ridiculous!' she said witheringly.\n\n'No, I'm sure she doesn't intend to kill you, just make you sick and pin the blame onto me. She's tried the same thing with Ophelia Locke, but I wasn't sure\u2014' I broke off. 'Oh, you don't know Ophelia, do you?'\n\n'I know of her. I have been told she claims to be carrying Tom's child, but she sounds a type most hysterical and neurotic.'\n\n'I suppose she is a bit,' I agreed, wondering who Leila's spy in the village was. 'But she is pregnant and there's a possibility it could be Tom's \u2013 about one in four, if you want the odds. But anyway, she found some bottled tomatoes on her doorstep the other day and assumed they were from me, and they weren't. And then I remembered once having a bad experience with bottled tomatoes someone gave me, and I got suspicious. Only it seemed so incredible that then I thought I must be imagining it.'\n\n'But you are confusing me with all this talk of bottled tomatoes! Who \u2013 and why? And...' There was a pause. 'It is Tom's other woman doing this, that weird person, Polly something?'\n\n'I think so,' I admitted. 'I can't imagine who else it could be, and there are a few too many coincidences. She's been blackmailing the local animal rights campaigners into targeting me, too, so I wouldn't put it past her.'\n\n'I will set the police on to her!'\n\n'There isn't any proof, so I don't think they could do anything, but I'm going to let her know that she's found out, so she'll think twice before trying anything else!'\n\nLeila still maintained that the police should be involved, but I was wary: what if they thought I'd done it myself, as a sort of double-blind?\n\nBut in the end she agreed she would do nothing for the present, and rang off, after adding that if I was ever in the vicinity of her restaurant there would always be a table free for me, an offer I thanked her for but was unlikely to take up.\n\nWhen I next popped into Annie's cottage on the way to see to Flo, I told her exactly who I'd meant when I'd warned them at the CPC meeting that someone was leaving poisoned preserves on doorsteps. Then I retailed my conversation with Leila.\n\n'Poor, poor woman!' she said sadly.\n\n'There's nothing poor about Leila!'\n\n'No, I meant Polly, to be so consumed with spite and jealousy that she could do such awful things!'\n\n'Well, that's one way of looking at it,' I said. 'Trust you to feel sorry for her! And it's all very well playing these pranks on me and Leila, but Ophelia's pregnant and it might have made her really ill or harmed the baby! Goodness knows what she put in those tomatoes.'\n\n'That's true, and she might do something else! Perhaps I ought to tell Gareth so he could go and reason with her?' she suggested doubtfully.\n\n'Absolutely not! There's no way she's going to cast herself upon his bosom and weep tears of repentance, and it would be like sending Daniel into the lioness's den.'\n\n'What are we going to do, then?'\n\n'I'm going to speak to Polly, preferably in a public spot with other people about. I'll tell her I know about her tricks, and if she does anything else I'll report her to the police. That should stop her.'\n\n'Oh, I hope so,' Annie said earnestly. 'Perhaps it will shock her into realising how badly she's been behaving, so she can move on.'\n\n'I wish she would move away,' I said, getting up. 'Well, must go and see to Flo on my way home. Ritch isn't going to be back until late and she's probably got all four paws crossed by now.'\n\n'You really aren't falling for him, are you, Lizzy?' she asked anxiously.\n\n'No, of course not, though if celibate widowhood ever palls on me, it's nice to know my options for random sex are still open.'\n\n'Lizzy! You wouldn't!'\n\n'Probably not \u2013 especially if he continues with all his dubious habits.'\n\nIn the afternoon Nick rang and demanded I go up to the Hall and taste his newest version of coffee granita, but I declined, since I was in the middle of a huge quince jelly-making operation by then and could hardly down tools at his bidding.\n\nHe slammed the phone down, but strode into my kitchen not ten minutes later, carrying an insulated box cradled in his arms like a baby.\n\n'This one's perfect!' he said, the light of battle in his eyes and his dark hair sticking up in an angry crest. 'I defy you to find fault with it!'\n\n'Look, I'm up to the elbows in this, I can't sit down and eat,' I protested, so he followed after me around the kitchen, feeding me teaspoons of granita as if I were a stubborn toddler. Much though I would have liked to find fault, however, I couldn't. The colour, taste and texture were all pure perfection.\n\nWhen I said as much he tossed the spoon into the Belfast sink with a clatter, grabbed me and planted a triumphantly emphatic kiss on my lips before I could fend him off with the ladle.\n\n'Mmm... you taste of the perfect coffee granita!' he murmured, half-closing his eyes.\n\n'I don't know what else you'd expect, when you've been force-feeding me the stuff for the last ten minutes,' I snapped, taking a step back. We unpeeled rather stickily.\n\n'You're a very messy jam maker,' he said severely.\n\n'And you are a very messy cook, full stop. I've never seen anyone use so much equipment to make even the simplest dish.'\n\n'Like my apple pie?' he said, a gleam in his eyes. 'Come on, Lizzy, you know there was nothing wrong with it last Sunday.'\n\n'It wasn't bad,' I conceded, then I smiled at him innocently and asked, 'That granita... just what did you add to make it taste like that?'\n\n'Wouldn't you like to know!' he said tantalisingly. 'Well, see you at the play rehearsal later, Eve!' Then, picking up his cold box, he walked out.\n\nHe was still being exasperating at the rehearsal \u2013 and so were the Nine Angels, who kept gurning at each other when they thought I wasn't looking.\n\nI didn't go to the pub afterwards, because I simply wasn't in the mood, but sneaked out of the side door and dashed home. Anyway, the kitchen was still a sticky mess and I wanted to clear that up and then, while still in quince mode, make some wine.\n\nFriday was Jasper's last day at the dig and he returned smelling of real ale and with some kind of excavation certificate, with which he was highly pleased. I knew he'd been feeding Ginny pork scratchings at the pub after the dig, because she threw most of them up behind the kitchen door.\n\nJasper went straight off after dinner to stay for a couple of days with his friend Stu, whose family lived in Ormskirk, and although I wanted to spend every precious moment left with him before the start of his first university term, I didn't try to persuade him not to go. Instead, I drove him there and dropped him off myself, hoping Stu's mum was expecting Ginny, too \u2013 and thank heaven she came ready-house-trained.\n\nI also hoped Jasper would behave himself, though frankly there are not many dens of iniquity in the lovely old market town of Ormskirk. But before he left home Unks gave him a huge amount of spending money. He must have had a win on the horses, to have so much cash about him.\n\n'You'll be sensible, won't you, Jasper?' I said, hugging him before he got out of the Land Rover, which he suffered me to do in a resigned sort of way.\n\n'It's not me who needs to be sensible, when that Rainford man's forever dropping in and hanging out with you, or chatting you up in pubs,' he protested. 'Not to mention phoning you up and asking you to go round to his house all the time!'\n\n'He's just being friendly, Jasper, and I only go round to his house to look after the dog.'\n\n'I don't see why he can't look after his own dog.'\n\n'Well, neither do I, really \u2013 or get one of his many girlfriends to do it.'\n\n'So you do know about all the girls he takes back there, then?' He sounded relieved.\n\n'Honestly, Jasper! I'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to, even if Dora Tombs didn't tell me. The whole village is talking about him, which at least means they've moved on from going over what your dad got up to with Leila and Polly, and taking bets on who the father of Ophelia's baby is,' I said tartly. 'Now, you stop worrying about me, because anyone would think I was some naive innocent out of a Victorian melodrama, about to be taken advantage of by the villain of the piece!'\n\n'He does do that all the time in Cotton Common.'\n\n'But not in real life,' I said firmly. 'And I'm not interested in Ritch that way \u2013 or any other man. I just want to be left alone with my hens, my garden and my recipes.'\n\nEspecially the search for the perfect apple pie and coffee granita...\n\n'Try not to fall out with Uncle Nick while I'm away,' was his final admonishment as he removed his holdall and slammed the door. He must have been reading my mind \u2013 and bossiness seems to run in the Pharamond blood, just like cooking.\n\nI didn't get a chance to fall out with Nick, since it turned out that he had left for London and was then going on to Cornwall in search of fish recipes for some forthcoming article.\n\nI felt a bit... piqued, I think is the word. I'd sort of got used to having him around again, annoying though he is, because he's someone to bounce food ideas off and argue with. Annie's interested in food, but I wouldn't call her a creative cook, and she's so even-tempered I couldn't pick a quarrel with her even if I tried.\n\nMind you, since every second word she utters these days is 'Gareth', exasperation might eventually lead me to smother her to death, probably with a hassock.\n\nRitch was off in London too, shooting some cameo role for a film, so Dora Tombs and I were taking care of Flo between us. On Sunday I joined the depleted party up at the Hall for lunch and Mimi and Juno were full of talk of their holiday and deep in planning the installation of a water feature in the walled garden, while Unks was happily doing his own thing, as usual, mainly involving studying racing form.\n\nI was still extremely busy myself, perpetually preserving, storing, gardening and pet-sitting, but it gave me a foretaste of what it was going to be like once Jasper went off to university...\n\nI suspected Nick wouldn't give up his flat in London after all, but go back to dividing his time between there and the Hall. Eventually, once the divorce was finalised, he'd marry someone young and beautiful and start a family. I was quite convinced this would happen, because even I had to admit he was wildly attractive, except when he was annoying me... so it was just as well he annoyed me most of the time, wasn't it? And clearly he had no great interest in me, whatever my misguided relatives thought, since he couldn't even be bothered sending me postcards any more!\n\nAnyway, I liked being on my own, and Jasper wouldn't be a million miles away, so I couldn't imagine why I was feeling suddenly so depressed.\n\nBut of course I wasn't totally alone, for I still had my friends in the Christmas Pudding Circle, and at the next Monday meeting Miss Pym gave us all a surprise gift of candied angelica. Marian had brought me her giant round two-part metal Christmas pudding mould, too, so the following afternoon I abandoned everything else and made a huge spiced fruit cannonball instead. The smell of the ingredients took me right back to happy times at the vicarage with Annie's family, and was very comforting.\n\nStirring, I made a wish.\n\n## Chapter 20: Freshly Minted\n\nI have been preserving apples in wine and making green tomato chutney, before clearing away the tomato plants. I'm not sure what I'll do with the bare patch where the huge glasshouse used to stand, but I'm very tempted to turn it into a little apple orchard, with several unusual old kinds.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nThe most dreadful thing! Gareth called to tell me that Tom's mother and stepfather had just arrived in the UK and were on their way down to pay their respects at Tom's grave!\n\n'What? But why didn't they call me?' I asked, stunned. 'I haven't heard a word since the funeral \u2013 and it's years since they saw Jasper, too, and he's away at the moment. If only they'd let me know they were coming!'\n\n'I don't know, but I thought I'd check to see if you knew about it, because they didn't mention you and you ought to be there. I gave Mr Barillos directions to the graveyard. They've hired a car and were only about an hour away when he rang.'\n\nI ran a distracted hand through my tangled hair. 'Well, thanks for telling me, Gareth. They're such odd people that I suppose them behaving like this shouldn't surprise me, but you're right and I'd better meet you at the graveyard.'\n\nI hoped they wouldn't be too disappointed that the stone has not yet been erected. It's ordered, but these things do take time.\n\nQuickly I changed into something clean, though equally unsuitable for the occasion, and set off, collecting Annie on the way for moral support.\n\nGareth was standing by the grave, which did indeed look forlorn, especially on such a grey, cold October day as this one: a grassy mound in the Pharamond corner. I intended planting spring bulbs there, once it had its stone, and possibly a bit of lavender. I don't much like cut flowers left dying on graves, or in those little stone urns.\n\nI wasn't sure I would have recognised the Barilloses if I'd met them in the street, but on a gravel path in an old country graveyard, they stood out like sore thumbs. For a start, there was something glossily expensive about their clothes and, although it was not a sunny day, they both wore huge, wraparound reflective sunglasses.\n\nThe skin visible on Tom's mother's face looked stretched, smooth and peachily tinted, while her skittish curls were a rich brassy blond. Her husband looked positively withered and prune-like in comparison, apart from having a head of hair like black Astroturf.\n\nGareth stepped forward and clasped their hands in turn, murmuring a few earnest words. Then, since they were pointedly ignoring me, he gestured and said, 'And here's your daughter-in-law, Lizzy, come to meet you and her friend, Annie Vane, whom I don't think you've met.'\n\n'Well, Elizabeth, I didn't expect to see you here,' Jacqueline Barillos said coolly.\n\n'My wife did not wish to see her \u2013 you should not have told her we were coming,' argued her husband.\n\n'But she's Tom's widow,' began poor Gareth, baffled. 'Who better to offer comfort and\u2014'\n\n'But we know she did not care about him and was a bad wife,' interrupted Jaime Barillos. 'We have had many beautiful letters from the woman he did love, whom he wanted to marry. We know how grieved he was when he found out about his wife's affair and realised that even his own son was fathered by his cousin!'\n\n'Now, just a minute!' I broke in angrily. 'I think I can guess who's been telling you this pack of lies, but it most definitely is not true!'\n\n'Certainly not!' Annie defended me stoutly. 'It was Tom who was the unfaithful one, not Lizzy, and Jasper is Tom's son.'\n\n'And you, of all people, must know why my son looks so like a Pharamond!' I added pointedly to Mrs Barillos.\n\nShe gave me a dirty look, then threw a dramatic hand towards the grassy mound and cried, 'Here's the proof \u2013 does this look like the tomb of a loved husband?' Clearly she'd missed her calling and should have been on the stage.\n\n'The stone is ordered. These things take time,' I explained.\n\n'Not even any flowers...' she sobbed, turning to her husband, who put his arm around her and glared at me.\n\n'Please,' began Gareth, 'please don't distress yourself, Mrs Barillos! Look, why don't we all go back to the vicarage and talk this through? I fear you're letting the natural grief of a mother lead you to unwarranted conclusions\u2014'\n\n'No!' she declared, lifting her head and turning her dark lenses in my direction like an inimical ant. 'I would like you all to go away so I can pay my respects to my son \u2013 alone.'\n\n'Then afterwards, perhaps...' suggested Gareth tentatively.\n\n'No. Leave us in peace,' she said implacably.\n\nI turned and walked off before I could say something I would regret, and Annie followed me, though Gareth paused to speak to them before catching us up.\n\n'This has been a bit of a shock, Lizzy. Why don't you come back to the vicarage for a cup of tea anyway?' he suggested kindly, but I insisted I was fine and, despite their protests, set off for home. I didn't even want Annie's company just then.\n\nThat ugly little scene had seemed too melodramatic to be true at the time, especially with the Barilloses resembling nothing so much as a pair of Thunderbirds puppets, but now, suddenly, my legs began to feel trembly and I realised it had affected me more than I'd thought.\n\nSo when a sleek dark red sports car slid to a purring stop next to me and Ritch offered to run me home, it was a relief to get in. I didn't have to talk, either, because he was full of what he'd been doing.\n\nIn fact, it's sometimes pleasantly relaxing being with a man who notices nothing much other than himself, though it was kind of him to take me home when he'd just driven all the way up from London.\n\nWhen we got to Perseverance Cottage I pulled myself together and thanked him for the lift, then added firmly that I knew he wouldn't mind if I didn't ask him in, since I had lots to do before the Mystery Play rehearsal.\n\n'That's OK. I'll see you later, after it,' he said, and I managed to smile at him before climbing out of the car and waving him off.\n\nTurning, I spotted Caz through the open door of the barn, doing chin-ups on a crossbeam, like a very strange clockwork toy. Hadn't he got a beam of his own to swing from?\n\nWithout Nick, that night's rehearsals were a bit... flat, I suppose is the only word to describe them.\n\nThe only highlight was when I overheard the new Moses, in answer to God telling him that he'd written down Ten Commandments on tablets of stone, reply testily, 'Could thee not find something lighter? I'm no spring chicken, tha knows! Just as well I hadn't t'carry 'em up t'mountain as well as down!'\n\nI felt hugely tired and unusually down, which was probably reaction from that horrible scene in the graveyard, so I might have just sneaked straight home again rather than on to the pub with the others, except that home was empty without Jasper.\n\nThere wasn't any sign of Ritch after the rehearsals, but he was already in the pub, the centre of an admiring circle. I expect he was telling them all about his cameo film role, too. I sat quietly in the corner with Gareth and Annie for a while, then left early and fairly abruptly when I spotted Polly coming in, wearing a wrapover dress that made her breasts look like a giant pair of loosely packaged white puddings.\n\nI pounced on her near the door, grabbing her sinewy arm. 'I want to talk to you! I know what you've done, Polly.'\n\nShe went the colour of clotted cream and stared at me through a spidery inch of clogged mascara. 'I don't know what you mean!'\n\n'Those tricks you've been playing \u2013 the jars of jam and tomatoes made to look like mine, the ARG harassment, the poisonous fungi in the mushrooms, even the lies you've been telling the Barilloses! And I'm warning you, if there's any more of it, I'll go to the police.'\n\nHer colour came back in a rush. 'Tell them, then, and see if they believe you!' she hissed, then wrenched her arm away with surprising strength and shoved her way through the crowd towards the bar.\n\nThere was no point in following her, but Ritch caught me up outside.\n\n'Wait for me! I said I'd run you home tonight \u2013 you look exhausted.'\n\n'It's been quite a day,' I agreed wearily, though it just goes to show that you shouldn't misjudge people: he might have seemed totally self-absorbed in the pub, but he'd still noticed I wasn't exactly a sparkling little star in the firmament tonight.\n\nSo when we pulled up outside Perseverance Cottage I didn't resist when he put his arm around me and kissed me: apart from suddenly feeling too exhausted to move, I needed comfort.\n\nHe tasted only of minty mouthwash. Now, that was a relief.\n\nAfter a couple of minutes he must have detected a certain lack of enthusiastic cooperation because he sat back again. 'OK, I know when I'm flogging a dead horse. You don't really fancy me, do you?'\n\n'I wouldn't exactly say that,' I replied honestly, 'but...well, to be frank, I find the thought of your morning pee-drinking sessions a bit off-putting!'\n\n'Really? You know, you're the second woman to say that \u2013 though it's perfectly natural, you know \u2013 everyone is doing it.'\n\n'Not round here they're not!'\n\n'Well anyway, I've given it up, now. I get crates of Elyxr delivered instead.'\n\n'What kind of elixir?' I asked curiously.\n\n'Oh, Elyxr is the name they've given to a very special and expensive ionised mineral water. It comes from a secret source high in the Himalayas, where everyone's over a hundred and the local men all father children into their nineties and beyond. What do you think?'\n\n'I think you've got more money than sense. What's ionised water?'\n\n'I've no idea,' he confessed. 'But anyway, now you know I've given the other thing up, does that make a difference?' he asked hopefully.\n\n'Not really, because it's pointless \u2013 I'm simply not harem material.'\n\n'You can be chief concubine,' he offered, cheekily.\n\n'Thanks, but no thanks. And you'd better watch your step with Kylie, too. Did you know she has a very tough boyfriend, in the army?'\n\nHe grinned unrepentantly. 'In the army and in another country, though. Anyway, she's not serious and neither am I; it's just a bit of fun. But you and I could be serious...'\n\n'No we couldn't, don't be daft! There isn't a serious bone in your body,' I said severely, fending him off, then gasped as a spectrally pale face appeared at the window.\n\n'What the hell...?' began Ritch explosively, letting me go just as the door on my side was pulled open.\n\n'Hens,' Caz Naylor said succinctly, with a jerk of his head.\n\n'Oh God!' I scrambled hastily out. 'I entirely forgot to lock them up for the night before I left, and there's been a fox about. Good night, Ritch, thanks for the lift!'\n\n'But, Lizzy\u2014' he began to protest, though when I ignored him and started across the yard towards the henhouse he gave up and drove off.\n\n'I've done 'em,' Caz said from behind me, stopping me in my tracks, and then he turned and loped silently off into the darkness.\n\nMen.\n\n## Chapter 21: Slightly Stewed\n\nThere is already an autumnal feel to the air, along with the nostalgic hint of dead leaves and wood smoke. I put grease bands around my cherry and apple trees, and cleaned out the small greenhouse behind the cottage, before lining it with bubble wrap to conserve warmth through the winter to come \u2013 and perhaps it will be another hard one, in which case I will soon be cooking up my home-made version of fat balls to help the birds get through.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nNick was still away, but very early one morning a postcard of Penzance arrived, with a recipe scrawled on the back for a dessert consisting mostly of Cornish clotted cream. It appeared to have travelled the length of the country before coming home to roost, possibly because the front was tacky so it had stuck to other mail. I had to sponge and dry it before adding it to the album. I expect he wrote it in a restaurant over a lush dinner, probably in the company of some equally lush Poldarkian beauty.\n\nI was about to embark on my daily larder-filling (Lizzy the human squirrel), gardening and pet-sitting activities, though guiltily feeling that I should instead make a proper start on the Just Desserts book, when \u2013 speak of the devil \u2013 Senga rang me.\n\n'I thought you might like to know that Polly Darke and I have parted company,' she told me crisply. 'She rang me up hysterically demanding I drop you as my client, or she would leave me. So I told her to take her business elsewhere.'\n\nI nearly dropped the telephone. 'But, Senga, she earns much more than I do!'\n\n'Perhaps, but she's ten times the trouble and I'm not having one of my authors telling me who else I can or can't represent. Anyway, if she carries on like she's doing, pestering her publishers and doing a prima donna act all over the place, they will drop her, too.'\n\nWhile I was grateful that Senga decided to keep me and ditch Polly, it does give Polly one more thing to hate me for. But now she knows that I know she did all those spiteful things, surely she wouldn't be stupid enough to try anything else?\n\n'Crange and Snicket want to know how Just Desserts is coming along,' Senga said. 'And so do I.'\n\n'I'm collecting recipes,' I assured her hastily.\n\n'Don't forget that you can use old stuff from all the Chronicles, though you need at least fifty per cent new material or your readers will feel cheated.'\n\n'I will, and I'm picking Nick Pharamond's brains, too, only his recipes tend to be pretty sophisticated and I have to dumb them down to my level.'\n\n'I'd forgotten he was some kind of relation of your husband's \u2013 that's lucky. And he's really attractive as well, isn't he?'\n\n'Lots of women seem to think so. He's in the middle of getting divorced \u2013 shall I put in a good word for you?'\n\n'God, yes!' she said enthusiastically.\n\nIn the afternoon Jasper returned and I needn't have worried about what he was going to spend Unks' holiday money on, because he came back laden with stuff to take to university with him: his own kettle, mugs and crockery, plus tons of archaeology books because he'd struck a rich vein in a second-hand bookshop.\n\nHe also sported a strange haircut and lots of new clothes, including some oddly worded T-shirts that probably meant something a mother shouldn't know about: I didn't ask for a translation.\n\nGinny sported a new collar. Jasper tried to persuade me that she was pleased to see me on her return, citing the fact that she hadn't yet nipped my ankles as evidence, but I wasn't convinced. I think she is a one-man bitch.\n\nI went out early next morning to clean out the cage of a rather vicious African Grey parrot, leaving Jasper getting his stuff ready to go to university the following day.\n\nWhen I got back he said Nick had phoned. 'He wanted to wish me good luck for university.'\n\n'That was kind. Where is he?'\n\n'Back in London, but he's coming home soon. He has to do something about the divorce first \u2013 go to the solicitor's maybe, and sign something? He said he and Leila were getting on better now they were divorcing than they ever had while they were married,' he added.\n\n'How lovely. I'm so happy for them.'\n\nJasper grinned. 'He said he was sorry to miss you, and had you managed to make a decent apple pie yet.'\n\n'Ha, ha!' I said sourly. My shortcrust pastry is so light it practically floats off the plate, so I still can't see why the judges at the f\u00eate gave Nick the gold prize!\n\nAfter a quick lunch we set off to the museum and botanical gardens near Southport, which was one of Jasper's favourite trips out as a small boy. He seemed to enjoy the outing as much as I did, though I expect he was just humouring his old mum again. I did let him drive the Land Rover, though, so that might have had something to do with it.\n\nWhen we got home he brought down all his boxes and bags of stuff, and stacked them in the hall, while I cooked his favourite dinner of roast chicken with crinkly, thick-cut chips, followed by little pots of rich, dark chocolate mousse.\n\nIt had been a lovely day and, even if I was sad to see Jasper leave home, I was also happy for him too, because this was how it should be.\n\nSo there I was next day, about to leave my beloved offspring, bag and baggage, marooned in a strange place to start a part of his life that I would only peripherally be involved in.\n\nNot that Jasper was entirely among strangers, of course, since not only was Ginny present, but also his friend Stu and another friend's elder brother were among the students sharing the terraced house.\n\nJasper's bedroom was on the ground floor in what had once been the morning room, so at least if there was a fire he could get out fast... And even after half an hour I was still sitting quivering on the bed from the effect of having driven through the Liverpool traffic system, trying to find the place.\n\nJasper had somehow managed to fit all his stuff in the Land Rover, but now it had exploded to four times its original bulk, like popcorn in a microwave.\n\n'When I went to London to do my cookery course with Annie,' I remarked, looking at it all with amazement, 'we had\u2014'\n\n'Just one rucksack and a sleeping bag each,' he finished for me, ripping the tape off a cardboard box and delving inside for coffee and mugs. He had his own little sink in the corner of the room, which was handy. 'I know, Mum, you've told me.'\n\n'And I had a guitar.'\n\nHe frowned. 'I don't think you ever mentioned the guitar. And you can't play a guitar.'\n\n'No, so I swapped it with someone in the first week for that glass pig with the three little pigs inside it.'\n\n'Oh, yeah, cannibal pig.' He plugged in his brand-new kettle and switched it on. I was ready for a cup of coffee by then.\n\n'You don't have to stay any longer, you know, Mum,' he said kindly, looking up. 'It'll be dark before you get home if you don't get off soon. Besides, no one's going to come in here while my mother's hanging about. I can hear them talking in the kitchen, so I'll go and take my food and stuff through in a minute when you've gone.'\n\n'It'll be dark anyway by the time I get home,' I pointed out, feeling slightly hurt. 'But perhaps I had better go and leave you to get on with it. I only hope I can find my way back out of Liverpool again.'\n\n'It'll be easier finding your way home than getting here, because you'll know where you are once you're out of the city. Come on, I'll see you off.'\n\n'I'll phone you tonight, just to make sure everything's all right, shall I?'\n\n'Well, I might be out somewhere too noisy to hear it,' he said dubiously, 'but you could leave a message.'\n\n'No, that's OK \u2013 you call me when you feel like a chat,' I suggested, with a brightness I certainly didn't feel. 'I'd love to know how you're getting on.'\n\nOut on the pavement I gave him a hug, which he suffered with saintly resignation, then got into my now empty Land Rover.\n\nHe leaned in at the open passenger door and said, 'Now, Mum, remember what I said, and don't try changing any plugs!'\n\n'I only melted one once!' I replied indignantly.\n\n'And switch the light off before you change a light bulb. Don't mess about with the timer on the boiler \u2013 and if the flame goes out again, ask Unks to send Joe down to do it, or Uncle Nick.'\n\n'Now look here, Jasper, I'm not completely helpless, you know! I may not have an affinity with anything electric but\u2014'\n\n'Actually, you're the kiss of death to anything electric,' he interrupted firmly. 'Anyway, I expect I'll come home for the odd weekend before Christmas, so you can save anything that wants doing until then, if you like.'\n\nHold on, I thought, shouldn't this be me giving out the instructions? And not about electricity either, but drugs, safe sex and eating properly (though the eating bit wasn't so pressing since I'd packed enough food and drink to last him for about ten years).\n\n'I expect I'll survive,' I said, then looked at him \u2013 tall, skinny, his dark hair whipping about in the brisk breeze \u2013 and swallowed hard.\n\n'Goodbye then, darling. Hope you settle in quickly,' I said slightly huskily, though I did manage a smile, before starting the engine and heading in the direction I hoped would take me home.\n\nThe sun was sinking in a clear sky, but just like the song, it was raining, raining in my heart.\n\nAnnie had kindly been to the cottage to shut up all the Myrtles and Honeys, and left me a pineapple upside-down cake with a nice note telling me to ring her if I wanted to, though ten to one Gareth was there, or she was out doing something godly and good with him.\n\nThe cottage looked desolate and empty, which was exactly how I felt. Jasper had been the centre of my universe for over eighteen years: what was I going to revolve around now?\n\nThen Unks called to ask me how Jasper had settled in and I told him how he'd turned the tables on me in the good advice stakes, which made him laugh.\n\nAfter that I turned to food and drink (last year's apple wine and flapjacks) for comfort until bedtime, when I fell into a state of comatose indigestion.\n\nI wasn't feeling much happier in the morning, especially since I also had a hangover. It was lucky I didn't have any pet-sitting jobs to do, for I kept bursting into tears, which was quite unlike me.\n\nI stripped Jasper's bed so that it would be made up all nice and fresh if he was homesick and popped back for a night or two. But I didn't linger in there, with the bare surfaces where his computer had been and the gaps on the bookshelves. It was too poignant.\n\nWhile the bedding was going through the wash and dry cycle, I gave the cottage the sort of thorough cleaning it only gets when I'm trying to distract myself from something. It didn't quite work, though, because I kept finding things of Jasper's that set me off again.\n\nIn fact, Nick walked in on me just before lunch and discovered me slumped in a sobbing heap in the old wicker basket chair in the kitchen.\n\n'Lizzy? What on earth's the matter?' he demanded, coming to a sudden startled stop and staring at me. 'I don't think I've ever seen you cry, except that once at the hospital!'\n\nI snuffled back the tears and held out the large black Snoopy sock with a hole in the heel that I'd found down the back of the radiator. 'It's J-jasper's!' I wailed.\n\nLooking relieved, he bent down and hauled me to my feet, then gave me a little shake. 'Oh, is that it? Come on, Lizzy, stop wallowing in pathos! He's only a few miles away at university, not the other side of the world. You can go and see him any time you want.'\n\nI sniffled and tried to pull away, but he didn't let go. 'No I can't! He's got to make his own life there, so I couldn't possibly keep popping in and fussing. But it's such a long time until Christmas!'\n\n'I expect he'll come back for a weekend before then. Look, there's no point in sitting here moping like a wet weekday,' he added, 'so get your jacket and let's go.'\n\n'Go? Go where?' I said indignantly, though at least I'd stopped feeling weepy.\n\n'I'll take you out for lunch. You look quite decent \u2013 no need to change. Come on.'\n\nConsidering I was dressed in my oldest jeans and a washed-out sweatshirt, he had to be joking.\n\n'I don't think I want to go out, thank you, Nick,' I began, but he wasn't taking no for an answer, so in the end it was easier to give in, though I insisted on changing, bathing my face in cold water and brushing my hair first.\n\nLunch was fish and chips, well laced with salt and vinegar, eaten out of newspaper on the seafront at Southport, with the expanse of beach stretching away under a cold blue sky scudding with clouds.\n\nBut that was after he'd made me walk for miles, so by then I was starving and, I admit, feeling much more optimistic.\n\nAfter he dropped me back at the empty nest, Annie came around with someone else's Maltese terrier, so I didn't have time to start moping again and, anyway, all that fresh air and exercise seemed to have numbed the pain a little.\n\nI even resisted the urge to call Jasper and see what he was doing, but instead got hot and sweaty stuffing his duvet back into its clean cover, a task somewhat like giving birth in reverse, but without the excruciating agony followed by a stranger trying out their embroidery skills on your private parts.\n\nThe good thing about being pregnant (possibly the only good thing apart from the eventual baby) is that at least you know where your child is and have a pretty good idea what it's doing. Now we were only joined by the frail umbilical cord of Jasper's new mobile phone.\n\nMimi and Juno's Glorious Autumn Garden Colour luxury coach tour set off just after seven in the morning and, since I'm always up early, I volunteered to drive them to the pick-up point outside the New Mystery pub.\n\nMimi was highly excited, but I was sure Juno had thoroughly searched both her luggage and her person for any sharp implements with which she might attempt to steal cuttings from the various stately homes they were to visit, so provided she kept her eye on her I was hopeful they would have an enjoyable holiday.\n\nWhile Juno was seeing to the luggage being stowed away, Mimi dashed into the corner newsagent's shop to buy cough candy and Uncle Joe's Mint Balls for the journey, and came back carrying several little paper bags, her cheeks bulging like a hamster's.\n\nAs the bus pulled away I looked up at Mimi, who was seated in the window, a sweetly angelic little old lady in a pink velvet Alice band and matching pearly beads. She waved benignly at me and I could have sworn something glinted in her hand...\n\nBut I must have imagined it, or she was wearing a ring... though I'd never known her to wear one, since they got in the way of her gardening.\n\nThe coach vanished down the high street and I turned the car for home, calling at Annie's cottage on the way as much from the hope of hot croissants as to see if any more pet-sitting jobs had come up.\n\nIt was a Danish pastry day, which was nearly as good, and she was bubbling with suppressed gossip.\n\n'Gosh, Lizzy,' she said excitedly, 'there were ructions last night in the village! Kylie's boyfriend got leave from the army and came home a couple of days ago, and, of course, someone told him all about what Kylie's been up to with Ritch. So he went round to Ritch's and there were loud voices, then they had a fight! Or Kylie's boyfriend hit Ritch, at any rate, and the police got called.'\n\n'Well, I did warn Ritch about the boyfriend, so it's entirely his own fault.'\n\n'And Kylie's,' Annie pointed out fairly.\n\n'That's true, but I bet she put all the blame onto Ritch.'\n\n'Ritch's just phoned me up. He tried you first, but there was no answer. He wants one of us to go round and take Flo out, because he isn't feeling well.'\n\n'Meaning battered and bruised? I'd better go on my way home and I'll ring you later and tell you what he says \u2013 if I can catch you,' I added. 'You're always out these days.'\n\nMainly with Gareth, whom I still hadn't had that quiet word with. What was holding him back? Perhaps I ought to give him the birds-and-bees talk I gave Jasper before he went to university?\n\nExcept that that wasn't such a great success, come to think of it: Jasper said he was sure he already knew much more about it than I did.\n\nRitch took his sunglasses off to show me his black eye, but he seemed to have escaped relatively unscathed otherwise.\n\nTigger certainly hadn't lost any of his bounce. 'Kiss it better?' he suggested hopefully.\n\n'No chance!' I told him severely. 'And I did warn you.'\n\nHe shrugged. 'It was just a bit of fun on both sides, nothing serious. I don't know what Kylie told him, but he swung a punch at me as soon as I opened the door and took me by surprise, then we had a bit of a scuffle until the police came and broke us up. I didn't press charges.'\n\n'Magnanimous of you!'\n\n'It is really, because Make-up are going to have their work cut out disguising this shiner for a couple of weeks, unless they can work it into the storyline... That's an idea,' he added thoughtfully, heading for the phone.\n\nAs you can imagine, the fight was the main topic of conversation at the Christmas Pudding Circle on Monday, when we were all crammed into Annie's tiny cottage. But once we'd exhaustively thrashed that out, we got down to deciding which sweets we would make for the WI hampers and then divided up the big packet of Cellophane circles we'd ordered, from which we would make little cone-shaped bags, to tie up with shiny ribbon. Rum truffles fell to my lot this year, but I also volunteered to make sugar-free Fruit and Nut Munchies for our one diabetic Senior Citizen.\n\nKylie was much subdued at the Mystery rehearsal, though at the same time strangely triumphant: I expect that's the glow from having two men fighting over your charms. She didn't look a bit embarrassed during the Annunciation scene, but I'd have curled up and died.\n\nAfterwards her fianc\u00e9, a stocky and pugnacious-looking young man, collected her and whisked her away, though he didn't have to worry about Ritch tonight, because he wasn't anywhere to be seen.\n\nNick, who seemed to be in a foul mood, said sourly, 'Looking for Casanova? I hear Kylie's boyfriend's sorted him out big-time.'\n\n'Actually, there's hardly a mark on him except a black eye, and I think he only got that because he was taken by surprise,' I said coldly.\n\n'Oh? And did you kiss it better?' he asked sarcastically, so clearly his mind ran along similar lines to Ritch's. Must be a man thing.\n\n'No,' I said shortly, going slightly pink. 'We're not on kissing terms.'\n\nHe raised an eyebrow. 'That's not what Caz says.'\n\n'Caz? You've been discussing me with Caz? And I haven't\u2014' Then I broke off, recalling that actually I had shared a kiss with Ritch.\n\n'Slipped your memory?'\n\n'Not that it's any of your business, but Ritch did give me a kiss \u2013 for comfort. Tom's parents showed up while you were away. They didn't tell me they were coming, but Gareth let me know and I went to meet them at the churchyard. Only Polly's been writing lies to them and turned them against me, so there was a horrible scene. It really upset me. Ritch picked me up on the way home and he was very kind.'\n\n'I bet he was,' Nick said nastily.\n\nUp to this point I'd been automatically ambling in the direction of the pub, but I stopped dead and demanded, 'What is the matter with you tonight? You were really nice to me the other day too, when I was upset about Jasper leaving home, and now you're being horrible!'\n\n'I hadn't had a chance to speak to Caz then.'\n\nI glared at him: 'Have you told Caz to spy on me?'\n\n'To watch over you, after he told me about the mysterious jar of tomatoes and the mushrooms \u2013 which, by the way, you might have mentioned to me yourself!'\n\n'I dealt with it,' I said shortly. 'And it did sound a bit unlikely \u2013 The Case of the Poisonous Mushrooms \u2013 so I thought you might not believe me anyway.'\n\n'True, I can't say it really convinced me until Leila told me about getting that pot of jam in the post. She had a friend run some tests on it.'\n\n'She did? And was it poisoned?'\n\n'It contained a strong emetic.'\n\n'Well, I didn't send it.'\n\n'I didn't think you had, but there doesn't seem to be any real proof that Polly did either, does there? Still, I wasn't taking any chances, so I asked Caz to watch out for you while I was away.'\n\n'There's no need, I can look after myself. And what's more, whatever I get up to is my own private business!'\n\n'Pardon me for caring!' he snapped.\n\n'Look, Nick, I don't know why you're needling me like this tonight, but I've had enough, so good night!' I said, and walked off. Though I felt his eyes boring between my shoulder blades, he didn't follow me, so I expect he had other fish to fry.\n\nIn the morning I found an old envelope on the doormat, with Marian Potter's secret Lancashire hotpot recipe scribbled on it in Nick's spiky handwriting, so I suppose it was an apology of sorts for his foul mood.\n\nThen when I opened the front door a parcel fell on my feet: The Perseverance Chronicles copy-edits had arrived with amazing speed. There was also a rough proof of the book cover, which was too twee for words: why did they always turn my solid northern sandstone cottage into something thatched, gabled and timbered to within an inch of its Anne Hathaway life?\n\n## Chapter 22: Given the Bird\n\nThis morning I made some sugar-free sweets, suitable for diabetics: a sort of sugar plum, without the sugar! I tried various blends of chopped dried fruit and nuts: apricot, almond, brazils, raisins, with a little orange juice to bind the mixture together. I rolled some into little log shapes and others into balls, and left them on a sheet of baking parchment to dry out for a couple of hours. I think they would keep very well in the fridge, but they were so delicious they didn't last long.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\n'Gareth found three large frozen geese on the vicarage doorstep this morning,' Annie said.\n\n'Frozen geese?' I questioned, putting a mug of tea and a plate containing three small wedges of apple pie in front of her, each marked with a different coloured cocktail stick flag. 'I know we've had some night frost, but it hasn't been that cold yet!'\n\n'Plucked, cleaned, oven-ready, with an anonymous note saying they were for the Senior Citizens' Christmas dinner. Gareth called me right away, to ask my advice.'\n\n'That was a pretty generous donation,' I said thoughtfully. 'Frozen...?'\n\n'Yes, they were in those big, see-through roasting bags, but there were no supermarket labels on them or anything like that.' She looked down at her plate. 'Three pieces of pie?'\n\n'Little pieces. I want you to taste them and tell me which one you think is best. Here, have some cream.'\n\n'All your apple pies taste wonderful.'\n\n'But Nick's obviously taste better, or he wouldn't have won the gold at the f\u00eate.'\n\n'Yes, but you won practically everything else, including Best Middlemoss Marchpane, Lizzy, so you might let him have that one small triumph.'\n\n'Not if I can help it.' I watched her drizzle cream over the pie and asked, 'So, what did you and Gareth do with the frozen geese?'\n\n'We took them up to the Hall. I thought we might as well, since Mrs Gumball cooks the Senior Citizens' dinner anyway \u2013 with your help, of course \u2013 and there are huge freezers in the cellar she can store them in.'\n\nShe tried another forkful of pie and chewed thoughtfully. 'Nick was there, and he said this year he was going to help cook the dinner.'\n\n'He is? Then Mrs Gumball won't need me as well, will she?'\n\n'I think she will, because I overheard Nick telling Gareth that you would both be helping her,' Annie said. 'And when we ran into Clive Potter on the way back, Gareth told him about the geese and how Nick and you were going to help Mrs Gumball to cook them for the Senior Citizens, so I expect it'll be in the next Mosses Messenger.'\n\n'Then it can come straight back out again,' I said sourly. 'I have no intention of being the Demon Chef's whipping boy. He can find another one.'\n\n'Whipping girl \u2013 and you're very crabby today,' she observed, then looked down at her empty plate as if surprised that she'd cleared it down to the last pastry flake. The coloured sticks lay round the edge like the hours on a clock.\n\n'Which slice did you like best?'\n\n'To be honest, I couldn't really taste much difference,' she confessed. 'They were all delicious!'\n\nI sighed. 'Maybe he uses Dark Arts and says a spell over his cooking pots?'\n\n'You'll be able to watch him cooking the Christmas dinner and find out,' she teased. 'Has he done something to annoy you?'\n\n'When does he not do something to annoy me? But yes, he has excelled himself, because he set Caz on to watch me while he was away!'\n\n'But Caz already does watch you. I mean, he keeps an eye on the place because it's part of the estate \u2013 and probably also because he thinks of you as family, however remote the connection.'\n\n'Yes, I know that, but Ritch kissed me the other night when he drove me home and Caz not only interrupted us, but he reported it to Nick!' And I repeated to her what Nick had said, about not being sure it was Polly playing the nasty tricks and even thinking I'd imagined them at first.\n\n'Of course, I haven't told him about Ophelia being in ARG, and I don't suppose Caz has either. I'm not sure how he would take it and he might feel he has to tell Unks.'\n\n'He'd probably find it funny, Lizzy!'\n\n'I wouldn't put it past him. He seems to find most things I do funny \u2013 except the bits involving Ritch. And that was a perfectly innocent kiss, even if it was any of his business who I kiss, which it isn't.'\n\n'It was?'\n\nI grinned. 'Well, it was a perfectly enjoyable one, at any rate, but just between friends. Ritch knows I don't want a relationship with him \u2013 or anyone else,' I stated firmly. 'I'm getting quite tired of Unks, Mimi, Juno and now even Jasper trying to throw Nick and me together, when it must be clear it's a complete non-starter.'\n\n'But, Lizzy, it's very evident even to me that he's concerned about you, and jealous!'\n\n'Do you really think so?' I considered the matter carefully, then dismissed it. 'I've noticed he's a bit jealous, but I'm sure it's not of me personally, but some dog-in-the-mangerish male thing to do with property. I'm part of his family and living on his land, as it were... except it's still Unks' land, of course.'\n\n'No, you're wrong, Lizzy: you think I don't notice these things, but I've seen the way he looks at you and I'm sure he's in love with you.'\n\n'No way,' I said positively. 'Just because you're in love, you think everyone else should be!'\n\nShe went slightly pink under the freckles, but carried on doggedly, 'And you missed him when he was away, so I don't think it's all one-sided, either.'\n\n'No I didn't,' I lied, 'which is just as well, because that's what he always does, isn't it? He goes away. We split up the first time because he wasn't going to let a little thing like our romance come between him and his globetrotting, recipe-collecting expedition. I'm only surprised he's stayed around Middlemoss so long now, because he's obviously getting itchy feet.'\n\n'Now, Lizzy, you know if it weren't for Tom, he'd have spent much more time here in the last few years. He's quite sincere about loving the place.'\n\n'He may love the place, but he's only passionate about his cooking.'\n\n'Well, he's using it to try and impress you,' she insisted stubbornly. 'He knows the way to your heart is through food.'\n\n'He's certainly not going to do that by snatching my gold prizes away. Though if he has got any designs on my virtue, I'd probably do almost anything he asked, for that coffee granita recipe.'\n\n'Lizzy!' she exclaimed, shocked.\n\n'Just joking,' I said hastily. 'But you've got it all wrong, because I'm not interested and he's not interested. After all, if he cared about me that way, what's to stop him from telling me?'\n\n'But you were only widowed in August and his divorce isn't through yet, so that might be holding him back, don't you think?'\n\n'Yes... I suppose it might if he felt about me like that, which he doesn't. And I don't really feel newly widowed, now I'm over the shock, since Tom and I were so estranged.'\n\n'If Nick was a dog, he'd be a big, dark, Irish wolfhound,' she said inconsequentially. 'Ritch is a bit of a tomcat.'\n\n'I don't like the way your mind's working,' I said severely. 'Gareth has been a demoralising influence on you. I'm afraid poor Juno's feeling a bit demoralised too, because she rang Unks and told him she had to explain precisely what Mimi was doing to someone's stately garden with nail scissors. You know, I thought I saw her holding something metal up when the coach pulled away the morning they left. She must have got them in the corner shop when she was buying sweets.'\n\nAfter she'd gone I got out the copy-edits of my book and went through them for errors for the second time, before parcelling them up and taking them down to the post office. The cover I pinned to the kitchen notice board in the hope it would grow on me, but it hasn't yet. Nor do all the flowers depicted in the cottage garden bloom at the same time anywhere other than in the artist's demented imagination \u2013 or not in this hemisphere, anyway.\n\nJasper seemed to be settling in well, and I sent off a box of chocolate-coated candied peel. I hoped he was eating properly and not pickling his liver with spirits, like many students do.\n\nI'd decided Annie was right about my apple pies and you couldn't improve on perfection, so Nick winning first prize must have been a fluke. The final one I tried that night, though, using dark Barbados sugar to sweeten the apples, had an interesting slight toffee-apple flavour, which made a nice change.\n\nA policeman who sounded like that boy who favoured finger food called to say that one of the 2CV's wheel nuts had been handed in by a metal-detecting member of the public and added, in a seemingly casual aside, that it appeared to be in a perfectly good state of repair, the thread undamaged. Then he informed me the inquest was set for the end of January, and rang off.\n\nThe light was fading fast. I put on a warm coat and went to lock up the hens and, as I did so, Caz emerged slowly from the shadow of the barn. Since my slight contretemps with Nick I had entirely ignored Caz when he was around, which hadn't seemed to bother him in the least \u2013 if he'd even noticed.\n\nNow I ran my hand distractedly through my tangled hair and said, 'Oh, Caz, the police have found one of the missing wheel nuts \u2013 or rather, I think someone found it and handed it in \u2013 and the thread on it looks fine. I'm sure they still think I loosened them on purpose and encouraged Tom to take my car!'\n\nCaz glanced at me in his usual obliquely wary yet not unfriendly way, then said, 'Don't you fret, our Lizzy, it'll all come out in t'wash,' and loped off towards the woods, his gun under his arm.\n\nI stared after him: if he continued getting so garrulous, we might soon be able to hold an entire conversation.\n\nHe'd probably be back later, too, because the Mummers would be coming round to the workshop to practise. I hoped Ritch came too and popped in as usual for coffee and chat afterwards. I felt like some company.\n\nRitch not only stopped by, he took me out to the caf\u00e9-bar in the former Pharamond's Butterflake Biscuit factory, which was very pleasant now I had firmly established my unavailability for his healthy sex rota.\n\nOr at least, I think I have...\n\nOf course this didn't stop him flirting with me, but actually I found that quite enjoyable now that Nick had suddenly gone even more morose and distant than usual. And also, of course, now I knew Ritch had stopped his more dubious habits he had regained a little more of his previous attraction!\n\n'You look great tonight \u2013 that top really shows off your curves,' he said, leaning forwards towards me across the table. 'I'll butter your pie dish any time you give me the word!'\n\nI grinned. 'Hanging round my kitchen has given you a whole new vocabulary!'\n\n'And a whole new taste for real home-baking,' he agreed.\n\nAfterwards Ritch dropped me off at the cottage and I let him have a good-night kiss, though I didn't want to make a habit of it... well, not if Caz was watching.\n\nThere was no sign of him, but that didn't mean he wasn't still lurking about somewhere.\n\nMimi and Juno got back from their coach tour late on the Saturday, then walked down next afternoon to give me my present of a pair of flower-patterned gardening gauntlets, and for Juno to show me the photographs she had taken on her digital camera.\n\nMimi was, as usual, not only unrepentant about her bit of petty plant-pilfering, but entirely failed to understand what the fuss was about. 'I don't suppose they will take, because it is the wrong time of year, but anyway, gardeners should share things,' she said.\n\n'It might have been politer to ask first,' Juno said patiently.\n\n'Oh, they didn't really mind,' Mimi said. 'I promised them some cuttings from my rare lavender when it's the right time to take them \u2013 and then perhaps Tom could drop them off next time he is heading in that direction.'\n\n'Tom's dead, Mimi,' I said gently.\n\n'Oh, is he? Then perhaps if I wrap them in wet kitchen towel and a plastic bag and post them, they will be all right. Not that the postal service is all it used to be,' she added.\n\nWe had to have the next CPC meeting at Marian's, because she had boxes and boxes of big green apples a friend in the WI had given her and she was desperate to get rid of them.\n\n'Maggie said they were eaters, but they cook well too, and it was such a bumper crop this year that she didn't know what to do with them,' she explained. 'So I said I was sure we could divide them up among our group.'\n\n'There are an awful lot of them,' Fay said, 'and I've got more than enough of my own to be going on with.'\n\n'Me too,' I agreed, but since there were loads left even after the others had all taken some, I ended up with the lion's share, simply because I couldn't bear to see them go to waste. I couldn't imagine what I was going to do with them.\n\nI spent a large part of that Tuesday filling the freezer with apple pies, pur\u00e9e and crumble, yet had hardly made a dent in the apple mountain...\n\nAnd Nick was not at the Mystery Play rehearsal, because he'd gone off on his travels yet again, according to Mimi, who'd come down to the village hall with Juno, being in one of her restless phases. Then she added meaningfully that he was catching up on things he should have done before, only he hadn't wanted to leave Middlemoss, so I expect he'd finally just got bored and restless.\n\n'Oh, it's the nativity, my favourite bit!' Juno said, as the vicar called, 'Shepherds and angels to the crib, please!'\n\nAs they gathered round, I noticed for the first time that the Nine Angels of the Annunciation all had bright white patches on their wings where they had repaired them with fresh sturdy new feathers.\n\n'See yonder breet light shining on t'owd stable?' said the First Shepherd, adjusting his tea-towel headdress.\n\n'Aye, I do that, and a right bobby dazzler it is an' all!' replied the Second Shepherd, then nudged his friend as the Three Wise Men appeared. 'Hey up, we've got company.'\n\n'Why wasn't there a Wise Woman too?' Mimi asked in a penetrating whisper.\n\n'I don't know \u2013 perhaps they didn't fancy riding a camel all that way?' suggested Juno.\n\nBy the end of a very hectic week, the larder shelves were groaning with apple-based jams and jellies, apple sauce, apple chutney, apples in wine and spiced apple... you name it, and I'd made it.\n\nOf course I'd had to keep up with the pet-sitting and gardening too, but apart from escaping to Butterflake's for an hour or so again one evening with Ritch, the days passed in a sticky haze.\n\nThen suddenly I was down to the last few apples in the bottom of a box, and made a batch of fritters with them, which I ate sifted with brown sugar, drizzled with honey and blobbed with thick cream. After that I felt completely appled out and never wanted to see another one again, unless, of course, it was as apple wine.\n\nI ceded the apple pie prize to Nick in perpetuity. And speaking of Nick, I'd heard nothing from him for days and then suddenly had a spate of postcards all at once \u2013 every single one bearing some kind of tart recipe! Perhaps that was what his next article would be about?\n\nI gave all my CPC friends a jar of apple chutney at the next meeting, but I had a feeling I'd still be trying to offload the remainder next autumn.\n\nNick was back next day, just in time for the Mystery Play rehearsal but, like Ritch, appeared to have lost interest in going to the pub afterwards. I wasn't finding it very tempting either, because I could only take playing gooseberry to Gareth and Annie for so long, no matter how kindly they went out of their way to include me in their conversation.\n\nAs we came out of the village hall, I thanked Nick for all the postcards, then asked curiously, 'But why are all the recipes for tarts?'\n\n'I thought you deserved them,' he said shortly and then strode off into the night, looking distinctly Mr Rochester again.\n\nI don't know what was biting him, unless he'd heard about my occasional friendly drink at Butterflake's Bar with Ritch, and misconstrued it?\n\nI spent the rest of the evening catching up with the next Perseverance Chronicle, having not had time to keep up with it while so preoccupied with apples \u2013 and apples formed the basis of most of what I wrote! I also made a few more notes for Just Desserts, because I needed to get going with that soon, before Senga started snapping at my ankles.\n\nIf Nick hadn't been sulking I could have asked him for some ideas, but at least he'd provided the inspiration for a whole chapter devoted to tarts...\n\n## Chapter 23: Put Out\n\nThe vicar is delighted to announce that due to an anonym ous benefactor, this year's Senior Citizens' Christmas dinner (to take place on 1 December) will be roast goose with all the trimmings! As usual it will be cooked by Mrs Eva Gumball up at the Hall, most kindly assisted by Mrs Lizzy Pharamond and also, adding that touch of cordon bleu, Mr Nick Pharamond! It will be delivered piping hot to the village hall, courtesy of our friendly local Meals on Wheels volunteers.\n\nMosses Messenger\n\nThe dankness of early November set in and the children had been collecting firewood for Friday's Bonfire Night for the last week or so. I thought Jasper might come home for that, but he said he was too busy, though busy with what, he didn't inform me, and it was probably better not to ask.\n\nStill, he seemed to have settled down very happily at university and was enjoying his lectures. He told me what had been discovered about the Vikings' dietary habits, from excavating their cesspits at York, at more length than I really wanted to know. It's quite amazing what passes through the digestive tract more or less whole, isn't it?\n\nMarian brought the latest issue of the Mosses Messenger and pointed out the announcement about my involvement in cooking the Senior Citizens' Christmas dinner. It was a fait accompli, because once it had been proclaimed in the parish magazine, there was no getting out of it... unless they were to forget about my helping by then? It was almost a month away.\n\nSaying I never wanted to see another apple again was obviously tempting fate, for Marian then asked me to make toffee apples for Bonfire Night \u2013 she runs a little refreshment table with the proceeds going to charity. As usual, Miss Pym would provide a tray of treacle toffee, Annie gingerbread pigs for the children and Faye would bake parkin. There was usually someone roasting chestnuts too and I absolutely adored those.\n\nMarian had yet more apples in her car to give me, but I didn't mind really, especially after I thought up a variant, Treacle Toffee Apples, and added it to my Just Desserts collection. Then it occurred to me that the Bonfire Night celebrations in Middlemoss would make a whole chapter of the next Chronicles, if I included a few other interesting snippets of information, like the fact that we always burned an effigy of Oliver Cromwell, warts and all, and not Guy Fawkes like everyone else.\n\nIt was not so much that the villagers were all staunch Royalists in the Mosses, just that they knew how to enjoy themselves and deeply resented the Puritans, or anyone else, trying to put a damper on their fun, and especially the Mystery Play.\n\nAnd speaking of the Mystery Play, the Tuesday rehearsal went very well... and in my experience, if the November rehearsals go well, then the final dress rehearsal is a total disaster! But the performance itself on Boxing Day would go down wonderfully, whatever happens, because everyone would be well oiled with mulled wine and marinated in anticipation by then.\n\nBut on Tuesday even Nick had cut out the innuendo from his interpretation of Adam and played it straight. Sombrely, even. He appeared to be still sulking, though I wasn't sure what about, and he went off again straight afterwards. There was no Ritch in the pub, either, so I played gooseberry with Annie and Gareth for a while, then went back home, where I ate two toffee apples. Just as well I'd made a lot.\n\nI sent Jasper some of the treacle toffee left over from the apples, which I'd moulded into a square and then broken up, plus a rawhide bone for Ginny \u2013 might as well blunt her teeth before he brought her back for Christmas. I was missing him so much. It seemed to hurt more as time went on, though part of me was also, of course, happy that he was having a good time at university.\n\nThe toffee and treacle-toffee apples were all wrapped in circles of Cellophane and piled back into the empty apple box by Thursday, when Marian collected them after the second Mystery Play rehearsal of the week. Apparently that one had also gone swimmingly, so we were both now convinced that the dress rehearsals were doomed to some kind of disaster.\n\nBonfire Night, the following day, was likely to be freezing, and I felt increasingly sure my guess about another cold, snowy winter would be right: the amazing number of berries on everything was a dead giveaway.\n\nAnnie never went out on Bonfire Night, staying in to comfort Trinny, who clearly associated loud firework bangs with some unimaginable terror from her past and became a shivering heap. She said Gareth would show his face at the event, before joining her to roast chestnuts over the fire and watch the home videos Annie's parents had sent her of their VSO work in Africa.\n\nI expect there will be at least a chaste foot of sofa between them.\n\nUnks was away and Juno wouldn't bring Mimi down for the bonfire, since she got much too excited, but instead would treat her to a short private display of Emerald Cascades and Glittering Fountains in the walled garden before cocoa and an early night.\n\nWhat Nick was doing I had no idea, and nor was I even remotely interested, so I set out on my own at seven, torch in hand, my innards warmed by a strong slug \u2013 or maybe two \u2013 of Miss Pym's rightly famed damson gin: last year's had been an excellent vintage, but I was down to the last couple of bottles.\n\nThe fire was well alight when I got there and the first of the fireworks were going off, under the direction of Clive Potter. There was quite a crowd about and the refreshment table was doing a roaring trade. I didn't buy one of my own toffee apples, but I did purchase a plastic cup of mulled wine.\n\nLooking round the faces brightly lit by the fire I spotted many familiar ones, though some, like Polly Darke and her friends, were not so welcome. On the other side of the bonfire I could see Jojo, Mick, and almost the entire Mysteries cast. In fact, most of the Mosses residents had turned out as always, though I expect the event wasn't sophisticated enough for Ritch and his crowd.\n\nFrom time to time, one or two of the more rebellious teenagers sneaked off into the darkness outside the firelight to set off explosive fireworks, and were yelled at for their trouble: it was all much as usual.\n\nI sat on a log and peeled hot chestnuts out of a paper cup, then got another tumbler of punch and began to feel a lot happier. 'This is fun, isn't it?' I said, finding myself standing next to Ophelia, who was swathed head to foot in a Tolkien-style woollen cloak with a tasselled hood. It looked pretty weird by firelight, but probably not as odd as the full-length knitted coat that I was wearing, a labour of love presented to me by Annie last Christmas. It had lots of little hanging daggy bits like a raddled sheep, and the strident colour combination meant I could only wear it in the dark.\n\nOphelia's white face was upturned and rapt, watching a sunburst of stars. 'Oh... it's sooo beautiful!' she sighed rapturously. 'Beautiful, beautiful stars. Stars...'\n\nThen as the firework flickered and went out she turned to me and said excitedly, 'Star! Of course! I'll call the baby Star!'\n\n'Star Locke?' I said doubtfully, though of course it might by then be a Star Naylor. 'If it's a boy, it might sound a bit odd.'\n\n'No, no... beautiful!' she murmured, and another firework shot up into the sky and exploded into a galaxy of pinprick lights. 'Better than Rambo...'\n\n'That's very true,' I agreed, beginning to feel a bit muzzy and wondering if my earlier shots of damson gin hadn't been such a good idea. Or perhaps the punch was stronger than usual. Whichever it was, I had the feeling the chestnuts were sloshing about in an awful lot of liquid, and it was probably about time to call it a day and go home... especially since Nick had suddenly materialised out of the shadows nearby like the Prince of Darkness.\n\nHe was looking at me with what appeared to be acute disapproval: so nothing new there, then.\n\n'Must find Caz and tell him about stars,' Ophelia said, looking around her vaguely, though you'd need ESP to find our chameleon of Middlemoss if he didn't want to be found.\n\nShe wandered off and I too turned to go, but had only taken a step or two away from the firelight when something landed with a thud just where we'd been standing and immediately exploded with a horrendous bang and a shower of bright sparks.\n\nI put my hands over my ears and staggered, almost falling \u2013 and then was suddenly knocked flat by someone large and heavy. He landed on top of me and rolled me over and over and even winded, shocked and with my face pressed into icy mud, I somehow knew it was Nick. After what seemed like ages his weight was removed and urgent hands ripped my woolly coat off.\n\nThere was a smell of singed wool, and also, possibly, singed me.\n\nI turned over slowly, dazed and winded, then sat up in time to watch him jumping up and down on my coat. I knew it was ghastly, but it didn't quite merit that treatment.\n\n'Lizzy, are you all right?' Marian cried, running over and trying to haul me to my feet, only my knees seemed to have given up and I was a dead weight.\n\n'I'm fine,' I gasped, reinflating my lungs and trying to wipe the mud and grass from my face.\n\nClive appeared out of the darkness and declared vengefully, 'I don't know who threw that firework, but if I find him, he'll wish he hadn't!'\n\n'No one would be stupid enough to throw it in this direction on purpose. It must have been an accident, Clive,' Marian said. 'Those boys just wouldn't be told!'\n\nI looked around suddenly. 'Ophelia? Is she all right? Only we were talking together just before the firework went off.'\n\n'Don't you worry about her, she was well out of range and that Caz's with her,' Marian said soothingly. 'You were closest: did it burn you anywhere?'\n\nNick picked up my mangled coat and examined the limp and ruined remains with satisfaction. 'There, that's out. Only just caught it, though.' Then he bent down and hauled me effortlessly to my feet, though he had to keep one arm around me to stop me falling over again.\n\nWhen he realised I was trembling violently from a mixture of shock and cold, he shrugged out of his leather jacket and wrapped it around me, the silk lining warm and slithery.\n\n'I think Lizzy may have singed the back of her legs a bit, Nick,' Marian pointed out worriedly. 'Her jeans are charred in a couple of places.'\n\n'Yes, and I can't seem to stand up,' I said weakly.\n\n'Shock,' Marian said. 'Stand back, everyone, and let her get some air!'\n\nUntil that moment I hadn't even realised that the ring of spectators was pressing close, watching avidly, including Polly Darke, a half-smile on her lips like a slightly warped Mona Lisa. Then her eyes shifted sideways to Nick and she slowly took first one step back, then another, until she vanished into the darkness.\n\nI blinked. Maybe I'd imagined her...\n\n'Drink's more likely than shock, the way she was knocking the punch back,' Nick was saying unsympathetically. 'I don't think there's much harm done, but I'll take her home.'\n\n'Perhaps you should bring her to the post office first and Marian can see if she's burned?' suggested Clive. 'It might be bad enough for Accident and Emergency.'\n\n'I don't think so,' Nick said, 'but if it looks worse than I think it is when I've got her home, I'll phone the doctor.'\n\n'You do that,' Marian agreed.\n\n'Your voices sound strange,' I commented, and so did my voice, too \u2013 frail and far away. And then everything seemed to be shifting dizzyingly...\n\n'I expect the blast deafened you a bit,' Clive suggested.\n\n'No, I think I'm going to\u2014' I began, and then the darkness closed over my head like water.\n\nI woke in Perseverance Cottage lying on my own sofa in front of the glowing fire, with Nick wiping the mud from my face with a wet flannel. A cold wet flannel: I expect that's what brought me round.\n\nHis face, concerned and intent, was very close to mine. 'At last!' he said with relief when he saw my eyes open muzzily. 'I was starting to get worried.'\n\n'What... happened?'\n\n'You fainted.'\n\n'I never faint!'\n\n'Then maybe my first guess was right, and you passed out from all that punch you were knocking back, then,' he said.\n\n'I didn't have that much, and there's usually very little alcohol in it,' I said, attempting to sit up and feeling strangely disconnected.\n\n'How do you feel now?'\n\n'All right \u2013 a bit shaky.'\n\n'I expect that'll go off. There are two small burns on your leg. I've put some antiseptic and dressings on them, but I don't think they're much to worry about.'\n\nActually, I was more worried by the sudden realisation that he'd removed my jeans! Under a concealing blanket, all I was wearing on my lower half were my sensible cotton pants.\n\nMy face burned and I sat up straighter and primly tucked the blanket around my legs. 'I think I ought to thank you for \u2013 well, for putting me out. That's why you threw yourself on top of me, wasn't it?'\n\n'Yes, and I'm sorry about that, but I could see your coat was catching and it was the quickest way of smothering the flames.' He got up and came back holding the sad remains of my coat. 'I'm afraid I've made a bit of a mess of it.'\n\n'You certainly have \u2013 and Annie knitted it for me. Now I expect she'll make me another even more hideous one, because I told her I loved it.'\n\nThen I had an evil thought: perhaps I should tell her he jumped on it because he was jealous, and then she might knit him one, too? She whips them up in no time, on giant needles.\n\n'You ought to go to bed. Do you want me to carry you up?' he offered.\n\n'No, I don't,' I said firmly, shivering again. 'But I'd like you to fetch the bottle of damson gin from the kitchen and then lock the door behind you when you go.'\n\n'I don't think you should drink any more alcohol! You're in shock and would be better trying to go to sleep, and you don't have to be nervous, because I'll stay here tonight on the sofa. Go to bed and I'll make you some cocoa.'\n\n'I'm not nervous, I don't need you to stay here with me, and I don't want cocoa \u2013 I want gin. And if you aren't going to get it for me, then I'll get it myself,' I said, attempting to rise from a tangle of blanket on slightly wobbly legs.\n\nNick sighed and got up. 'OK, but don't blame me if you feel terrible in the morning.'\n\nMy hand trembled so much that the glass rattled against my teeth, so he had to sit down with his arm around me and hold it. But it did the trick and I soon began to stop shaking and calm down \u2013 or maybe 'go comatose' is a better description. The warmth of the fire and the soft pink light from the table lamp were very soothing...\n\n'I think Polly might have thrown the firework,' I said drowsily, relaxing against his broad chest, which was invitingly close. Anyway, it was that or fall over sideways.\n\nHe'd put the empty glass down, but hadn't removed his arm from around my shoulders and now he rested his chin on top of my head. 'I was looking at you so I didn't see where it came from. Polly was there, but the chances are she wouldn't do something that stupid. It was just boys messing about, and you were unlucky.'\n\n'Perhaps you're right, but she looked so... so pleased afterwards...' I yawned hugely.\n\n'Come on \u2013 you're all in, so I'll carry you up to bed.' He gathered me up as though I was a loose-limbed doll, but before he could rise to his feet, some compulsion made me slide my arms around his neck.\n\nHe went quite still and our eyes met and held, his like unfathomably deep, dark pools in the lamplight. Then he gave a resigned sort of sigh, tightened his grip and kissed me.\n\nHis lips tasted of inevitability: there was never anything of the minty mouthwash about Nick Pharamond.\n\n## Chapter 24: Flamb\u00e9\n\nI don't know why, but whenever I need a little comfort I find myself mixing up a batch of the quick and easy confection I call Choconut Consolations. They couldn't be easier to make: simply melt some good-quality chocolate (milk or plain, according to your preference) and stir in unsalted peanuts until it is a thick, lumpy mixture. (Those nuts that have been roasted in their shells give the best flavour, I've found \u2013 but remove the shells and then rub the red skins off before using, of course!) Spoon into petits fours cases, or onto a tray covered in baking parchment and leave to go hard in a cool place, though not in the fridge.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nNext morning I awoke slowly, with that languorous, totally sated and exquisitely guilty feeling you get after a really bad chocolate binge \u2013 blissed out.\n\nBut when I opened my eyes to find I was not lying in my bed but on the sofa, I instantly remembered it wasn't chocolate I'd pigged out on last night. In fact, I recollected every single moment only too clearly, right the way from Nick knocking me flat and battering me into the mud, to our kiss and more than make up... though I suppose that at least had the advantage of not involving icy wet earth.\n\nFor a woman whose memory span was normally similar to that of a goldfish, this was quite something, though the action replay going on in my head could have done with some soft-focused editing around the edges to hide all that urgent hunger \u2013 which surely hadn't been all on my side, even if I'd started it, had it?\n\nThe curtains were still drawn and the lights were off, though the fire was burning brightly enough behind the brass firescreen for me to see that I was alone. But that was no surprise, for I'd instantly sensed on waking that the cottage was empty apart from me \u2013 long empty. Slowly I heaved myself to my feet and, clutching my blanket, tottered into the kitchen on my singed legs, wincing at every step.\n\nPropped against the kettle was a brief note in Nick's distinctive handwriting:\n\nLizzy, it's six and I'm supposed to be in London at ten for the shortlist photoshoot for Cookery Writer of the Year. I'll phone you later. Mud brown suits you, by the way \u2013 you should always wear it.\n\nNick\n\nAnd that was it! I read through it twice, as though some hidden message might reveal itself, then crumpled it into a ball and threw it with some force at the wall opposite. It bounced off and fell behind the fridge.\n\nThen I slumped down on the chair, feeling humiliated and angry. This was worse \u2013 much worse \u2013 than when I confided in him at the hospital, because this time I gave him more than my secrets and Spudge recipe \u2013 and all he could think about was some stupid cookery award!\n\nBut so be it, I resolved: from now on, let him eat cake. I know what I'll be eating \u2013 Humble (or should that be Humiliation?) Pie. Here's one I prepared earlier:\n\nMix just enough alcohol with a bad shock and a dash of unadulterated essence of lust.\n\nPut in a warm, dark place.\n\nRemove any inhibitions and stir a little.\n\nThe leftovers can taste bitter if eaten cold next day.\n\nI've changed my mind about Nick being like spicy curry. Now I think he's more like that rich, dark chocolate that's been spiked with extra-hot red chillies, and one chunk is definitely enough.\n\nAnnie, receiving news from the milkman at the crack of dawn about those parts of my sizzling evening that were common knowledge, hotfooted it round the second she'd finished the first dog-walking session.\n\nShe found me slumped in the kitchen in my dressing gown over a plate of Choconut Consolations, though I'd roused myself enough earlier to stagger out into the painful daylight and let out the disgruntled hens, before showering off the last traces of mud and Nick's subtly intrusive aftershave, while singing 'I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair' through gritted teeth.\n\nWhile she was applying some of her Girl Guide first-aid skills to re-dressing my singed leg, I confessed to her that the most sizzling part of the evening hadn't been the firework-throwing incident.\n\nShe stopped heartily slapping on the Savlon, which was a relief, and stared up at me, blue-grey eyes round and startled. 'You don't mean you and Nick...?'\n\n'Yes, me and Nick!' I confirmed gloomily. 'I can't imagine what got into me, apart from a little too much of Miss Pym's damson gin. Perhaps the shock of nearly being blown up sent me temporarily insane?'\n\n'There you are,' she beamed, ignoring this suggestion, 'I knew you were in love with each other all the time!'\n\n'Love had nothing to do with it,' I said tartly. 'I don't know what it was \u2013 shock, gin, propinquity, comfort, hormones, a substitute for chocolate... whatever.'\n\n'Oh, no, Lizzy!' she protested. 'I'm sure Nick\u2014'\n\n'Nick was gone long before I woke up, so I don't know what his excuse was, but he kindly left me a note making it plain some trashy award is far more important than I am. Read this!'\n\nShe finished pressing a huge Elastoplast into place and I handed her Nick's terse little note, now crumpled and looking slightly the worse for wear.\n\n'Why's it got cobwebs on it?'\n\n'Because it's been behind the fridge. Read it and tell me if it sounds even remotely lover-like to you.'\n\nShe did, lips silently moving, then looked up uncertainly. 'Well, I suppose he had to go to the photoshoot if he's been shortlisted for Cookery Writer of the Year, Lizzy.'\n\n'Big deal,' I said sourly. 'But never mind, at least he makes it clear that food is still much more important to him than I am, just in case I was harbouring any illusions.'\n\n'Yes, but food is pretty important to you, too.'\n\n'Maybe, but I still put relationships first.'\n\nShe sighed. 'Then perhaps men see things differently and he thought you'd understand.'\n\n'He was wrong, then, wasn't he?'\n\nShe pored over the note again. 'It's very Nick, isn't it? You couldn't describe it as romantic.'\n\n'Not by any stretch of the imagination, and it's short to the point of being terse,' I agreed.\n\nAnnie was still trying to find excuses for him. 'I expect he was in a rush, but you'll be able to see him at the award ceremony on the telly on Monday.'\n\n'No I won't, because I've sold Tom's and the one in here is on the blink.'\n\n'You can come and watch mine, then.'\n\n'Thanks, but I think I'll stay home for a couple of days. My leg is very sore and I'm covered in bruises from Nick throwing himself on top of me. I had to hobble out in my dressing gown to let the hens out and I'm going stiffer by the minute.'\n\nShe went pink. 'Lizzy! Too much information!'\n\n'When he was putting the flames out,' I explained patiently. 'He rolled me in the mud.'\n\n'Oh, how quick-witted and brave of him! He's a hero!'\n\n'Don't start going all dewy-eyed and romantic again: it's pointless. I only wish I never had to see him again, because it'll be even worse than when I babbled my entire life history to him at the hospital, while Jasper was ill.'\n\n'You'll feel differently after he's talked to you,' she suggested, ever the optimist. 'And he will phone you up \u2013 look, he says here in the note that he's going to \u2013 and then you'll see he really cares about you.'\n\n'He'll find that difficult, since I don't intend answering the phone. I'll let the machine take the messages.'\n\n'Come on, you know you won't be able to resist answering, in case it's Jasper.'\n\nShe's quite right, I do tend to snatch it up at the first ring \u2013 and it rang right then. We both froze and stared at it.\n\nAt the sixth ring she gave in and lunged for the kitchen extension that hung on the wall by the fridge. 'Hello? Oh, Nick, it's you! Yes, Annie... No, I've just put a fresh dressing on it. It's not too bad, but it'll be sore for a couple of days... I'll ask her.' She covered the phone and held it out towards me enquiringly.\n\n'Tell him I've got much more important things to do than talk to him,' I said loudly, and started hobbling round the kitchen, opening the cupboard doors and slamming things about.\n\n'I'm afraid she can't come to the phone at the moment... Oh, you heard?' She looked up. 'He says, what's more important than talking to him?'\n\n'Food, of course \u2013 he should understand that,' I said pointedly. 'I'm making some giant rum truffles to send to Jasper. They're one of his favourites.'\n\nAfter a moment she put the phone down. 'He says he's sorry he had to dash off, but he'll come and see you when he gets back, and to be careful. Careful of what?'\n\n'I suppose he means careful in case the thrown firework wasn't some stupid adolescent prank last night, but Polly stepping up her campaign.'\n\n'Oh, no, I'm sure even Polly wouldn't do anything so dangerous.'\n\n'No... perhaps not. She's only done petty, spiteful things so far.'\n\n'I still find it hard to believe anyone could be so nasty. Couldn't it all just be coincidence, after all?'\n\n'The ARG stuff was certainly her idea and, besides, when I told her I knew what she was up to, she didn't deny it.'\n\n'Then I expect she's stopped now and the firework was an accident,' Annie said.\n\n'Speaking of accidents, I'm afraid I was wearing that lovely coat you knitted for me last night, and by the time Nick had finished trampling it into the mud, it was beyond repair.'\n\n'Never mind the coat, at least you're OK, that's the main thing. I can always knit you another.'\n\n'That would be lovely,' I agreed, then added, lying through my teeth, 'Nick said it was such a shame it was spoiled because it was wonderful, and he wished he had one just like it.'\n\n'Did he? Then I'll knit him one, too,' she said kindly. 'Well, I'd better be off \u2013 take it easy for a day or two, won't you? I can manage all the pet-sitting until you're fit again.'\n\n'I'm just a bit stiff really, there's nothing wrong with me.' To prove it I got up again to see her out.\n\n'When I arrived, Caz was in the barn doing exercises and Ophelia was sitting on a bale of straw watching him,' she said, pausing on the doorstep to look across the courtyard. 'But it looks like they've gone now, doesn't it?'\n\n'It's a pity he wasn't here early enough to let the hens out. You know, I'm beginning to think I might as well convert all the outbuilding into accommodation, so everyone can just move in with me,' I said a little sourly.\n\nDespite what I'd said earlier, I walked down to the village later, thinking the exercise might help loosen me up a bit. I still felt as though I'd gone three rounds with a gorilla.\n\nI went into the post office to mail Jasper the box of giant rum truffles I'd made that morning, and an Advent calendar with a chocolate behind every window. I only hope he doesn't get zits. The post office was busy and everyone in the queue was still talking about my near-roasting, though the news of Nick's TV appearance had also got out and was causing much excitement. I said I expected it would all come down to a brief glimpse of him among the also-rans, then realised how sour grapes that sounded and shut up.\n\nOf course I wanted him to win it, since clearly it meant so much to him. Of course I did...\n\nOn the way back home I noticed that Gareth's car was parked outside the vicarage and, on impulse, paid him a visit.\n\nHe gave me tea and I got right down to brass tacks.\n\n'Look, Gareth, I hope you don't mind my speaking frankly, but Annie is my oldest friend and all this dithering about is making her miserable. So I want to know whether your intentions towards her are honourable. Is Barkis willing?'\n\nHe choked on his arrowroot biscuit, but when I could get any sense out of him it was just as I thought: they were both pussy-footing around, each thinking the other one only wanted to be friends.\n\n'She loves you, you dimwit, she told me so,' I said plainly, but he was so modest it took a while to convince him. When it finally did, he stared at me with dawning hope in his blue eyes.\n\n'She'll be at home now, having lunch,' I said casually. 'I know she's got a busy afternoon, because she's covering my pet-sitting jobs as well as her own today, but I'll be fit to work again tomorrow. I'm...'\n\nBut I was talking to myself, because he'd gone without so much as grabbing his coat or saying goodbye. As I let myself out, I only hoped he had a key. We didn't want our vicar arrested for breaking into his own home, did we?\n\nAnnie phoned me up between pet-sitting jobs, almost incoherent with happiness, to announce that Gareth had proposed and they were now engaged. They're trying to get through to her parents to give them the glad tidings, but communication with that remote area of Africa is a little difficult at present.\n\nBut I'm sure when they do hear they'll be very happy and, if anyone deserves wedded bliss, I'm sure Annie does.\n\nAs for me, I remembered a recipe in one of my books for rabbit with chilli-chocolate sauce \u2013 and it was definitely different.\n\n## Chapter 25: Cr\u00e8me de Coeur\n\nSunday started bright, crisp and frosty, so I really threw myself into tidying up the garden, raking up dead leaves for compost and clearing the annual herb beds, accompanied by a lot of hopeful hens.\n\nIn the afternoon, I covered my own Christmas cake and the six individual ones I'd made for the WI hampers with marzipan. Then, having some left, I made petits fours by sandwiching marzipan between two walnut halves and put them in paper cases.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nI found it hard to sleep on Saturday night, despite having spent the entire evening making yet more rum truffles \u2013 this time little ones for the WI hamper goody bags.\n\nEvery time I closed my eyes, lowlights of the night before kept running on a loop through my head and I became conscious of all the aches and pains of my poor bruised, singed and battered body.\n\nThere was little work to do in the garden now that winter had arrived, but on Sunday I still found enough both there and in the kitchen to keep myself occupied. That night I did finally fall asleep, exhausted and still smelling of the rum truffles I'd been putting into little Cellophane bags tied up with silver ribbon.\n\nMonday's post brought me a card depicting the Tower of London with a Cr\u00e8me de Coeur recipe scribbled on the back, but I decided Nick could keep his heart to himself \u2013 if he'd got one.\n\nAt the CPC meeting I handed over all the little bags of truffles to Marian, another task done. I'd gone braced for lots of discussion of my Bonfire Night mishap, but luckily the news of Annie's engagement and Nick's forthcoming TV appearance were much more exciting.\n\nWe toasted the bride-to-be with the bottle of elderflower champagne I'd taken with me for the purpose, though of course she hadn't yet got a ring to show off.\n\n'But I gave Gareth my little silver dolphin ring for size, and he was going to buy one today,' she said, looking rosy-cheeked and very pretty, though I think the latter partly attributable to her having finally listened to my advice about growing out her fringe and abandoning the pudding-bowl haircut.\n\n'Do you trust him to get something you'll have to wear for the rest of your life?' asked Faye.\n\n'Oh, yes,' she said simply. 'I'm sure it will be lovely.'\n\nWe discussed the wedding pretty exhaustively and also the impossibility of Gareth marrying himself, though of course if Annie's parents got back in time her father could perform the ceremony.\n\n'I'd really love that,' she said wistfully. 'To be married by daddy in his old parish \u2013 that would be so special!'\n\n'Well, I don't see why not, if that's what you want,' Miss Pym said.\n\nWe had a second elderflower champagne toast and then, since we were once again at Faye's, we had another ice-cream tasting. The rum and raisin had the edge on the toffee apple, but they were both good.\n\nFaye said my champagne had given her an idea and next year she might try concocting an elderflower ice cream, which she thought would have a delicate but interesting flavour.\n\nI hadn't been home for long when Unks rang up and absolutely insisted I go up to the Hall to watch the awards ceremony on TV with him, Mimi and Juno that evening so, rather than upset him, in the end I agreed.\n\nWe all crowded round the big set in his den, which is decorated with a mixture of old racing prints and early Pharamond's Butterflake Biscuit posters, reflecting the varied strands that make up the family character.\n\nThe Cookery Writer of the Year award was just one among many, so we had to sit through Sport, Fashion and goodness knows what, before we got to it. It was just as well I'd taken up some of the walnut petits fours I'd made on Sunday evening and a big slab of very gingery parkin.\n\nThe cameras kept panning around the room and I caught a brief glimpse of Nick at one of the tables. I'd seen him in a dinner jacket before, of course, but never at a distance. It was like looking at a stranger... and I had a better chance to examine the effect when he went up to collect his award. Yes, he won the thing.\n\n'I knew he would,' Mimi said complacently, through a mouthful of parkin.\n\n'You can't have known,' Juno said. 'He's not the only good cookery writer around.'\n\n'He's in a league of his own,' she said loyally. 'And don't you think he looks handsome in his dinner jacket, Lizzy? He's the best-looking man in the room.'\n\nHe was certainly the tallest and though with those strongly marked features you couldn't in all fairness call him handsome, he was possibly the most attractive-looking man there. I realised I was sitting forward and leaned back again, casually.\n\n'He scrubs up well,' I agreed grudgingly.\n\n'He's coming home in a couple of days and bringing some people with him,' Unks told me. 'He asked me if I would mind if they decorated the hall, kitchen and dining room up as if it was already Christmas, so they could photograph it for an article.'\n\n'Isn't it a bit late for that? I thought magazines did everything well in advance.'\n\n'It's for the Sunday magazine he writes for and they were ready to feature some footballer or other; only now he's involved in a big sex scandal and his wife and children have left him, so they asked Nick instead.'\n\n'It will be such fun, like having two Christmases,' Mimi said rapturously. 'Will we have presents too, Roly?'\n\n'No, it's all fake. Don't get your hopes up. They'll bring everything they need to decorate the place with them, including a pretend Christmas dinner. Lizzy, Nick said to ask you if you would come, because they need extra guests for the photographs. And perhaps Annie and the vicar, too?'\n\n'Kind of him,' I said drily.\n\n'We'll all be in the magazine,' Mimi said, 'pulling crackers and opening parcels.'\n\nI seemed to have already pulled a cracker and I hadn't recovered from the big bang yet.\n\nUnks may have detected a certain lack of enthusiasm, because he asked anxiously, 'You will come, won't you, Lizzy? And Jasper too, of course, if he's home.'\n\n'I shouldn't think he will be, though he'll be back for the real Christmas, of course.'\n\n'I'm going to wear my blue lace dress,' Mimi announced.\n\n'You'll have to: it's the only decent dinner dress you've got left,' Juno pointed out. 'I keep telling you not to garden in them.'\n\n'Well, you've only got that black thing. Unless we buy new ones? What about you, Lizzy?'\n\n'I don't have anything suitable at all, so I'd better not come,' I said quickly. 'I'm sure Nick won't want me there, anyway.'\n\n'He said to ask you specially,' Unks said and they all seemed to be looking at me meaningfully... though, of course, they knew about the accident, for news travels fast round here.\n\n'He was so brave at the bonfire, wasn't he, Lizzy? If he hadn't been so quick-witted you might have been badly burned,' Mimi said, reading my thoughts.\n\n'Then he carried you back to your cottage after you fainted,' Juno sighed. She clearly has a much more romantic streak than her bluff exterior would lead you to believe.\n\n'Yes, he's a real hero. He even spent the night on the sofa afterwards, in case I was suffering from shock and needed anything,' I added pointedly. This was quite true, though of course I didn't mention that I had spent the night there too and, unfortunately, had needed something... or someone.\n\nMimi looked very thoughtful, but before she could say anything else I said quickly, 'Did you all know about Annie's engagement to the vicar?'\n\nThis proved distraction enough to keep them going until I went home.\n\nI'd put the phone down on Nick twice since he'd left. When I heard his voice I couldn't think of a thing I wanted to say to him \u2013 or nothing polite, anyway. He got the message eventually and stopped phoning. Good.\n\nHe missed yet another Mystery Play rehearsal, though we were all word-and position-perfect, and into sorting out the costumes and props, ready for our final dress rehearsal before Christmas. This we always do up at the Hall, in two sessions in random order, as ordained by Clive and Marian, and Adam and Eve are sometimes excused from wearing their skimpy outfits on this occasion, because of the cold. (I was so hoping it would be cold! The less exposure in my new Spandex outfit, the better.)\n\nMimi and Juno must have been at a loose end, because they came down to watch the rehearsals again and Juno kindly read Nick's part in her big, deep voice.\n\n'Might as well come along to the pub with you afterwards for a quick snifter,' she said heartily when we'd all finished.\n\n'Actually, I'm going to the Butterflakes caf\u00e9-bar with Ritch, tonight,' I said, slightly self-consciously, though there's nothing particularly secret about our occasional friendly drinks. And I certainly didn't want Nick thinking that there weren't lots of other men interested in me, even if he wasn't...\n\n'Oh, that sounds such fun!' Mimi said. 'I've never been to the Butterflakes bar. Why don't we go too, Juno?'\n\n'Oh, we couldn't possibly intrude on Lizzy's evening,' Juno said, and Mimi's face fell.\n\nRitch was awaiting me outside, but when I turned round to introduce Mimi and Juno they'd vanished. Somehow I wasn't completely surprised to find them already ensconced at a corner table at the caf\u00e9-bar when we went in. They smiled and waved.\n\n'Friends of yours?' asked Ritch.\n\n'Roly Pharamond's sister, Mimi, is the one with silver curly hair. Juno is her companion \u2013 and I'm starting to suspect they're here tonight to keep an eye on me.'\n\n'Do you need keeping an eye on?' he asked, brightening. 'Got anything interesting planned for later tonight?'\n\n'No, just a drink, a chat and then home \u2013 alone,' I said pointedly.\n\n'Oh, well, worth a go. Dora told me Nick Pharamond was the hero of the hour at the bonfire and you and he are, as she put it, only waiting for your six months' mourning to elapse before naming the day.'\n\n'Dora said that?' I gasped, because if so, then the whole of Middlemoss probably thought the same! How on earth did these rumours get about?\n\n'Yes. Sounds like something straight out of Cotton Common, doesn't it, though you should be wearing widow's weeds to look the part.' He glanced at me curiously. 'So, are you and the Young Master going to get hitched, then?'\n\n'No!' I said forcefully.\n\n'Well, you needn't bite my head off, I didn't suggest it! Though come to think of it, he does give me jealous looks whenever he sees me talking to you!'\n\n'That's just a sort of general disapproval,' I explained. 'He thinks of me as part of the estate's goods and chattels.'\n\nWhen we left, Mimi and Juno followed us out, though they could hardly hitch a lift in Ritch's sports car.\n\nJuno stooped and said to me through the window, 'Might just call in on the way home, Lizzy. Roly wanted some more of that lemon marmalade and it slipped my mind earlier.'\n\nSo I was definitely being chaperoned! But I was sure it was entirely their own idea, and they couldn't keep it up twenty-four hours a day. It did the trick tonight, though, because Ritch dropped me off and left immediately. I think he found Juno rather alarming.\n\nWhen the terrible twosome turned up ten minutes later, Mimi had a miniature paper umbrella behind one ear and was full of exotic cocktails, giggly and overexcited, but I thought she'd go out like a light once her head hit the pillow.\n\nI should be so lucky.\n\nThere didn't seem any way of getting out of the photoshoot, especially since Annie and Gareth were very excited about it, but I had no idea what to wear and neither did Annie.\n\nNone of our clothes looked smart enough, especially if Juno and Mimi were getting dressed up in their best. In the end we thought we'd better buy something new, and I drove us both over to Southport in the Land Rover.\n\nAnnie wanted to look in bridal shops anyway, because she and Gareth hoped to get married in January, if Annie's parents could get back for it, and that didn't leave a lot of time for the preparations. She wanted me to be chief matron of honour and the rest of the CPC to form her bridal retinue, preferably dressed in pink, like a posy of slightly pass\u00e9 flowers. But her thrifty little soul was shocked by the high prices so we gave up after a while and searched out our dinner outfits instead.\n\nAnnie chose a midnight-blue chiffon tunic top with matching palazzo trousers, cinched in around her narrow waist (her shape is a very curvy hourglass) with a gold chain belt. Mine was a dark, clingy dress in a holly-leaf colour that made my eyes look very green. It had interestingly draped bits and looked like nothing on the hanger, but it certainly made the most of what assets I possessed when it was on.\n\nIn fact, it was dead sexy, and not at all the sort of thing I would normally wear, but in it I felt armoured for any eventuality.\n\nWhen Nick came back very early on the Thursday morning, he instantly threw the Hall into a flurry of preparation for the Christmas photoshoot, though they didn't have to put any decorations or a tree up, because everything was supplied and the house was to be professionally 'dressed'.\n\nMrs Gumball had sent Joe down for some eggs, which is how I knew Nick was back, and after a few hours he finally managed to tear himself away and walked into my house without a by-your-leave.\n\nI gave him one glance, as he lounged in the doorway in dark thundercloud mode, and then concentrated on beating my fruitcake mix to death: when he was wearing his Mr Rochester expression it was never a good sign.\n\n'Why did you keep putting the phone down on me, Lizzy? Don't we have something to talk about?'\n\n'We have nothing to talk about, Nick,' I said firmly.\n\n'Yes we have! The other night\u2014'\n\n'Shouldn't have happened, and as far as I'm concerned it never happened,' I interrupted firmly. My arm was starting to ache by now, so I stopped beating and began buttering the cake tin instead.\n\n'But, Lizzy\u2014'\n\n'Look, I don't want to think about it, let alone talk about it!' I snapped, crashing the tin back down on the tiled work-surface and glaring at him.\n\n'Why? What was so wrong about\u2014'\n\n'I'm not discussing it,' I said. 'Just forget it, OK?'\n\nHe gazed at me, black eyebrows drawn together in a ferocious frown. 'Forget it? Come on, Lizzy, it must have meant something to you!'\n\n'Shock makes people do the strangest things, Nick. But if you like, you can put it down to an excess of gratitude that you saved me from serious burns,' I suggested.\n\n'I don't want your damn gratitude,' he snarled, and then slammed out, making everything on the dresser rattle.\n\nAfter putting the cake in the oven I sat down and scraped the mixing bowl clean. It tasted salty \u2013 but that was probably all the angry tears dripping into it.\n\n## Chapter 26: Crackers\n\nIt's best to leave a few days between covering your cake in marzipan and icing it, but it works perfectly well even if you don't. Mince pies freeze very well and defrost quickly, so I usually start to bake batches of them around mid-November. I've heard some people put sugar in their shortcrust pastry, but that sounds too sickly for words: the sweetness should come from the mincemeat filling. Nor do I dredge the tops of mine in yet more sugar... The whole world seems to have gone sugar-crazy!\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nIn the morning I had just begun icing the Christmas cakes when Mimi and Juno popped round to describe how the family had been banished to the kitchen and small morning room, while the hallway, staircase, drawing room, dining room and family silver were all being buffed up to a high polish.\n\n'Only there isn't much family silver,' Mimi said, 'unless we drink out of Roly's racing trophies.'\n\nShe was more than a little overexcited, so I suspected that Juno's main reason in bringing her was to get her away from the Hall for a little while.\n\n'You've never seen anything like it!' Juno said. 'Mrs Gumball is in high dudgeon and says if people wanted to see their faces in the furniture, they should have let her know years ago.'\n\n'Yes, and Juno slipped and nearly fell in the hall, because they had polished under the rug,' Mimi said, helping herself to a scrap of fondant icing. 'She might have broken her leg all over again!'\n\nShe didn't sound terribly regretful about this, but I think she'd relished the unusual amount of freedom she'd enjoyed while Juno had been laid up.\n\n'Stupid thing to do,' Juno agreed. 'But it's all nearly ready for tomorrow now.' Then she added, casually, 'Nick's been very bad-tempered today.'\n\n'Isn't he always?' I asked.\n\n'Oh, no, he only looks gloomy most of the time, he isn't really,' Mimi said. 'But since he said he was going to visit you yesterday, he's been really ratty. Did you fall out?'\n\n'None of your business, Mimi!' Juno said reprovingly.\n\n'We may have had... just a little misunderstanding,' I confessed. 'But we know where we both stand, now.'\n\n'Where's that?' Mimi asked irrepressibly, but was frowned down by Juno.\n\n'Are all these little cakes the ones for the WI hampers?' she said, tactfully changing the subject.\n\n'Yes, we've done six each but we decorate them all the same, so no one knows who baked which.' I opened the old biscuit tin in which I kept the cake decorations and laid out half a dozen plastic sprigs of holly, robins sitting on logs and gold Merry Christmas plaques. 'Perhaps you could put one each of those on the tops for me, Mimi, while I look out the cake bands?'\n\nI also got out the fruitcake I made yesterday, and neither of them complained about the taste, so perhaps I only imagined the mix tasted salty.\n\nWhen they'd gone I put the small cakes away in the larder, ready to deliver to Marian at some point, then turned to our own, decorating it exactly the same way I do every year, with Santa emerging from a little forest with his reindeer sleigh. The bristly fir trees were firmly stuck together in the tin like an early form of Velcro, and had to be prised apart.\n\nAnnie and Gareth collected me in her car next day and we all agreed that it seemed very odd to be getting glammed up for a smart dinner before it was even lunchtime. Mind you, I dress up smartly so infrequently that it would have felt odd at any time.\n\nThey were looking forward to it, but I would have cried off, even at this late stage, if I could have done it without upsetting Unks. I mean, it wasn't even as if we could eat the damned food, since it was all going to be either fake and glazed with something to make it photograph prettily, or sit under the lights for so long it would be rife with three strains of salmonella.\n\nMimi had already rung me to describe how Christmas had arrived at Pharamond Hall very early that morning in a large van, along with a miscellaneous assortment of photographers, food technicians and the like, plus a snootily elegant grey-haired woman, whose job was to 'dress' the rooms they were to use: deck the Hall with boughs of holly.\n\nMrs Gumball let us in at the kitchen door and said that they'd already photographed in there and the hallway with its garlanded oak banister, until she was fit to scream, and she'd be glad when they were done. Then she took our coats and sent us through into the dining room, which looked strangely unfamiliar.\n\nAlthough it was barely midday, the crimson curtains were shut and the only light came from thousands of candles glittering off the polished dark panelling. Very realistic swags of festive foliage studded with gilded baubles were draped everywhere, in a colour scheme of crimson, gold and an ecclesiastical deep purple that must have made Gareth feel quite at home.\n\nThere were a lot of strangers milling about with cameras and lights and things near the dining table, on which gleamed an unfamiliar silver candelabra and a lot of sparkling cut glass, but the family were all gathered round the fire next to a large fake Christmas tree, among a litter of discarded festive giftwrap.\n\nNick, looking darkly morose and Mr Rochester in an immaculate dinner jacket, leaned on the mantelpiece with his foot on the fender, gazing into the flames and barely acknowledging our entrance.\n\nUnks made up for this, however, by saying jovially, 'Come in! What excellent timing, because they're almost ready for us to do the Christmas dinner scene. Annie, my dear, you look lovely,' he added, kissing her. 'Being engaged suits you! You're a very lucky man indeed, Gareth.'\n\n'I certainly am,' the vicar agreed, looking devotedly at Annie, and she blushed.\n\n'Lizzy looks pretty too,' Mimi commented brightly, 'don't you think so, Nick?'\n\n'She certainly looks different,' he said, actually looking at me properly for the first time and taking in the figure-enhancing effect of my new dress with a raised eyebrow. I suddenly wished I hadn't bothered dressing up, but come in the dungarees I wear when I whitewash the henhouse.\n\n'We've been opening presents,' Mimi said. 'They were all empty, but we are having real crackers.'\n\n'And real wine,' Unks added. 'Need something to keep us going!'\n\n'The Christmas tree pops up, decorations and all, like magic,' Mimi confided to us. 'Roly, can we have one of those?'\n\n'No, I like the real thing, smelling of pine,' Roly said. 'And you like decorating it, don't you, m'dear?'\n\n'Oh, yes, I hadn't thought of that,' she agreed.\n\n'Can you take your places at the table, please?' someone called, and we went where we were directed, which in my case was between Juno and Nick.\n\nPeople darted in to tweak, dab and twitch everything to perfection as we posed, slightly self-consciously, as directed. I was already aware that my new green dress fitted where it touched \u2013 and it touched almost everywhere \u2013 but when the photographer kept zooming in on my cleavage I began to wonder if it might be a bit over the top in more ways than one. Then Nick glared at him and he backed off a bit.\n\n'Can we pull the crackers now?' Mimi asked plaintively. 'Haven't they finished yet?'\n\n'OK... go ahead,' a man's voice said from the dark shadows.\n\nThey were certainly big, expensive-looking crackers, with equally pricey-looking novelties inside. Mine, which I pulled with Nick, contained a gold-plated pen, a gilt cardboard crown and a tightly rolled piece of paper.\n\n'Does your motto make sense?' Juno asked, puzzling over hers. 'I think mine is supposed to be a joke, but I'm not sure. I mean, how could you cross an elephant with a mouse? That's not physically possible!'\n\n'Read yours aloud, Lizzy!' ordered Mimi gaily. She was becoming flushed and excited.\n\nI unrolled the long, thin strip of paper and found it entirely covered in Nick's instantly familiar spiky handwriting. 'Mine doesn't make sense either,' I said quickly, crumpling it into my hand. 'Do you want my pen to go with your little photo frame and gold dice, Mimi? They seem to match, don't they?'\n\n'Oh, yes, please!' she said, but just as I was handing it over, there was the sound of a loud altercation outside the door and a bit of scuffling.\n\nThen Mrs Gumball lumbered in, with a small, rotund and apoplectic man hard on her heels. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder in his direction. 'It's that little twerp Lionel Cripchet, from over Rivington way.'\n\n'Sir Lionel,' he snapped, bobbing up in front of her and glaring generally round, but though we must have presented a very Night Watch sort of tableau, the strangeness of it escaped him under the urgency of his anger: 'I'm here for an explanation!'\n\n'Are you?' Unks said mildly, taking another sip of wine. 'Well, now you are here, I wouldn't mind an explanation myself about that supposedly sound horse you sold me a couple of years back. Remember? The one that mysteriously went permanently lame the day after I bought it?'\n\n'I'm not here to talk about horses, but squirrels! Yes, that's taken you by surprise, hasn't it? I suppose you thought I wouldn't find out!'\n\n'Is the man mad?' Juno asked. 'Why is he blethering on about squirrels?'\n\n'Yes, spit it out, Cripchet,' Roly said amiably. 'Why are you blethering on about squirrels?'\n\n'You know very well,' he exclaimed slightly wildly, looking at the vicar and Annie as if he expected them to come out in support, despite their baffled expressions. 'I've been overrun with the little grey bastards these last two years and now \u2013 last night \u2013 I finally caught him in the act!'\n\n'Who?' asked Nick, then added, after a moment's thought, 'And what?'\n\n'Your gamekeeper, Caz Naylor. His Land Rover was parked up a track next to my estate at one this morning! Now, what do you say about that?' Sir Lionel demanded triumphantly.\n\n'Is Caz still around?' Roly asked Mrs Gumball.\n\n'In the kitchen. Shall I send him in?'\n\n'Do,' he agreed. 'I am quite sure he has a perfectly innocent explanation.'\n\n'Ha!' said Sir Lionel, moustache bristling.\n\nCaz slid silently into the room a moment or two later, but no further than the dark shadows just beyond the reach of the candlelight.\n\n'Ah, Caz, Sir Lionel wants to know what your Land Rover was doing parked up a track next to his estate in the early hours of the morning,' Roly said. 'Were you indeed there?'\n\nCaz nodded, almost imperceptibly.\n\n'And I'm sure you had a very good reason?' prompted Unks.\n\n'Of course he had a damn good reason!' yelled Cripchet, going puce and practically dancing up and down on the spot. 'He was releasing hordes of flaming grey squirrels onto my land, that's what he was doing! There's standing room only and they're fighting for territory. It's like World War Three out there!'\n\n'What do you say to that, Caz? What were you doing?'\n\n'Courtin',' he said laconically.\n\n'Courting?' demanded the infuriated baronet. 'Courting? You can't expect me to believe that, Caz Naylor!'\n\n'Actually,' the vicar interjected quietly, 'Caz and his fianc\u00e9e, Ophelia Locke, have just asked me to put up the banns, so I see no reason to doubt him.'\n\n'That's right,' agreed Caz, and then, clearly feeling that enough had been said, sidled back out of the door again.\n\n'But the squirrels...' began Sir Lionel, baffled and furious.\n\n'You know, Caz said he'd found a lot of the traps sprung but empty lately,' Unks said, with an air of sudden illumination. 'And that animal rights group, ARG, are very active around here, so I dare say they've been releasing them onto your land, that's what it is.'\n\nCripchet's lips worked silently and his skin went an even more ominous shade of puce.\n\n'A drink before you go?' suggested Nick hospitably.\n\nSir Lionel looked from one to the other of us and said slowly, 'It's a damned conspiracy! You're all in league together!' and then he slammed out.\n\nThe magazine crew, who'd been watching with silent appreciation, broke into a spatter of polite applause. Roly bowed.\n\n'There, all's well that ends well, isn't it?' he said happily. 'And if you have finished with us, too, ladies and gentlemen, then I suggest we adjourn to the kitchen for something real to eat and leave you to pack everything up.'\n\nWhen I got to my feet I discovered I still had the curl of paper from the cracker clenched in my hand and, for want of a handbag, shoved it down the front of my dress when no one was looking.\n\nMrs Gumball had hot soup and sandwiches ready, and by the time we'd finished those, Christmas had been dismantled, packed away and driven off again. Evidently it took much less time to do that, than set it all up.\n\nAnnie and Gareth were giving me a lift home and as we left, Nick called out to me, 'Lizzy, I'll have to go away tomorrow, but I'll be back by the end of the month, so I'll see you up here bright and early on the first of December.'\n\nI stopped dead. 'You will?'\n\n'Yes, it's the Senior Citizens' Christmas dinner, remember? Mrs Gumball is expecting us to both help cook it.'\n\n'That's right,' she agreed.\n\n'But surely, if Nick's helping, you won't want me under your feet, too?' I suggested hopefully.\n\n'Many hands make light work,' she said firmly. 'And I've three geese to cook!'\n\nThe note in the cracker was Nick's recipe for prize-winning apple pie and I instantly saw that there was no startling difference between his and my own. So if his really was better, then it must mean that he had a lighter hand with the pastry, which was even more unforgivable.\n\nIf he wanted a motto for his cracker, 'I shot myself in the foot' would do admirably.\n\n## Chapter 27: Charmed\n\nWe had the first snowfall of winter last night and I awoke to find everything fuzzily flocked in white and looking Christmas-card pretty. This is when the birds are glad of the bright-berried bushes like pyracantha, holly and viburnum \u2013 but it's still only mid-November, so let's hope there are still lots of holly berries left for the Christmas decorations!\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nJasper and Ginny arrived unexpectedly next afternoon, dropped off for a couple of hours by his friend Stu, who had bought a car.\n\nI wished he could have given me warning, so I could have cooked him something he loved, but it was wonderful to see him. I know we've talked over the phone a lot, but it wasn't the same as actually being able to put my arms around him and give him a hug. He looked sort of subtly grown-up too... and even Ginny refrained from trying to bite my ankles, so perhaps absence made the heart grow fonder. I told him about the photoshoot and what a hollow mockery of a real Christmas it had been, then after a while, he popped up to the Hall to see the family and came back later with the news that Nick was off travelling abroad for the next couple of weeks, which is something he does do from time to time, filing his copy from wherever he is. But yesterday he didn't say a word about where he was going!\n\nMind you, he hardly said a word to me at all...\n\nMrs Gumball had given Jasper half a cold roast chicken and an apple turnover to take back to university with him, Unks a fifty-pound note (I didn't even remember seeing one of those before) and Mimi, not to be outdone, presented him with the gold crown from yesterday's cracker. I'd already packed up a moveable feast as my contribution to the student larder, so they would none of them starve before the end of term.\n\nWhen Stu came to pick Jasper and Ginny up again I heroically refrained from quizzing him about how good his car brakes were, or telling him to drive carefully. I think I deserved a medal for that.\n\nAt the CPC meeting I gave Marian the mini Christmas cakes and so did one or two of the others. 'Oh great,' she said, 'the hampers are coming along really well, I just need to bulk buy the boxes of mince pies nearer the delivery date.'\n\nOf course we would have happily made those, too, but when surveyed the majority of the Senior Citizens preferred shop ones, though I've no idea why.\n\nWe were all crammed into Annie's tiny cottage and once she had poured the coffee and passed the Fondant Fancies, she tipped a big bag of pine cones onto the newspaper she had spread over the table and showed us how to turn them into Christmas tree decorations.\n\n'I got the idea from a magazine and tried it with the Brownies last year, and they looked lovely,' she said, 'though I didn't let them loose with the Superglue, of course.'\n\nShe demonstrated how to glue on a ribbon loop to the top, then dabbed a little gold paint around the cone, sprinkled it with glitter, and shook off the excess, before placing it in an old egg box to finish drying.\n\nI'd wondered why she'd asked us to bring old egg boxes with us! And come to think of it, they would be perfect for storing any breakable tree ornaments too.\n\nThat evening the Mummers were in the workshop, practising the songs they would play in the intervals of the Mystery Play, and afterwards Ritch came over to the cottage and said he thought Ophelia was imminently going to give birth to a chest of drawers.\n\n'She has suddenly grown a big bump, all out at the front,' I agreed. 'Though I suppose those smocks she wears have been hiding it for months and so it's only just become noticeable. She's no idea when it's due. You'd think she was living in the Middle Ages, the way she avoids modern medicine. Did you know she and Caz are going to get married?'\n\n'Are they?' He looked at me over a table spread with home-made goodies (I'd half-expected him to come tonight) and unleashed his glowingly attractive smile. He appeared so blondly wholesome that I admit my heart gave a bit of a thump... Then I reminded myself that even if he had given up one of his dubious habits there was still the philandering and the healthy sex rota.\n\n'Yes, they've put the banns up already. And Annie's parents are delighted about her engagement, too \u2013 they're flying back in the New Year on leave for the wedding.'\n\nAnnie, now sporting a modest sapphire ring, was going about in a permanent glow of happiness.\n\n'She and the vicar seem perfectly matched,' Ritch said. 'Maybe I should try it?'\n\n'What, marriage?' I said, startled.\n\n'Why not?' He gestured at the table. 'A woman who can cook like this is worth hanging on to!'\n\n'Don't be daft,' I said, though rather flattered. 'Monogamy isn't in you!'\n\nThe Cotton Common cast were kept hard at it this week, so Annie and I were also kept busy dogwalking: I was becoming very fond of Flo, and also of Delphine Lake's little dogs.\n\nNick was not at the Mystery Play rehearsal that evening, of course, and it was all a bit unexciting. But then, it was mainly costume adjustments and props, for there were only a couple more rehearsals before the final dress one up at the Hall, so that was only to be expected.\n\nMarian and Clive were also very involved in the annual Mosses Christmas Show, which was to take place in early December, so naturally they liked to have the Mystery Play well in hand in order to concentrate on that at the end of November instead.\n\nI did go to the pub for a bit with the others, where Annie and Gareth revealed to me that they've decided that spending a fortune on a big wedding was immoral, so instead they were going to have a thrifty one and make a large donation to charity.\n\n'Luckily I'm the same size as Mummy was when she got married, so she suggested I wear her lovely wedding dress,' Annie said on the Thursday, when I called in after taking Flo for a walk. 'I took it out of storage this morning, with the veil and everything, and it was perfect. It's hung up in my bedroom now. And dear Miss Pym says she'll try and find four bridesmaids' outfits in shades of pink on eBay, which she can alter to fit. She makes almost all her own clothes.'\n\n'I'd never have guessed,' I said untruthfully. 'But what about a reception? It's a pity I got rid of the big glasshouse really, though I suppose it would have been too cold in January.'\n\n'Oh, we'll have it in the village hall, with a simple buffet: perhaps all the guests could bring a contribution.'\n\n'I'll make the wedding cake, that can be mine,' I offered. 'And do you know, I think getting married this way is going to be much more fun!'\n\n'Yes, that's what I think, too,' Annie said, her eyes shining. 'And it will make our special day even more wonderful, knowing that we'll be helping others.'\n\n'Spread the love,' I agreed, giving her a hug. 'Now, show me this beautiful wedding dress!'\n\nIt was Stir-Up Sunday, and the day when the church service traditionally included the prayer beginning with the words, 'Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people', which always used to be the signal for the Christmas puddings to be made.\n\nMy own huge, round one was long since made, but I spent most of that day cooking the ones for the Senior Citizens' Christmas lunch. Mrs Gumball does all the rest of it, but I rather like making the puddings.\n\nWe'd stopped putting charms in them after a minor disaster when one of the Senior Citizens broke his dentures on a Bachelor's Button: in any case, they always refused to give them back, and it got expensive buying new ones every year.\n\nI felt the first twinge or two of excitement that Christmas always gave me: dim but happy memories of those spent with my parents and more recent ones with the Vanes. And whatever difficulties I'd had with Tom, I'd always tried to make sure that Jasper, too, would have a hoard of joyous treasured memories of Christmas.\n\nIt had been ages since Nick had gone abroad, but not a single postcard, with or without tart recipe, had arrived. Meanwhile the CPC had become more of a Wedding Circle, since we spent almost the whole time discussing Annie and Gareth's big day!\n\nMiss Pym put in low eBay bids on bridesmaids' dresses and had already secured two, which were on the way.\n\n'And there does not seem to be much interest in bidding on the others, so I will know by this evening whether we have those as well,' she said. 'They are all in shades of pink, so though we won't match, we will have a theme.'\n\n'Lovely,' I said resignedly, though pink is definitely not my colour and, to be honest, it's not going to do a lot for Faye's ruddy complexion, either. 'Though let's hope it doesn't snow, or we will freeze to death!'\n\n'What about if we all get an ivory-coloured pashmina or wrap?' suggested Marian.\n\n'Good idea,' I said, for at least a pashmina is likely to be useful later.\n\n'The meeting had better be at my house again next week, so we can have the first fitting,' Miss Pym suggested, but by then we had completely lost the thread of our rota, as usual, so it might have been her turn anyway.\n\nAlthough Ritch still often called in at the cottage after the Mummers sessions, we hadn't been to Butterflake's for a drink for ages, probably because he has another woman \u2013 or even two or three \u2013 on the go. Caz was still hanging around the cottage just as much as usual, though, but since he'd staked his claim on Ophelia, I supposed he would want to keep an even closer eye on her.\n\nI finally got a postcard from Nick, with a Turkish delight recipe on the back. I wondered if that was an improvement on tarts...\n\nWe all had a mince pie tasting at the CPC over at Miss Pym's neat bungalow in Mossedge. We had to wait until we'd had our bridesmaids' dresses fitted first, though, so they didn't get marked.\n\nThe four of them varied from baby pink to a deep rose (mine) and are all the traditional tight-bodiced, full-skirted type, with big, puffed sleeves. There was much pinning and tacking, then we had our mince pies and a modest sherry, since most of us were driving.\n\nMiss Pym had also found some cheap pashminas on the internet and we gave her the go-ahead to buy them.\n\n'And Roly is providing all the flowers, including decorating the church and my bouquet,' Annie said gratefully. 'It is so kind of him. In fact, everyone is being wonderful.'\n\n'That's because we all love you, dear,' Marian said. 'You will have a splendid day, just you wait and see!'\n\nWhat with organising the Christmas Show, Senior Citizens' Christmas hampers and lunch, and directing the Mystery Play (among other things too numerous to list), Marian was, by the end of November, starting to look even thinner, her huge dark eyes sunken and her cropped silver hair bristling with electricity. But she and Clive always insisted they loved to keep busy: and they must have done or they wouldn't have volunteered for everything!\n\nLuckily for their peace of mind, Nick returned just in time for the next Mystery Play rehearsal, albeit bleary-eyed, unshaven and very, very grumpy. He snapped out his lines with barely a look at me, which boded well for the next day's early morning start helping Mrs Gumball to cook the Senior Citizens' Christmas Lunch.\n\nI can't describe to you how much I wasn't looking forward to that.\n\n## Chapter 28: Cold Snap\n\nI make my own version of those fat balls for wild birds that you can buy, mixing birdseed, dried fruits, nuts, bacon rinds and crumbs with some melted dripping or lard. You can either put blocks of it on the bird table or refill those coconut shells that are pierced for hanging up. The cold weather seemed to be set to continue into December and though the child in me found pleasure in the idea of a White Christmas, it would be hard on the birds and other small creatures.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nI was up at the Hall before dawn, carrying two baskets containing the big Christmas puddings, along with some brandy butter I'd whipped up the night before. It's not far, especially if you take the shortcut through the woods and the walled garden, but by halfway I'd begun to wish I'd taken the Land Rover.\n\nMrs Gumball and Nick were already hard at work by the time I arrived, and had divided the cooking between them, leaving me the role of skivvy. I quickly discovered that Nick is hell on wheels in a kitchen, too, and takes no prisoners. Had it not been for such a good cause I wouldn't have stood it for a second \u2013 but never again! The moment when it was all packed into the Meals on Wheels van and trundled down the drive was wonderful \u2013 as was the stiff drink and long soak in the bath I had as soon as I got home, despite it being only lunchtime. Nick had offered to drive me back, but by then I wasn't speaking to him \u2013 if I had been in the first place, which was a moot point.\n\nAnnie, who had also risen early that morning to help put the Christmas decorations up in the village hall and then stayed to serve dinner, popped in to Perseverance Cottage later to report that it had all been a great success: the geese were delicious, and we'd all got a vote of thanks for our labours at the end.\n\nClive was going to write it all up for the Mosses Messenger, with photos... and come to think of it, I did vaguely recall that he'd been up in the Hall kitchen earlier and a flashbulb had gone off right in my eyes...\n\nMarian and Clive rushed out the first December issue of the Mosses Messenger at record speed, and it was as I feared: there was a photograph of me looking hot, cross, shiny and dishevelled in the Hall kitchen, flanked by Nick, in gleaming chef's whites and Mrs Gumball, wearing a crisp, frill-edged pinny and with not a hair on her head out of place.\n\nHowever, there was a lovely picture of the Senior Citizens toasting Annie and Gareth's engagement in dandelion and burdock, sherry, beer or Pinot Grigio, according to their tastes.\n\nOnce I'd recovered from that, I threw myself into giving the cottage its annual big Christmas clean, from the attic downwards. Unfortunately, when I went up to the attic I found I hadn't fully secured the bottom section of the loft ladder, so that it slid up when I was near the top. I clung to it, swinging to and fro over the stairwell like Tarzana of the Apes but, luckily, finally dropped off when over the landing. I lay there on my back for a few minutes, winded and giggling slightly hysterically, but after that I double-checked the ladder before trusting my weight to it.\n\nI didn't do much up there anyway, other than sweep away the cobwebs and collect the boxes of Christmas decorations... especially after I discovered a few more forgotten odds and ends of Tom's. And I don't know why, but they made me burst into tears. I didn't miss him \u2013 in fact, there was a sense of relief that he wasn't ever going to be coming home again \u2013 but I think that made me feel even guiltier.\n\nPerhaps there was added guilt, too, about what happened with Nick on Bonfire Night \u2013 but of course that was just a combination of alcohol, shock and a need for comfort, not love. Nick may be attractive (even when he's at his worst, barking orders at me in the Hall kitchen), but he's also exasperating, and that's twice he's dropped me like a hot potato and gone off doing something food-related and therefore far more important.\n\nIn between all my cleaning, I baked some Christmas tree gingerbread shapes for the next CPC, though wedding mania was still holding sway. Miss Pym intended making more adjustments to our dresses, since Marian was losing weight, while I was putting it on. I blame it on being unable to do much in the garden, which lately is either frozen hard, covered in snow, or both.\n\nI couldn't believe that already it was the last Mystery Play rehearsal in the village hall, and really we didn't need it, we were all word-perfect. So after a quick run-through, we all turned to helping Marian and Clive set the hall up ready for the village Christmas Show the following evening. I was looking forward to that, since I never got involved, so all I was expected to do was buy a ticket and go to watch it.\n\nIt was late and bitterly cold when we went out, so most of us headed straight for home. Nick silently fell into step beside me, but instead of seeing me to my door he strode off at the turn from the drive up to the Hall with a brusque 'Good night!', leaving me to it.\n\nEveryone goes to the Christmas Show, including Roly, Mimi and Juno. Even Nick came this year, but when Juno offered to change places so I could sit by him, I said quickly that I was quite happy next to Roly, and Nick glowered at me.\n\nThe evening followed its usual pattern: Ted the gardener gloomily produced rabbits out of a battered top hat and silk scarves out of the ears of members of the audience. He was followed by the infants singing carols, which always reduced most of the audience to tears, and Dave Naylor singing 'O Sole Mio', which didn't.\n\nThe Senior Citizens' Tea Dance Club's display of salsa dancing was particularly memorable. Some of the others may have been more technically perfect, but the fire and liveliness of Mrs Gumball's performance more than made up for any little mistakes.\n\nOn the Friday I went to Liverpool to fetch Jasper, dog and baggage home for the Christmas holidays, though I took a wrong turning and circled one of the two cathedrals twice, before charging off in what luckily turned out to be the right direction.\n\nIt was lovely to see him again, but Ginny was still about as attractive as a hairball, and gave an experimental nip or two at my ankles as I hugged Jasper.\n\nHis belongings seemed to have doubled since I left him there in October, and we had a job getting them into the Land Rover. I treated that like a sort of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, which is something most women are good at since life is a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle containing several trick two-sided pieces. (I'm sure Nick is one of those, from an entirely different puzzle.)\n\nAll the way home Jasper was silently texting messages on his phone and when I asked who to, he said his girlfriend! He didn't expand on this interesting remark but I expect he'll reveal all eventually.\n\nThe day after Jasper came home Nick slammed in through the kitchen door like a whirlwind and demanded, 'Why didn't you tell me Ophelia Locke was the ARG supporter who was targeting you \u2013 and at Polly Darke's instigation?'\n\n'How did you find that out?' I blurted, taken off guard.\n\n'Caz just told me, among several things he suddenly decided I ought to know \u2013 and I might have taken the other incidents more seriously if I'd known about it.'\n\nJasper, who'd been sitting at the table finishing off a late, late breakfast, looked up. 'Ophelia was? What, with those animal rights people?'\n\n'You mean, you didn't know about it either?' Nick said in a quieter voice, seeming slightly mollified.\n\n'I didn't tell him \u2013 or about the other incidents,' I said, 'because I didn't want to worry him.'\n\n'Which other incidents?' asked Jasper.\n\nNick gave him a quick r\u00e9sum\u00e9 of what had been happening and then added, 'And there was a firework thrown at her at the bonfire, did she tell you about that?'\n\n'We don't know that was Polly,' I said, going pink as usual when anyone mentioned Bonfire Night.\n\n'Actually, we do, because Caz spotted her doing it.'\n\n'He did? Then why on earth didn't he say so?'\n\n'You know how he feels about the police. It took him long enough to tell me.'\n\n'You won't tell Unks about Ophelia being in ARG, will you?' I asked anxiously. 'Only they've thrown her out now, and since she and Caz are getting married it would be a pity to spoil everything.'\n\n'You are the strangest woman!' Nick exclaimed, looking exasperated.\n\n'She certainly is,' Jasper traitorously agreed. 'Do you know, I found her crying over her postcard album when I came downstairs earlier and when I asked her why, she said there was something terribly sad about Cr\u00e8me de Coeur!'\n\nNick seemed strangely cheered by the thought of my misery. 'She did? Well, well!'\n\n'Shouldn't we do something about this woman, if she's playing nasty tricks on Mum?' suggested Jasper.\n\n'Something is going to be done,' Nick assured him. 'Leave it to me.'\n\n'Oh, right,' Jasper said, looking relieved. 'Well, come on, Ginny. Mum, can I borrow the car, if you don't need it today?'\n\n'Why, where are you going?' I asked automatically.\n\n'Meeting Stu and some other friends, and maybe going to see a film and have a pizza, but I won't be late. And I won't drink and drive,' he added patiently.\n\nI handed him the keys to the Land Rover. 'Are you meeting your girlfriend?'\n\nJasper tapped the side of his nose infuriatingly, which was all the reply I got. Nick followed him out and I saw them talking together before I closed the door against the icy wind.\n\nWhen I looked out again, the yard was deserted and the hens had retired to huddle somewhere warmer. The very last Honey, her thick brown feather bloomers blown up like an inside-out umbrella, was running up the ramp into the henhouse.\n\n## Chapter 29: Clueless\n\nToday's meeting of the CPC was our Christmas party, because instead of the next one we were all going to help pack and distribute the WI Senior Citizens hampers. Everyone came to Perseverance Cottage bearing food \u2013 little triangular sandwiches, quiche, individual cream-topped sherry trifles decorated with green diamonds of angelica and, of course, Christmas cake. We ate our slices at the end with a chunk of crumbly Lancashire cheese on the side.\n\nWe had a lovely time, but after they'd gone and I was clearing the table, I couldn't help remembering back to when my son was taken ill on the same occasion, five years earlier...\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nI scribbled a heartfelt 'but thank goodness he pulled through!' to end the paragraph, thinking how lovely it was to have him home again, even if he did seem to be out of the house most of the time. There was certainly nothing wrong with his appetite: food vanished from the fridge and cake tins overnight, and I was making mincemeat flapjacks on a daily basis.\n\nHis Christmas present wish list seemed to consist almost entirely of books and CDs, although I'd already collected a few bits and pieces, including a spectacular Swiss army knife with millions of gadgets, which I rather coveted myself. I was sure it would come in handy.\n\nI had an awful lot of handwritten pages of notes for my next Chronicle and the Just Desserts book to type up, which would keep me occupied between all the Christmas stuff. But then, I'd already made the Christmas cake and pudding, and I didn't need to think about Christmas dinner itself, because we always had it up at the Hall with the family. It will be yet another goose... but then, it usually was.\n\nThe first Mystery Play dress rehearsal (for which I wasn't needed) took place up at the Hall, and apparently went quite well, with only one or two minor mishaps. Clive and Marian randomly mix up the various acts of the play for the two dress rehearsals because there's a feeling that it would be unlucky to do the complete thing right through before the actual performance. I could only hope that the snow had thawed and it was not quite so bitterly cold when I came to rehearse in my Eve costume the following Tuesday.\n\nWhile I was out on pet-sitting duty, Caz dropped a freshly cut Christmas tree off at the cottage, and by the time I returned Jasper had set it up in its stand in the sitting room and was opening the boxes of decorations we'd collected over the years, along with some old family ones I could remember my mother hanging up. Out came the fragile glass violins, trumpets and bells; the bright birds with purple and pink feather tails and the gaudy strings of slightly balding tinsel.\n\nWe don't have lights because I'm convinced they will set the house on fire. I don't know why, though perhaps distant memories of the way the bulbs used to pop when my father turned them on might have had something to do with it. I expect that's where I get my uselessness with electricity from.\n\nLater, while Jasper finished the decorating, including hanging a stocking for Ginny from the mantelpiece, along with his own, I baked thin, crispy star-shaped spice biscuits to hang on the tree with ribbon, the finishing touch.\n\nWhile I did this, the sound of carols on the CD player, the mingled smell of spices and pine... the memory of the cold, crisp air outside \u2013 all these seasonal elements combined until the magic of Christmas, as always, had me in its thrall.\n\nUnfortunately, next morning I found PC Perkins standing on my doorstep, her dark uniform lightly frosted with snowflakes like a rather odd Christmas card. She very politely suggested that we go and look in the outbuilding where I kept my gardening tools, because she'd received an anonymous tip-off.\n\nShe didn't say a tip-off about what, but I said she was welcome to go and look, and I would follow her over once I'd put my wellies and anorak on.\n\nWhen I got there, having waded through an audience of interested hens, she was standing staring up at the wall rack where my tools hung fairly neatly \u2013 and there, hooked among them, my blue steel cross-shaped wheel brace.\n\n'Is that the one you used to change your tyre, on the day your husband took your car?' she enquired.\n\n'It certainly looks like it,' I began, reaching up for it, but she put her hand on my arm to stop me.\n\n'Please don't touch it, Mrs Pharamond.'\n\nI let my hand fall to my side. 'But... I'm sure it wasn't there before! I'd have noticed it when I was hanging up the tools, because it doesn't live there. I always kept it in the car.'\n\n'So when did you last see it?'\n\nI frowned, trying to remember, though the events of the summer seemed an awfully long time ago now. 'I'm pretty sure that when I'd finished changing the wheel, I slung it in the footwell behind the driver's seat,' I said slowly. 'Didn't I already give you a statement about that? But of course Jasper checked the wheel too, while I was in the cottage, and I can't recall what he said he did with it. He's gone up to the Hall, but I'll ask him when he gets home, shall I?'\n\n'If you don't mind,' PC Perkins said, unfolding a large plastic envelope and inserting the wheel brace into it. 'And I'll just take this and check it for fingerprints, if you have no objection?'\n\n'Not at all,' I said politely, 'but you'll only find mine and Jasper's, won't you?'\n\n'Just routine. We like to tie up all the loose ends,' she said, giving me that 'I'll get you yet, you murderess' smile. After such a long silence, I'd convinced myself that I'd only imagined the police were suspicious of me, but clearly I'd been quite right all along!\n\nWhen he came in, Jasper said he thought he might just have propped the wheel brace up against the barn wall when he'd finished tightening the nuts, but he couldn't be sure. He could equally well have tossed it into the back of the car, where it usually lived.\n\n'But whichever way, someone must have put it with the gardening tools recently and then told the police,' I said, puzzled, 'because I'd definitely have noticed it if it had been there all this time, since I'm constantly taking tools out and putting them back \u2013 and it was hung on top of my favourite spade. But what's the point, when finding it won't tell the police anything they didn't already know?'\n\n'I wouldn't worry about it, Mum. I expect she really meant it, about tying up loose ends. And you are vague sometimes, so you might have moved it to get at the spade, and not noticed it was there.'\n\n'I'm not that vague. And who tipped them off about it, and why?'\n\n'It's a mystery, but not one that's important. I'd forget it,' he advised. 'Or you could tell Uncle Nick about it and see what he thinks.'\n\n'No, thanks,' I said crisply. 'He'd probably just accuse me of losing my marbles, like you.'\n\nJasper had now become even more antagonistic towards poor Ritch, if that were possible, and warned me that if he became his stepfather he would leave home! I assured him that even if I had been tempted to remarry, which was the last thing on my mind, I would certainly not replace one chronic philanderer with another.\n\nI expected it was all because he overheard Ritch jokingly asking me to marry him again, when he caught us having a Christmas kiss under the mistletoe I'd suspended from the drying rack. (I hang mistletoe up every year, but that was the first time I'd struck lucky.)\n\nRitch and I had already exchanged presents. He gave me a delightful little sparkly crystal snowman brooch and I gave him a box of home-made Turkish Delight (from the postcard recipe sent to me by Nick) and a large rawhide bone for poor old Flo, about to be immured in kennels while her master flew off to stay with friends in the Caribbean over Christmas.\n\nI might have felt compelled to offer to have Flo myself if it hadn't been for Ginny: one snap of Flo's powerful jaws and Ginny would be only a lingering memory. However, Flo was booked into the local luxury Dogtel, with heated beds and her own run, so I didn't suppose she'd find it too traumatic.\n\nJasper didn't, however, extend his antagonism towards all my male visitors, even on one occasion helpfully pointing out the mistletoe to Nick before he went out, though luckily I don't think he heard him.\n\nBut at least Nick now seemed to have finally accepted that I simply wanted to forget what happened on the night of the bonfire and continue as we were before, so we were back on our old, slightly argumentative but fairly amicable terms, and he was helping me with recipes for Just Desserts.\n\nHe began bringing down bundles of his old notebooks for me to copy things out of, though his idea of what was suitable and what wasn't didn't exactly coincide with mine.\n\nIt was no wonder I was putting on weight, because I'd adjusted my chocolate intake to compensate for... well, I didn't really know what for, but it was very comforting. Have you ever tried hot chocolate custard?\n\nJasper and I went up to the Hall for Sunday lunch and Roly had the newspaper magazine with the Christmas photoshoot article in it. And actually, it all looked really magical, lush and quite swish, in a slightly medieval sort of way, not fake at all.\n\nMimi said she thought Juno looked just like Edith Sitwell, but luckily Juno mixed her up with Edith Cavell and was vaguely flattered, saying she knew she was a heroine putting up with Mimi but that might be going a bit too far.\n\nI'd taken up a box of the spice biscuits, all ready threaded with ribbon for hanging, and we decorated their big Christmas tree in the hallway after lunch, with Nick leaning over the banister to place a porcelain-faced angel on the very top.\n\nI was convinced that their Christmas tree lights were made of Bakelite! I only hoped they'd had an electrician check them in the last fifty years.\n\nI was so glad I'd got a Land Rover, because I used to be very nervous about driving on snowy roads and now I wasn't in the least. We had another light snowfall on top of the last lot, which had half-thawed on the roads and then refrozen, making it pretty treacherous, but I made it easily down to the village hall to help with the hampers.\n\nEach recipient had ticked boxes on a form giving their likes, dislikes and preferences (Marian was nothing if not organised) so we just had to select from the list and assemble each box, which were the cardboard sort printed with a green holly pattern, with pop-up handles.\n\nSeveral of the WI members had four-wheel-drive vehicles, so were going to deliver the hampers that afternoon, when the roads had been gritted.\n\n'Another job done,' Marian announced with satisfaction as the last of them drove away. 'There's just the final Mystery Play dress rehearsal tomorrow, and then we can all relax and just enjoy ourselves over Christmas.'\n\n'Except we actually have to do the play on Boxing Day,' I pointed out, and the thought of shivering in the snow in my new Eve outfit was not an enticing prospect.\n\n'But that's the fun bit,' Annie said, then sighed. 'I will miss our CPC meetings until we start again in summer, though.'\n\n'This year I think we need to start again right after Christmas,' I said, 'only as Wedding Organisers instead!'\n\n## Chapter 30: Unscheduled Appearances\n\nThe snow lingers and, though the local farmers have kept the roads around the village open, more is forecast. It won't stop the Mystery Play, though \u2013 nothing has ever done that, not even Cromwell!\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nOn Tuesday afternoon I walked up to the Hall after lunch for the second of the Mystery Play dress rehearsals. I left Jasper typing up some of my latest Chronicle onto my new laptop. He was much faster than me, so that was a big help.\n\nHe said Unks wanted him to go up to the house later in the afternoon, so he would see me there.\n\nThe cobbled courtyard of Pharamond Hall where the audience stand to watch is bound on one side by the kitchen wing and on the others by stables and outbuildings, making it very sheltered. The entrance is through a large arched gateway with, directly facing it, a second arched doorway to the coach house, which forms the stage for the performance.\n\nMarian, Clive and most of the cast for the rehearsal scenes were already there, milling about, while the Mummers of Invention (minus Ritch, of course, who was on his way to the Caribbean) stood in one corner, running through the song for the first interval. Ophelia was wearing a knitted poncho in three shades of mud brown and it was stretched to the limit over her now enormous baby bump. Various bits of scenery and old props had been dragged out of storage and the loose boxes on either side set up as changing rooms. I knew Joe Gumball had already hung up the stiff, heavy canvas curtains in the entrance to the coach house, because Jasper and Nick had helped him, and now he was checking that the star lantern slid easily across the wire behind it.\n\nThere was a chilly wind blowing, and since the courtyard was not warmed by braziers and a massed audience, as it would be on the night, we ran through our scenes pretty briskly. Clive was reading the Voice of God today and started with Lucifer being cast out of Heaven. The silent angels, with their freshly flighted wings, trooped on and off on cue, but when Moses did his scene he interjected more than a little acerbity into his lines: his rheumatism was clearly still playing him up.\n\nI was on next, but luckily, due to the extreme cold, Clive kindly excused Adam and Eve from having to change into costume, which was a relief. I didn't know about Nick, but I was having serious doubts about the decency of my new Spandex outfit. Still, at least we were back on reasonably good terms again and from the tone of our voices you would have thought we were discussing the price of fish, not contemplating any kind of temptation.\n\nAfter that, Miss Pym and some of the parents brought the infants up from school in an orderly but excited crocodile, carrying their animal masks, to practise the Ark scene.\n\n'And all the animals came into t'ark out of the rain, and, by heck, it were pouring down,' Noah said, standing next to Mrs Noah, who was seated on a bucket. The children started to march past two by two, growling, roaring, hissing and generally sounding like a zoo at feeding time. Last of all came a solitary unicorn.\n\n'There's two of every darn thing \u2013 except t'unicorn. Yon's not going to breed on its own, Wife.'\n\n'Well,' said Mrs Noah, reluctantly looking up from her knitting, which was presumably a late Christmas present she was keen to finish, 'there's no more of 'em. Reckon that's the end o' the line for t'poor little beast. I never did see much use for it, though it's proper bonny.'\n\n'It attracts virgins, so they say,' said Noah.\n\n'Well, it's just thee and me now, chuck, so I reckon them have died out an' all,' said Mrs Noah. 'Knit one, purl two!'\n\nAfter the Ark scene we always have a break before the Nativity, so all the little animals can see Father Christmas before going home. By now Annie and Gareth had arrived together and helped Miss Pym shepherd the excited children through the arched gateway to be lined up again, sans masks, outside the front door of Pharamond Hall.\n\nThe rest of us went through the kitchens the back way to the cavernous hallway, where a log fire roared and the fairy lights flickered on the huge tree like so many weak fireflies (and I am sure they are not supposed to do that). Roly was sitting in an ancient carved chair next to it, dressed in the red, fur-edged hooded suit and black boots traditional on these occasions, and puffing at a cheroot, which was not. Over the years his wig and beard had yellowed with nicotine, so that I'm sure the scent of tobacco would forever remind successive generations of local children of Christmas.\n\nIn the shadows just behind the chair lurked Caz Naylor, the largest elf you ever saw, wearing pointed Spock ears and with his hat jammed down hard over his eyebrows, waiting to hand the presents to Father Christmas. What always surprised me was the way he could move so silently when his outfit was entirely covered in little bells. Perhaps he'd stuffed them with something?\n\nThe fire glowed in the huge hearth, and the candle bulbs in the cartwheel of evergreen foliage that was suspended from the ceiling were dimmed. The house smelled of cinnamon and burning fir cones, hot mince pies and spiced punch from the bowl on the trestle table laid out ready.\n\nFrom beyond the great oak front doors came the sound of a lot of reedy young voices belting out 'Good King Wenceslas' at the top of their lungs: distillation of pure Christmas magic, again.\n\n'Here we go,' Unks said, regretfully removing the stub of cheroot from his mouth and tossing it accurately into the fire. 'Let the little blighters in.'\n\nNick swung the door open and a tide of children rushed forward, only to be halted in their tracks by Miss Pym, who has a presence and voice that could command armies.\n\n'Stop!' she commanded.\n\n'Ho, ho, ho,' Unks said benevolently. 'Come in, one and all!'\n\nJoe Gumball activated the CD player and 'White Christmas' began to chirrup merrily in the background.\n\nThere was a gift for every child, and while Miss Pym orchestrated the queue, the adults fell on the food and drink. A few older children appeared as parents began to turn up to collect their offspring, but there was a bag of extra gifts for this contingency, so no one went away empty-handed.\n\nBy now Jasper had arrived too, and was talking very seriously to the vicar in the corner. At a rough guess, I'd say they were discussing the eating habits of Biblical folk or something like that, unless Gareth had a personal hobby horse and a stronger will than Jasper's. Annie had gravitated across to join them, and Trinny, wearing a collar of tinsel, was circling Ginny in a vaguely menacing manner, probably trying to decide which end was which.\n\nJasper picked Ginny up and Trinny immediately lost interest and wandered off under the table, where there were rich pickings in crumbs and discarded pastry. Mrs Gumball's idea of children's party food ran to miniature pork pies, tiny triangular sandwiches, and little jellies in paper cases with a blob of cream and a diamond of angelica on top of each. The hot mince pies and punch were strictly for the adults.\n\nEventually Santa announced that the reindeer were getting restless and he had to leave, which was the cue for the last of the tired but happy children to be taken home. As the final car vanished down the drive, Clive Potter firmly rounded the cast up for the final part of today's rehearsal: the Nativity, and another song or two from the Mummers.\n\nJasper had already gone home and Nick was helping Roly out of his robe, boots and wig, but the rest of us trooped out again into the growing dusk, warm, full and a bit reluctant. Marian and Kylie made for the loose box changing room to adjust her Mary costume, while our Joseph, Dave Naylor, leaned against a wall in his striped robe, smoking a cigarette.\n\n'Where's Ophelia?' Jojo asked, looking around him vaguely. 'We're supposed to be playing \"While Shepherds Watched\" before the next scene starts.'\n\n'Dunno. Haven't seen her for ages,' Mick said, then cupped his hands round his mouth and bellowed, 'Ophelia!'\n\n'That's funny,' I said. 'Now I come to think of it, I don't remember seeing her in the Hall, either. Has she gone home? I hope she's feeling all right.'\n\nCaz appeared, without his elf ears.\n\n'Caz,' I called, 'do you know where Ophelia is? Only no one seems to have see\u2014'\n\nI faltered as a piercing howl of anguish echoed from the stables we used as dressing rooms. Then Marian Potter's cropped, silvery head appeared over the half-door and she cried wildly, 'Help! Is there a doctor in the house?' before bobbing down again, more Punch and Judy than Mystery Play.\n\nUnfortunately Dr Patel had rehearsed his scenes the previous week so he wasn't present. There was a second's breathless hush, then we all rushed across the yard. Caz beat Annie and me to it, but it was a close-run thing and the others crowded up behind.\n\nInside the dimly lit stable, with no more ado than a couple of pangs and an animal urge to be alone, Ophelia had chosen to give birth, if not in the manger, certainly right next to it.\n\nShe lay pale, spent and panting slightly on the straw, her big eyelids closed, while Kylie, clearly revolted, was holding a messy and screaming baby at arm's length.\n\nIt was amazing! I'd never seen an infant that so closely resembled a fox cub, and there could be absolutely no doubt that it was Caz's.\n\n'Something to wrap him in,' Marian ordered distractedly, but Joseph was already passing his voluminous striped towelling headdress over. Caz slipped through the door, removed his child from Kylie's uncertain grasp and enfolded it in the warm material. Then he sat down on an upturned bucket. The baby, as if by magic, stopped bawling and stared up at him.\n\nGareth, who was still leaning over the half-door between Annie and me, now said slightly uncertainly, 'Bless you, my child!' like an aged bishop. Still, I don't expect this is a situation he's ever had to contend with before.\n\nClive, efficient as ever, had already trotted back to the house to tell Unks and call an ambulance. He said the horse might have bolted, but a check-up of mother and baby was clearly indicated.\n\nThere was a feeling of anticlimax about the rest of the rehearsals once Ophelia, the infant and Caz had been whisked away to hospital. Ophelia hadn't wanted to go, and Caz had almost balked at the sight of the ambulance's brightly lit and clinical interior, but Nick had reappeared by then and firmly shoved him in and closed the door.\n\n'I wonder if she's actually got anything ready in her cottage for the baby's arrival,' I mused.\n\n'Oh, yes. Dave says all the Naylors have rallied round with baby clothes and equipment,' Annie assured me.\n\n'I think their wedding had better be postponed until after the christening,' Gareth remarked thoughtfully. 'Or perhaps we can do both on the same occasion? I'll have to consult the bishop.'\n\n'If they can decide on a name,' I said. 'Star and Rambo seemed to be frontrunners last time I talked to Ophelia.'\n\nGareth gave me a doubtful smile: I expect he thought I was joking.\n\nWe rushed through the Annunciation, Nativity and Flight into Egypt at breakneck speed. Kylie was distinctly huffy, and clearly felt she had been upstaged, though Joseph, bare-headed, performed his part with perfect sang-froid.\n\nAfterwards, most of the cast set off for the New Mystery, and I bagged a lift with Gareth and Annie. Nick followed us down in the estate pick-up, with nine angels crammed in the back and Lucifer sitting beside him.\n\nWhen we got there I took our usual corner seat with Gareth and Annie, but it was only when we sat down that I realised Nick hadn't followed us but was smiling and talking with Polly Darke over near the bar. He's so tall he must have had a bird's-eye view down her cleavage: her twin prows were jutting out like the front of a catamaran.\n\nShe noticed I was watching and flashed a triumphant look in my direction as he steered her away to a darker corner, one hand under her elbow and his glossy dark head bent towards hers.\n\nMy mouth must have been hanging open, because Annie nudged me with her elbow and asked anxiously, 'Are you all right, Lizzy? You look a bit odd.'\n\n'I'm fine,' I said with an effort, 'just a bit tired, suddenly.'\n\n'Yes, me too. Where's Nick? I thought he followed us in.'\n\n'He decided to go for a bit of a tramp,' I explained.\n\n'I expect he needed some fresh air,' Gareth said vaguely, as if we hadn't already spent most of the day out in the cold, freezing our socks off.\n\n'If you don't mind, perhaps I'll just get off home, after all,' I said. 'I feel a bit tired, and there's such a crowd it'll take her ages to come for our orders anyway.'\n\n'Don't you want to wait and we'll drive you back?' asked Annie. 'We won't be long, because Trinny's in the car, and she'll get cold.'\n\n'No, that's all right,' I said, getting up. 'It's only five minutes away and Jasper will be there. I'll let you know if I hear any more about how Ophelia and the baby are doing.'\n\nOn my way out I sneaked a glance at the corner where Nick and Polly were still sitting, their heads close together.\n\n'Come on, Mum, obviously he's doing it for a reason,' Jasper said, when I told him about Nick's betrayal \u2013 which I did about five seconds after arriving home. It was that or burst.\n\n'Oh, yes, I could see that,' I said shortly. Ginny, not liking the tone of my voice, ran her teeth thoughtfully up and down my ankle.\n\n'No, Mum, I meant it must be part of some plan he has, because he said he would deal with her, don't you remember?'\n\n'Then he's going about it in a strange way! And if you're right, why didn't he tell me what he was going to do?'\n\n'You kept everything a secret from him, didn't you? He only found out from Caz and Leila what was going on. And I expect if he'd told you, your reaction when you saw them together wouldn't have looked half as authentic. Now she'll think she's putting one over on you.'\n\n'Maybe she is: he wouldn't be the first man unable to see past a pair of pneumatic boobs.'\n\n'Not Uncle Nick,' he said stoutly. 'Really, Mum, you can't possibly believe that \u2013 she's a complete dog.'\n\n'Bitch,' I said, absently, because I was wondering if he could be right. Then I realised what he'd said. 'That was a bit rude, Jasper!'\n\n'I suppose it was \u2013 but I only meant that she's no competition, so you don't need to worry about Uncle Nick falling for her.'\n\n'I'm not worried in the least, he can fall for anyone he likes,' I assured him, then rather spoiled the effect by adding, 'but while we're speaking of bitches, Jasper, do you think you could teach yours not to nip my ankles?'\n\n'She's just being friendly,' he said fondly, bending down and giving her a pat. 'By the way, Unks rang and told me about the nativity at the Nativity \u2013 sorry I missed it!'\n\n'Just don't expect a repeat performance on Boxing Day,' I warned him. 'I think we'd all better stick to the script from now on.'\n\n## Chapter 31: Middlemoss Marchpane\n\nI just made a chocolate, fruit and nut Christmas wreath, by packing melted chocolate mixed with puffed rice breakfast cereal into a ring mould, then studding the surface with whole nuts of various kinds, crystallised cherries and other candied fruits, glued on by half-dipping them in more melted chocolate. I'm going to have it as our table centrepiece on Christmas Eve, with a red candle in the middle.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nWord had it that Ophelia discharged herself from hospital almost as soon as she had been checked over, but the Naylor clan were rallying round.\n\nI spent the next couple of days doing Christmas baking, including the fine ham that Roly had sent down for me (he does this every year), and making a big trifle and a Middlemoss Marchpane.\n\nI put the recipe for the latter, with one or two small adjustments, into Just Desserts. I was going to save it to take up to the Hall with us on Christmas Eve, for we always went to listen to the carol singers, whose first call it traditionally always was. But then Jasper's friend Stu came over to stay the night and they demolished it, so I had to set to and make another.\n\nI drove up to the Hall, since as well as the Marchpane I had my contribution to tomorrow's Christmas dinner with me: a vat of mulligatawny soup and the giant round Christmas pudding. There was also a box of presents to put under the tree, most of them home-made and edible.\n\nWe've always had Christmas dinner up at the Hall: Mrs Gumball would go in early to cook breakfast and put the goose into the oven, then I would finish the cooking and serve it. But this year Nick was here, so apart from my soup and pudding contributions (and some brandy butter ice cream I'd got from Faye), he was doing it solo. He'd have to, because after my previous experience as chef's skivvy, I'd no intention of ever letting myself in for that again.\n\nIn fact, I was now trying to avoid him altogether, since every time I looked at him a nasty picture of his and Polly's heads, flirtatiously close together, slid into my mind. I might have agreed with Jasper that it was all just a cunning ploy to get information out of her, but I wasn't a hundred per cent convinced...\n\nJoining in with the carol singers round a roaring fire up at the Hall always seemed a significant moment and by the time they'd all trooped off again, full of sherry and mince pies, I felt as full of anticipation as a child.\n\nBack home once more, we had our usual Christmas Eve supper of thick slices of the Christmas ham with egg and chips, followed by first go at the big sherry trifle I'd made. Then we watched an old film in the sitting room on Jasper's little TV, which he'd brought back with him, along with all his other stuff. He'd fixed the kitchen one, too, by the simple expedient of changing the plug.\n\nJasper's stocking, which had been knitted for him by Annie when he was a toddler, hung next to Ginny's at one end of the mantelpiece. Mother Claus would fill it and hook it over the handle of his bedroom door later, as she always did... and I suspect she'd better hang Ginny's there too, or there would be trouble.\n\nThere was quite a heap of gifts under our tree. I couldn't resist fingering the ones from the family we had brought back with us, but of course I couldn't open them until next day, or it would spoil the surprise...\n\nWe had an orgy of unwrapping next morning while Ginny chewed noisily on a rawhide version of a candy cane and, although I'm sure we both thought of Tom while dividing up the presents into two piles, rather than three, neither of us mentioned his name. He'd hardly been around much for the last four or five years anyway, spending as little time in our company as possible, so the spirit of Christmas past didn't really haunt us, even if we were briefly saddened by the ghost of what might have been.\n\nJasper gave me a pen, the kind with liquid inside that you tilted so an Egyptian sarcophagus lid slid open to reveal a mummy's mask. There was a mummy-shaped biscuit tin too, so he'd obviously found a good museum shop somewhere. I had soaps, bath oils and gardener's handcream from Mimi and Juno, an antique-looking ring from Roly \u2013 and a new postcard album, bound in soft blue leather, from Nick. He must have noticed my old one was full up to overflowing...and he must also intend sending me a lot more, too, so I expected I was right about him soon tiring of staying in one place and he'd soon be off on his travels again.\n\nJasper retired to his room, wearing the long Dr Who scarf Annie had knitted for him, to have a private conversation on his mobile phone with his girlfriend \u2013 about whom I still know practically nothing, except that her name is Kelly \u2013 while I tidied up the discarded wrapping paper and ribbons.\n\nThen I put on my new slinky green dress (why should all the honours go to Polly?) and we went up to the Hall for Christmas dinner.\n\nAnnie and Gareth had been invited too, and it all felt a bit like d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu after the photoshoot one, except we actually got to eat the food, and Lionel Cripchet didn't burst in and start going on about squirrels. And Jasper was there too... and Ginny, who was sick behind the door from Mimi feeding her too many titbits, so that was different from last time.\n\nI was wearing the old and valuable-looking ring that had been Unks' gift to me, but with the large, oval emerald turned inwards so it didn't catch the light. I felt increasingly sure it was a family heirloom, in which case I really had no right to it. So, as soon as I got the chance for a quiet word, while we were going into the drawing room for coffee, I asked him if he was sure I should have it.\n\n'Yes, my dear, it's quite fitting,' he assured me. 'Don't you like it? Would you have preferred a modern one?'\n\n'Oh, no, I love it! Only I'm sure I've seen it in one of the portraits in the gallery, so it must be a family piece.'\n\n'It's the betroth\u2014' began Mimi, who'd caught up with us, spotting it for the first time, but a glance from Unks silenced her and she wandered off again with a giggle.\n\n'I want you to have it,' Roly said firmly. 'Humour an old man, m'dear?'\n\nI thanked him, but thought that the first opportunity I got I'd check out the portraits in the gallery and see if I could spot it, because if I was right, Nick might not be so happy about having part of his inheritance given away. Meanwhile, I'd have to remember not to wear it when gardening, or it would go the way of my wedding ring, back into the earth, never to be seen again.\n\n## Chapter 32: Hoar Frost\n\nThe annual Middlemoss Mystery Play on Boxing Day marks the end of the old year and the start of the new and I expect the Mystery Play replaced some much older, pagan ritual that would have taken place at about the same time.\n\nThe Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes\n\nThey say the sun shines on the godly, and certainly just as I arrived there on the morning of the Mystery Play with Jasper a weak, golden light began to spread over the courtyard of Pharamond Hall.\n\nThe farmers had cleared the local roads of the last fall of snow and, though icy in places, they were passable with care. In any case, many of the audience preferred to walk there.\n\nThe Mosses Women's Institute was setting up the refreshment stand near the kitchen door (the money raised goes to local charities), and I handed over my contribution of ginger parkin, fruitcake and bags of vanilla candyfloss. I managed to restrain myself from suggesting they make themselves Santa beards out of it, because this is quite a serious occasion, really.\n\nJasper went off to help Caz and Joe Gumball with the myriad last-minute jobs: lighting the charcoal braziers that were set around the courtyard, testing the microphone in Unks' little striped tent, from where he would speak as Voice of God, and moving scenery. I stored my Eve costume, wig and figleaves (which are threaded onto elastic, so they are quick and easy to put on for the Expulsion) in one of the loose boxes used for changing rooms: men to the left of the coach house, women to the right.\n\nWhen I came out again the audience had started to arrive, bearing picnics, folding chairs and rugs, and Jojo and Mick were warming their hands at one of the charcoal braziers. I hadn't thought how depleted the Mummers would be, since Ritch was still away basking in the Caribbean, and Ophelia, of course, had just given birth; but when I spoke to them they told me that actually Ophelia and the baby were in the kitchen with Mrs Gumball, who would mind the infant while she popped out and performed as usual.\n\n'Is that a good idea, so soon?' I asked doubtfully.\n\n'Yeah, she's fine, she wants to do it,' Jojo assured me, but I imagine the poor girl's performance will be even limper than usual.\n\n'Have they decided on a name for the baby yet?'\n\n'Sylvester Star, according to Ophelia,' Mick said, 'but I heard Caz Naylor calling it Sly.'\n\n'That's got to be better than Rambo, though,' I said, and they agreed.\n\nAlthough there was an old outside toilet behind the stables (Victorian vintage, with shiny mahogany seating), in recent years Roly has also arranged for a portable toilet block to be set up next to it, which saves much queuing during the breaks. I sensibly repaired there before putting on my Eve costume under my clothes: it would certainly be impossible to go again in that outfit. Makes you wonder how Spiderman and other superheroes manage, doesn't it?\n\nThe Spandex felt odd under my jeans, but quite warm. I left my wig hanging on the post outside the loosebox, together with my figleaves, and went outside again. The courtyard was now quite full and noisy, and the WI ladies were doing a roaring trade in hot drinks. The air was cold and smelled of spices and roasting chestnuts \u2013 or, if you suddenly and unexpectedly found yourself in the vicinity of Polly Darke and her little circle of friends, as I did, civet cats.\n\n'You've been making candyfloss again, I see,' Nick said, doing his silently materialising act right next to me.\n\n'I call it Hoar Frost and I'm dedicating the recipe to Polly,' I said tartly. 'What is she doing here? And why hasn't anyone run her off the premises?'\n\n'She's here because I invited her specially and told her it just wouldn't be the same without her,' he said, with an enigmatic smile. 'I suppose you feel much the same about Ritch Rainford. Poor Lizzy \u2013 didn't he invite you to go to the Caribbean with him?'\n\nI felt myself blush, because actually Ritch had, though I knew he was only flirting, as usual.\n\n'Yes,' I said shortly and ambiguously. 'It's a pity he isn't here for the play,' I added, fingering my sparkling little snowman brooch rather ostentatiously. 'Several of the other Cotton Common cast members are, though I don't know if they'll have the stamina to stay for the whole thing.'\n\nNick's hand captured mine and he stared at the ring on my finger. 'I didn't get a good look at that last night,' he said thoughtfully. The flat green stone gleamed with restrained opulence in its heavy, antique gold setting.\n\n'I hope you don't mind Unks giving it to me? I suspect it's a family heirloom, but I did ask him if he was sure he wanted me to have it.'\n\n'Well, then, I suppose you could say he's given you the family seal of approval,' he said blandly. 'And look, he's arrived, so we must be about to start. Who's that with him?'\n\n'Delphine Lake, one of the actresses in Cotton Common.'\n\nPretty as a picture from silver curls to tiny, pointed blue shoes, Delphine had somehow managed to insinuate herself into Roly's royal pavilion, but then, he always did have an eye for an attractive woman. There was just enough room for another folding canvas chair, and their heads were close together in earnest conversation.\n\nClive Potter came out and stood in front of the canvas curtains, holding up his hands for silence, and then bid everyone welcome to the Middlemoss Mysteries.\n\n'Now let our play begin!' he said dramatically, bowed and walked off.\n\nA small silence ensued, then there was a squeak as Nick leaned in and switched on Unks' microphone before his voice could be heard, confiding to Delphine, '... and then blow me if it didn't pick itself up at the fifth, overtake the field and gallop home by a head!'\n\n'Voice of God!' Nick whispered urgently.\n\n'Ah, yes \u2013 excuse me, my dear...' There was a rustling noise, as of paper being picked up. 'I AM GOD, THE ALL-POWERFUL, ALL-KNOWING,' he declaimed loudly, then lowering his voice to a more normal level, continued, 'Listen to my words \u2013 take heed of the mysteries that will unfold before your dazzled eyes.'\n\nThe curtain was pulled back to reveal Lucifer and nine angels against a gilded cloudy backdrop and the Mysteries were well and truly up and running. (Or bicycling, as would be the case during Mary and Joseph's journey to Bethlehem and subsequent flight into Egypt.)\n\nVarious interesting noise effects accompanied God's description of the Creation, which I could hear as I shrugged off my clothes in the changing room and concealed as much of myself as possible with the long, blond wig.\n\nThen we were on.\n\nIf you've ever tried to remember your lines while inches away from a tall and attractive man dressed in little more than ballet tights, you'll understand why I found it hard to keep my eyes on the apple. He was carrying a small sheaf of hay, which may have preserved his modesty from the audience, but was not much help to me. I expect ballerinas quickly get blas\u00e9 about this kind of thing.\n\nOf course, it might have helped if he'd stuck to the text when I offered him the apple, like he's done at all the recent rehearsals, instead of soulfully telling the audience in the most hammy way that I'd already had his heart and he didn't think a piece of fruit was much of an exchange.\n\nThey loved it, but I was tempted to elope with the snake.\n\nThen he took a bite, tossed it over his shoulder into the wings and led me offstage to cover my modesty with figleaves.\n\n'Nice costume,' he said, casting away his sheaf of hay and adjusting his figleaves like a hula skirt. The effect was interesting. 'Need any help with yours?'\n\n'No, thanks,' I said primly. Whoever plays Eve next year will need new elastic: the twang had quite gone out of mine.\n\nWe quickly took our places behind the painted bushes and the Voice of God demanded why we had eaten the forbidden fruit? I only wished I knew.\n\n'The woman tempted me,' Nick said, passing the buck, just as men have done from time immemorial, and we were expelled from Eden.\n\nThe curtain came down and the Mummers began to play something lilting while the scene was changed for Noah's Ark.\n\nNick dashed off for his changing room and I headed for my own warm outfit, shivering. I quickly dressed and then went out into the courtyard through the back doorway, avoiding the scurrying animal-headed infants and a harassed-looking Miss Pym.\n\nNick was already in the courtyard, talking to Polly. I elected to watch Noah's Flood from the other side, with Annie and Gareth.\n\n'What's Polly doing here?' Annie whispered to me worriedly, when Gareth had kindly gone to get me a hot drink (I was still freezing). 'And why is Nick chatting to her like that, and laughing and... well, flirting?'\n\n'Search me! He said he'd invited her, so perhaps he's fallen prey to her fatal beauty.'\n\n'No, I'm sure he hasn't, because he was flirting with you in the Adam and Eve scene, Lizzy, and he couldn't take his eyes off you! He must have an ulterior motive for making up to Polly.'\n\n'That's what Jasper says,' I agreed grudgingly, 'but I think he seems to be enjoying himself too much.'\n\nThe curtains closed on Noah's Ark and the animals, and then reopened revealing a tetchy-looking Moses seated on a mountain.\n\n'Here are my commandments, writ on tablets of stone,' said the Voice of God.\n\n'Could thee not find something lighter? I'm no spring chicken, that knows!' grumbled Moses.\n\n'There are ten of them \u2013 see thee obey the rules,' ordered God, while Moses hobbled about collecting them up in his teatowel headscarf.\n\n'I'll give it me best shot, Lord, and I can't say fairer than that.'\n\nIgnoring this sally, God ran briskly down the list then demanded finally, 'Dost thou understand?'\n\n'Yea, Lord,' Moses said obediently, though with an evil look in his rheumy blue eyes. 'I'm not deaf, tha knows! I'm going back down t'mountain as fast as me legs can carry me, and I'll be straight on t'case. Idol worshipping and other ungodly goings-on will be reet out t'window.'\n\n'Good, good \u2013 for I see everything, you know, I am omnipresent,' God added conversationally.\n\nThen the mike squeaked and his voice suddenly boomed, 'IN FACT, POLLY DARKE, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER! I KNOW IT WAS YOU WHO LOOSENED THE WHEEL NUTS ON LIZZY PHARAMOND'S CAR, CAUSING THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND.'\n\nEveryone, including me and a flummoxed Moses, turned to stare at Polly Darke. Nick let go of her arm and stepped away, but I could see from his face that this was no surprise to him: God's accusation had been prearranged.\n\nShe found herself the centre of a staring, whispering circle of shocked faces: even her friends were wide-eyed.\n\n'Polly did?' I exclaimed. 'But\u2014'\n\n'No, no, I didn't!' Polly yelped, looking from face to face for some sympathy. 'Why on earth would I do that? I loved him!'\n\n'Because you expected Lizzy to drive the car, not Tom,' Nick said clearly and coldly. 'It was just one of a series of little spiteful accidents you arranged for her, because you were eaten up with jealousy.'\n\n'No! No, I didn't! I haven't\u2014'\n\n'Good heavens! Surely she wouldn't do something so evil?' gasped Annie, shocked to her soft-centred core, and Gareth put his arm around her consolingly. I wished someone would put their arm around me: I was shaking even more now, and not from the cold.\n\nI didn't notice PC Perkins and her youthful associate until she was actually putting handcuffs on Polly, just like in a film, and saying clear enough for everyone to hear, 'Polly Darke, you are under arrest...' and proceeding to give her the official caution.\n\nPolly stared around like a hunted animal, but there was no escape: I could see the flashing lights of police cars beyond the archway, and other officers. Then her eyes fixed on me.\n\n'It was her \u2013 her!' she cried. 'I've said so all along... you've no proof!'\n\n'It was not!' boomed God into his microphone. 'And there was a witness to your wrongdoing.'\n\n'That's right,' Caz agreed loudly from the shadows. 'I seen her doing it.'\n\n'EVIL WOMAN, BEGONE!' God added, with finality. I think the excitement of the moment had quite rushed to his head.\n\nThere was a buzz of excitement as she was escorted out and we all listened until the scrunch of gravel under tyres vanished into the distance.\n\nI was struggling to take it all in, but when I saw Nick talking to Caz, I suddenly realised who must have hidden the wheel brace with Polly's fingerprints on it among my gardening tools, and then tipped off the police!\n\nWould Polly have had the strength, once Jasper had tightened the nuts, I wondered \u2013 then remembered what Ritch and Dora Tombs had said about her working out. And really, anyone can change a wheel with one of those cross-brace things, it's not that difficult.\n\nBut it had been my car, me she wanted to hurt, not Tom. Not kill me \u2013 none of her little tricks had been intended to go quite that far; though I expect she would have looked on my death as a bonus.\n\nAnd in the end Caz must have told Nick everything he knew, and so they had set this very public accounting up \u2013 as revenge? I didn't suppose Polly could be charged with anything terribly serious.\n\nThe courtyard was still buzzing, but then Moses suddenly awoke as if from a trance, and banged his shepherd's crook on the floor a couple of times to regain the audience's attention.\n\nSlowly they quietened and turned back to the stage.\n\n'If that's all, Lord, I'll be getting off, then,' Moses said, back to the script.\n\n'Aye, go with my blessing upon you,' God said, sounding exhausted, and invisible hands began to draw the canvas curtains across the front of the arched doorway.\n\n'A hot rum toddy, that's what I need,' Roly added, forgetting to switch off the microphone. 'Delphine, my dear, you'll join me, won't you? There's a short break before the next acts for refreshments, and I'm sure we all need them.'\n\nJojo and Mick picked up their instruments and began to play, and Ophelia, looking harassed and frightened, ran out of the house, fiddle in hand.\n\nNick forged his way through the crowd and handed me a plastic tumbler of hot toddy, which I took automatically and drained in one: I needed it.\n\n'Well,' he said thoughtfully, 'I don't know how we'll be able to follow that next year.'\n\nI turned on him accusingly. 'You knew that was going to happen \u2013 you, Caz and Uncle Roly set that up. How long have you known it was Polly who sabotaged the car?'\n\n'Not long at all. I thought that, at least, was an accident, until Caz told me what he'd seen. He'd been watching from the woods that day and saw Polly come out of Tom's workshop and look at the car, then pick up the wheel brace (which Jasper must have left leaning against the wall, by the way) and start unscrewing the nuts \u2013 by sheer coincidence on the same wheel you'd changed earlier. Then she put the wheel brace back where she found it and left. Caz was going to go down and see what she'd been up to when the coast was clear, but Tom drove off in your car before he had the chance. So Caz wrapped the wheel brace in sacking and put it behind the freezer you let him use.'\n\n'Why? And why didn't he say anything?'\n\nHe shrugged. 'Well, you know Caz. He said he thought at first it was something to do with ARG and he didn't want to get Ophelia into trouble. It was before he knew that Polly wasn't a member of the group, just forcing Ophelia to target you.'\n\n'He's not keen on the police anyway. But he confided in you.'\n\n'Yes, he finally told me the whole thing, because he was so angry that Polly was prepared to harm Ophelia, even when she was pregnant. I negotiated with the police and they're going to forget that Ophelia was ever a member of ARG in return for Caz's statement.'\n\nHe seemed to feel this was worthy of praise, for he paused expectantly.\n\n'Oh, well done, Nick!' Annie, who had been listening admiringly, exclaimed. 'You are clever!'\n\nI gave her a withering look. 'I think you might have let me in on what was happening, Nick!'\n\n'Why? You didn't tell me anything! I found it all out for myself.'\n\n'Yes, but Lizzy was upset when you were flirting with Polly, Nick,' Annie said traitorously.\n\n'No I wasn't!' I exclaimed indignantly. 'I\u2014'\n\n'Ssh... afterwards,' Nick said, a gleam in his slaty dark eyes, 'they're starting again.'\n\nI gave him a glare and moved away, avoiding him for the rest of the entertainment, which isn't easy when you're enclosed in a small courtyard. I can't say my mind was completely on the play either \u2013 or even on the refreshments, which just goes to show how churned-up and confused I felt.\n\nBut eventually I began to be caught up in the Mysteries again, just as I was every year.\n\nKylie was a subdued and modest Mary, with only one or two wisps of violently pink hair escaping from her hooded robe, and her fingernails unpainted. The huge rock that sparkled in the muted light on her engagement finger was not quite in role, though: Kylie had clearly got her man.\n\nThere were the usual moments of light relief during the Miracles: it didn't matter that the audience had heard the lines before.\n\n'Get up, thou great lazy lummock,' Jesus told the Lame Man forthrightly. 'Pick up thy pallet and walk.'\n\n'I'll be reet glad to, lad, 'tis no life for a man, this. What did tha say thy name wor?' asked the Lame Man, getting up.\n\n'Jesus of Nazareth.'\n\n'Is that ower near Burnley?'\n\n'Nay,' said Jesus, moving on to the next supplicant. 'What's t'matter wi' him?' he asked one of the disciples.\n\n'He can't see owt, master.'\n\n'That's reet,' agreed the Blind Man. 'But I believe thee can cure me and so my friends hath brought me here.'\n\n'I'll touch thy eyes, and if thee believe, then thee will see. How many fingers am I holding up?'\n\n'All of 'em, Lord.'\n\nThe audience cheered, then sobered for the final darker scenes before the second interval. But once the curtain was drawn across the crucifixion scene (excellently performed by Gary Naylor) the holiday spirit returned and everyone headed for the refreshments to fortify themselves for the resurrection and the grand finale.\n\n## Chapter 33: Well Stirred\n\n'We're happy, Lord, to see thee again,' Faye said stolidly, in her role as Mary Magdalen. 'Thee said that thee would come back and thou were right. Wilt thou stay awhile?'\n\n'Nay, I must get home to my Heavenly Father.'\n\n'Well, I reckon he'll be reet glad t'see thee, and thou art done thy bit for mankind.'\n\n'My father hath many mansions, Mary, and all who believe in him will be welcome in t'Kingdom of Heaven.'\n\n'That'll be proper champion, that will,' Mary said gratefully.\n\n'I'll be off then,' Jesus said, suiting the action to the words, and Mary followed him behind the drawn curtain.\n\nAn angel appeared, the new white goose-feather patches on his wings glistening, and stood with one hand cupped to his ear, as if listening intently.\n\n'Here is my judgement, and the pure of heart need fear nowt,' said Roly as Voice of God, refreshed and speeding up considerably now the finishing post was in sight.\n\n'What is thy wish, Lord?' asked the angel.\n\n'That retribution shall visit the wrongdoers.'\n\n'Lord, it shall be done.'\n\n'Let it be so, for as the old year dies, another, Lazarus-like, rises anew. Our play is played out, our Mysteries unfolded,' said God.\n\nThe angel, who'd been gazing vaguely up into the rafters, now turned to look directly at the audience and said weightily, 'Look into t'mirror of thy heart and, if thou like not what thou see, then freshly start again, fer Christ died fer thee.'\n\nGod, as always, got the last word. 'Heed my commandments. Keep thy conscience clear. Remember, I'll see thee agin, this time next year!'\n\nGoing by the wild applause it was certainly another Middlemoss Mystery success, but more than one mystery had been enacted, revealed and resolved today. It had been a cathartic and exhausting experience, and the audience was subdued as they slowly began to leave, while I felt like a well-wrung-out dishrag.\n\n'Everyone involved in organising the play has been invited to the house for a hot toddy before we go home,' Annie said, taking my arm and giving it a squeeze. 'You're coming too, aren't you, Lizzy? Look, there's Jasper going in. And I want to know all the details about Polly, too \u2013 did you really not know any of that was going to happen?'\n\n'No, of course I didn't!' I snapped, finding myself being swept through the kitchen and along the passage to the Great Hall, where the steaming silver punch bowl and a tray of sandwiches were laid out before a blazing log fire. 'I'd have told you.'\n\nRoly beckoned me across to where he was sitting with Delphine. 'Well, my dear,' he said, 'that seems to have worked out for the best, doesn't it? Justice for poor Tom has been served, and everything is sorted out satisfactorily.'\n\n'Is it?' I said, slightly sourly.\n\n'You were very good as Eve,' Delphine said kindly. 'Quite beautiful in that costume.'\n\n'Yes, you're much better with Nick as Adam,' agreed Roly. 'But if he isn't playing it next year, he can take over as Voice of God.'\n\n'That was Lizzy's last turn in the role, wasn't it?' Nick said, having come up behind me unobserved. 'I'm not playing Adam to anyone else's Eve.'\n\nRoly looked from one to the other of us and, beaming, took our hands and clasped them together in his. (Theatricality also runs in the Pharamond bloodline.) 'Let it be a New Year, a new beginning for both of you!' he said sentimentally.\n\n'I don't know what you mean, Unks,' I said, trying and failing to loosen my hand from Nick's strong grip. 'And I'm afraid I'll have to be going home now. Jasper?'\n\n'I'm going out again, to help clear up,' Jasper said quickly. 'I'll see you later.'\n\n'I'll walk you home, Lizzy,' Nick said, 'but first there's something I want to show you.'\n\nI couldn't imagine what he'd got that I hadn't already seen. But I let him lead me upstairs to the long gallery, switching on the wall lights as we went. He came to a stop in front of the portrait of an eighteenth-century Pharamond bride, who posed with one slender hand resting on a book \u2013 and on her finger, my ring. I just knew it was an old family piece.\n\n'There \u2013 you see?' he said.\n\n'Nick, I can't possibly keep a family heirloom, whatever Unks says. Please take it back!' I protested, tugging it off my finger and handing it to him. He accepted it, then calmly took hold of my other hand and shoved it over the knuckle of my ring finger instead.\n\n'What on earth are you doing?' I said, trying to pull away.\n\n'It's the betrothal ring of the Pharamonds.'\n\n'I dare say it is, but we're not betrothed\u2014'\n\n'I think we are, and Unks thinks we are \u2013 so you're outnumbered. Just as well he would never let Leila have the ring, because I'd never have got it back.'\n\nI glared at him. 'This isn't the Middle Ages, so I do have a say in all this, Nick Pharamond \u2013 and I'm not engaged to you! You are an underhand, devious\u2014'\n\n'Yes, I know,' he said soothingly, pulling me close, 'but I do love you. I think, deep down, I always did.'\n\n'You have a damned strange way of showing it!'\n\n'There wasn't much point, when we were both married to other people... but the postcards showed I was always thinking of you. I never wanted quite to let go of you. And you kept them all.'\n\n'Only for the recipes,' I said quickly, fighting a rear-guard action, for close proximity was scrambling my brain cells and weakening my knees, just as it so disastrously had on Bonfire Night. 'Besides, we argue all the time and you despise my cooking!'\n\n'No I don't, I just like to wind you up. You should know that by now.'\n\n'You think your cooking is more important than I am!' I accused him.\n\nHe grinned. 'No, I think it's a pretty even match, actually. I don't see why I can't have my cake and eat it.'\n\n'I do. And anyway, we're just too different \u2013 it'd never work,' I said firmly, then ruined the effect by smiling back at him.\n\n'If mayonnaise works, I don't see why mixing the two of us together shouldn't \u2013 if we do it slowly and very carefully.' His lips moved over my face and then lingered on my mouth before I could point out that curdled mayonnaise was a lot easier to rescue than a curdled marriage.\n\nOh, hot chilli chocolate sauce! I thought, but more in resignation than revolt. He was the one who broke that clinch: I couldn't have, even if you'd waved a giant Mars bar in front of me.\n\n'And I've had a great idea! Once you've finished Just Desserts, we'll collaborate on a joint recipe book of all the postcards. We'll call it A Feast of Romance,' he added soulfully.\n\nI laughed. Senga was going to absolutely love it \u2013 and him. 'That is a totally corny idea! And what's more, I'm not cooking anything with you, because I always end up doing all the donkey wo\u2014'\n\nI stopped dead as I spotted Caz silently slinking out of the dark shadows at the end of the gallery. Downstairs someone had turned up the music so that the heavenly sound of a choir singing Silent Night drifted down the long, dark gallery, while over our heads a mistletoe ball rotated in the slight draught from the open door. Caz jerked his head back in the direction of the stairs. 'Mr Roly says t'champagne's open. You two done, yet?'\n\n'Rising nicely,' Nick said, glancing up at the mistletoe ball thoughtfully, then reaching for me again.\n\n'Half-baked!' I amended, giving him a quelling look. 'Caz, tell him we'll be down in a minute \u2013 and perhaps you ought to cork up the champagne again, because there are just a few rules of engagement I need to thrash out first, before I even consider this insane idea.'\n\n'Like what?' Nick asked suspiciously.\n\n'Separate kitchens,' I said, smiling sweetly. 'And that's just for starters!'\nLoved the seasonal treats in this book?\n\nThen why not try and make them yourself?\n1) Mincemeat Flapjacks\n\nThese are very easy to make!\n\nIngredients:\n\n4 oz butter\n\n2 tablespoons of golden syrup\n\n2 oz Demerara sugar (or a soft, dark brown sugar, if you want a slightly 'treacly' taste)\n\n5 heaped tablespoons of mincemeat, either bought or home-made\n\n5 oz rolled oats\n\nMethod:\n\nPreheat oven to gas mark 3, 160\u00b0C, 325\u00b0F and grease a seven-inch baking tin. If using a cake tin instead, then I would line the base with baking paper, too.\n\nMelt together the sugar and syrup in a pan over a low heat, then stir in the mincemeat and, once warmed through, the oats.\n\nRemove from heat and mix well, then spoon into the baking tin and spread it out, flattening the top.\n\nPut into the oven for about half an hour: it should be slightly golden brown. Remove and leave to cool for fifteen minutes before marking into squares or slices.\n\nWhen cool, store in an airtight container.\n\n2) Christmas Mincemeat Spudge  \n(Mashed potato fudge)\n\nIngredients:\n\n5 oz of mashed potato\n\n1 oz butter\n\n1 lb icing sugar (and some extra, in case it is needed)\n\n4 tablespoons mincemeat, either bought or home-made\n\nA few drops of almond essence\n\nMethod:\n\nGrease a small baking tray or pie dish.\n\nMash the potato with the butter and, while still warm, stir in the icing sugar. When smooth, mix in the mincemeat and the almond essence to taste.\n\nDepending on the runniness of the mincemeat used, you may need to add extra icing sugar \u2013 you are aiming for a very stiff consistency that has to be spread into the tray. (The first time I tried this variation I didn't put quite enough sugar in, so it didn't set hard, but it made a lovely fudge topping for vanilla ice cream!)\n\nWhen cold it will be firm and can be cut into pieces and stored in an airtight box in the fridge.\n\nVariations:\n\nYou can make plain Spudge by omitting the mincemeat. Instead try adding vanilla essence and\/or two tablespoons of de siccated coconut. When cold, cover with a layer of melted chocolate.\n\n## Forget the Jimmy Choos, Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues is the only accessory you need for spring 2012...\n\nWhen eccentric Tansy Poole suddenly finds herself the newest proprietor of Bright's Shoes, a run-down shoe shop tucked away in the idyllic Lancashire village of Sticklepond, she is inspired to take the business in a new direction. And soon, Cinderella's Slippers opens to the public-promising to provide the footwear to make any fairytale wedding come true.\n\nStocking everything a bride would want to walk down the aisle in, from exquisite satin pumps to quirky vertiginous heels, Tansy's shop soon expands to carry shoe-shaped wedding favours, bridesmaid gifts and even sumptuous artisan chocolate shoes. It's the dream destination for anyone who loves shoes!\n\nIf only everything in her personal life could be as fulfilling \u2013 but with a fianc\u00e9 unwilling to name the day until she fits into a size 8 wedding dress, not to mention disturbing family revelations having recently come to light, Tansy takes refuge in making Cinderella's Slippers a success. Her hard work pays off when word of mouth attracts customers from far and wide.\n\nBut one man isn't thrilled by the stream of eager shoe lovers thronging to Cinderella's Slippers... Shakespearian actor Ivo Hawksley, resident of the cottage next to the shop, is troubled by a dark secret in his past and has come to Sticklepond to nurse his own broken heart, not have his peace shattered by the trill of 'Here comes the bride' every time the shop door opens!\n\nHowever, Ivo is shaken by the realisation that he and Tansy have a link in their past and soon, they both find out how secrets shared can make a very strong bond indeed...\n\nDon't miss the brand new book from The Queen of Yummy Lit, guaranteed to put a spring in your step.\n\nChocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues \u2013 due to be published by Avon spring 2012\n\nISBN \u2013 978-1-84756-277-7\n\n## TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS\n\n## Trisha Ashley\n\nChristmas is coming...\n\nChristmas has always been a sad time for young widow Holly Brown, so when she's asked to look after a remote house on the Lancashire moors, the opportunity to hide herself away is irresistible \u2013 the perfect excuse to forget about the festivities.\n\nSculptor, Jude Martland, is determined that this year there will be no Christmas after his brother runs off with his fianc\u00e9e and he is keen to avoid the family home. However, he will have to return by the twelfth night of the festivities, when the hamlet of Little Mumming hold their historic festivities and all of his family are required to attend.\n\nMeanwhile, Holly is finding that if she wants to avoid Christmas, she has come to the wrong place. When Jude un expectedly returns on Christmas Eve he is far from delighted to discover that Holly seems to be holding the very family party he had hoped to avoid.\n\nSuddenly, the blizzards come out of nowhere and the whole village is snowed in. With no escape, Holly and Jude get much more than they bargained for \u2013 it looks like the twelve days of Christmas are going to be very interesting indeed!\n\nISBN: 978-1-84756-115-2\n\nOut now.\n\n## About the Author\n\nTrisha lives in beautiful North Wales, together with the neurotic Border Collie recently foisted onto her by her student son and an equally neurotic but also vain, bad-tempered and chancy Muse. Her previous book, Twelve Days of Christmas, was a Sunday Times bestseller in 2010.\n\nVisit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.\n\nPlease visit Trisha's Facebook fan page for exclusive recipes, quizzes and regular updates from Trishaworld!\n\n## Other Books by the same author:\n\nSowing Secrets\n\nA Winter's Tale\n\nWedding Tiers\n\nChocolate Wishes\n\nTwelve Days of Christmas\n\n## Copyright\n\nThis novel is entirely a work of fiction.  \nThe names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.\n\nAVON\n\nA division of HarperCollinsPublishers  \n77\u201385 Fulham Palace Road,  \nLondon W6 8JB\n\nwww.harpercollins.co.uk\n\nFirst published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011\n\nTHE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS. Copyright \u00a9 Trisha Ashley 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.\n\nTrisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work\n\nA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library\n\nISBN-13: 978-1-84756-116-9\n\nEPub Edition \u00a9 AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 978-1-84756-301-9\nAbout the Publisher\n\nAustralia\n\nHarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.\n\nLevel 13, 201 Elizabeth Street\n\nSydney, NSW 2000, Australia\n\n<http:\/\/www.harpercollins.com.au>\n\nCanada\n\nHarperCollins Canada\n\n2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor\n\nToronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada\n\nhttp:\/\/www.harpercollins.ca\n\nNew Zealand\n\nHarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited\n\nP.O. Box 1\n\nAuckland, New Zealand\n\nhttp:\/\/www.harpercollins.co.nz\n\nUnited Kingdom\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Ltd.\n\n77-85 Fulham Palace Road\n\nLondon, W6 8JB, UK\n\nhttp:\/\/www.harpercollins.co.uk\n\nUnited States\n\nHarperCollins Publishers Inc.\n\n10 East 53rd Street\n\nNew York, NY 10022\n\nhttp:\/\/www.harpercollins.com\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nBegin Reading\n\nTable of Contents\n\nAbout the Author\n\nPhotos\n\nCopyright Page\n\nThank you for buying this\n\nFarrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.\n\nTo receive special offers, bonus content,\n\nand info on new releases and other great reads,\n\nsign up for our newsletters.\n\nOr visit us online at\n\nus.macmillan.com\/newslettersignup\n\nFor email updates on the author, click here.\nThe author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com\/piracy.\nThe most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.\n\n\u2014Albert Einstein\n\nAutumn Fog\n\nPrivate First Class Vonnegut prepared to die.\n\nAt the bottom of a snowy hollow, he fixed his bayonet and waited, huddled in a group of roughly fifty soldiers. Their unit, the 423rd, had been at battle for three days, since December 16. They'd been lost for most of it. They must be somewhere in Luxembourg, someone said. Now they were surrounded, herded into a small depression in the unfamiliar land. Kurt hunched into his coat\u2014he had a tall man's habit of hunching\u2014but he couldn't get warm. That December\u20141944\u2014was one of the coldest and wettest ever recorded in Europe.\n\nThe Germans were shouting at them. Kurt and the other soldiers couldn't see them, but they could hear accented voices telling the Americans to give up. They were surrounded, the Nazis said. It was useless to resist. The men bunched together, pointing their bayonets out the way soldiers do in the movies. Time slowed down. Kurt had always liked being part of a clan, and here, at the end of the line, the soldiers became almost one being, a big porcupine bristling with steel quills. For a few minutes, it was kind of nice.\n\nHe had waded ashore to the European theater less than a month earlier and ground to the front in a truck buffeted by sleet. He was still somewhat in shock. His mother had died of a drug overdose\u2014was it a suicide? an accident?\u2014just before he shipped out. The sadness hung thick over his departure, complicating and deepening his fear. He longed for the feeling that someone loved him, followed his every move with boundless devotion. He hadn't realized how much he needed that until his mother was gone.\n\nStill, for the first time in his life he felt beyond reproach. No longer a flunking chemistry student or a college dropout, he was where he was supposed to be, a soldier putting his life on the line. He was now the sort of person honored in the grandiose Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument at the center of his hometown, Indianapolis. Not even his big brother, Bernard, could say that much. Bernie, the A student, the brilliant scientist, the MIT man like their father. The one who launched the chain of events that landed Kurt here, a pacifist about to be swallowed by war.\n\nThe Germans fired on the trees above the soldiers' heads. Branches and splintered steel rained down. A couple of guys were hit. They might be dead. Twenty-five years later, Kurt would introduce a character named Edgar Derby to the world and describe his experience of this very battle. He would call what rained down on him \"the incredible artificial weather that Earthlings sometimes create for other Earthlings when they don't want those other Earthlings to inhabit Earth any more.\"\n\nCome out, the Nazis ordered again. The Americans came out. When he saw the Germans, Kurt couldn't help but note their white snowsuits. That made so much more sense, he thought, than his absurd army drab. The Americans were always in olive, as if wars were never fought in white places, in white weather.\n\n* * *\n\nThe battle had started three days earlier at 5:30 a.m., before dawn crept over the frozen landscape of Schnee Eifel, or Snow Mountain. They were manning a lightly defended spot along the old Westwall, a reinforcement ridge the Allies called the Siegfried Line. It was quiet: no one expected much to happen on this front. Then out of the predawn darkness came the attack, and it sounded like the sky falling in. For eighty miles along the Westwall, Allied soldiers woke up to German artillery raining down on them: fourteen-inch shells from railroad guns, the hacking cough and plunk of mortars, the high-pitched whistles of what the Americans called \"screaming meemies\" but the Germans called Nebelwerfer: fog throwers. The forest along the front was leveled as the Germans fired on trees. Even the Nazis were impressed by their own artillery storm. \"A hurricane of iron and fire,\" one German major called it.\n\nFor nearly an hour, the onslaught pounded the American troops. Then, suddenly, there was an eerie silence. As the soldiers tried to get their bearings, they heard a clank, and then they were lit like stage actors from the east. Through the dense fog, the Germans were flooding them with searchlights\u2014a new intimidation tactic they called \"artificial moonlight.\" To the battered Allies, it felt as if the Nazis had commandeered control of nature. Finally, out of the white came snow monsters: German infantry.\n\nSomething big was happening, but no one knew what. Telephone lines were blasted; whole divisions lost contact with command. Strategists got garbled and patchy reports; some thought the barrage was merely a \"spoiling\" attack, a futile lashing out by an enemy who knew he was defeated. After all, the war was meant to be winding down. General Eisenhower had a standing bet with the British field marshal Montgomery that Europe would be won by Christmas. It took days before the Allied generals realized that a major offensive was under way and diverted troops to stop it.\n\nIn retrospect, it was clearly a mistake to man twenty-five miles of front with one Allied division. But the Germans were outnumbered and out-armed. Why would they launch an offensive? They had only one thing on their side: the Allies called it \"Hitler's weather.\"\n\nIn war, soldiers fight more than the enemy. They fight topography. They fight time. Most of all, they fight weather. Kublai Khan might have overrun Japan, but a typhoon destroyed half his ships. The Spanish Armada fell to Britain because of storms on the North Sea. Napoleon was especially unlucky in weather: he lost Waterloo because of a rainstorm, and his march on Russia was beaten back not by war craft but by winter.\n\nIn World War II, weather mattered more than ever. It was the first war in which airpower would be decisive, and the U.S. Army Air Forces were especially vulnerable to bad weather: cloud cover disrupted bombing runs; snow scrambled radio signals; icing forced planes to land. But weather could waylay the Navy too: the day Kurt woke up to the German attack on the western front, the Third Fleet faced a typhoon in the Pacific. The storm sank 3 destroyers, wrecked 146 aircraft on carriers, and killed 778 troops, racking up a higher death toll than any Japanese attack. And weather tormented the infantry: rain and snow slowed tanks, troops, and supply lines. Fog could conceal enemy movements.\n\nWeather forecasting had been part of most militaries since the early nineteenth century, but when World War II broke out, the generals realized they needed more meteorologists than ever. Colleges were enlisted to train thousands of weather officers for the new Air Weather Service. MIT, America's leading meteorology school, established a special program, bumping its enrollment from thirty students to around five hundred. The department head, Sverre Petterssen, left MIT to join General Eisenhower's meteorology team. He played a key role in the war's most famous weather suspense story.\n\nDuring World War I, a new physics-based school of meteorology had arisen in Norway called air mass analysis. Petterssen was Norwegian and a proponent of this scientifically rigorous new approach. When Ike was poised to invade Normandy, Petterssen told him to wait. The skies looked clear, but the upper air situation was unstable. Petterssen told Eisenhower's team that the weather was likely to turn bad and scuttle the invasion. He based this forecast not just on what he could observe but on the idea that large wind patterns were battling each other high in the sky, atmospheric echoes of the clash of armies below. Such wind patterns are common knowledge today, but in the 1940s not everyone believed that weather was shaped by the huge, invisible air masses that meteorologists had given a warlike name: fronts.\n\nThe American meteorologist Irving Krick, who was also on the team, scoffed at Petterssen's approach. Krick, using the classic forecasting technique\u2014looking at weather maps from the past to determine how the future might shape up\u2014declared that the offensive should go on as planned.\n\nThe largest invasion in history hung in the balance as the weathermen argued about the winds. Finally, the chief meteorological officer made the call. D-Day was postponed for twenty-four hours, and indeed the weather turned stormy. The next day looked no better, but Petterssen pointed to the changing barometric pressure as a sign that the weather would improve. There would be a window of opportunity before the next bad day. Gambling on Petterssen's prediction, General Eisenhower launched the attack.\n\nNow it was the Germans who were using the weather to their advantage. The attack that would come to be called the Battle of the Bulge was planned for December with good reason. Under cover of heavy cold fog, the Germans had amassed 410,000 troops, 1,400 tanks, and 2,600 artillery weapons for the predawn offensive. The weather had slowed the delivery of Allied troops and supplies to the front, and the bitter cold ensured that the Allied infantry, huddled in foxholes and trenches, was distracted by the need to keep warm. Best of all, the heavy cloud cover would keep British and American planes grounded, depriving the Allies of air support. General Alfred Jodl had foreseen it in the detailed operational plan he drew up for the Reichsf\u00fchrer. He called it Herbstnebel: Autumn Fog.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt's regiment, the 423rd, got the worst of Autumn Fog. Its troops were far enough forward to be on German ground, and before they even realized what had happened, they were cut off. The men of the 423rd, like the entire 106th Division, were green; they had never seen action. Many, like Kurt, had been pulled out of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP)\u2014a combined college and military program that was meant to lead to a degree and an officer's commission. It was canceled in 1944 because the Army didn't need more officers; it needed riflemen. Hitler was going to be defeated not by strategists or engineers but by numbers. College boys like Kurt were plucked from classes on thermodynamics, calculus, and mechanical engineering, given a few months' hasty training in combat skills, and shipped to Europe. Kurt tried to get assigned to public relations, but his efforts failed. His unit, the 106th, was the last American infantry division to be mobilized in World War II. Two-thirds of its troops were single men under the age of twenty-three.\n\nThe Schnee Eifel was where these young men were supposed to get \"blooded\"\u2014to practice their battlefield skills before facing actual combat. Now they were thrust in the middle of the very bloody real thing, and they didn't know what to do. Kurt's regiment commander, Colonel Charles Cavender, was told to dig in and hold the Germans back as best he could. He was promised an airdrop of ammunition and supplies. As the Germans moved inexorably forward, the men of the 423rd split into small groups and huddled together like sheep. By nightfall, the sheep were surrounded. For the next two days, they fought as best they could, in small groups or larger ones, while the Germans streamed around them and toward St. Vith.\n\nFor three long days, the 423rd and its sister regiment, the 424th, tried to hold their ground, like ants clinging to a boulder in a rising flood. By the morning of December 19, hundreds of men from the 106th were dead or wounded. The promised airdrops weren't coming, and there was no sign of reinforcements either. Colonel Cavender sent six of his men out to reconnoiter. One of them was Kurt. They weren't looking for the enemy; they were looking for their own artillery. Wandering the snowy hills, the six men found about fifty more Americans. And then the Germans found them.\n\nThe Americans surrendered as they were taught: they dismantled their weapons and threw them into the snow. Coming out of their gully, they said things like \"take it easy\" and \"don't shoot.\" They wanted to go on living if they possibly could. Kurt knew a little German; his German American parents spoke it, and he'd had two years of it in high school. He tried out a few words. The Germans asked him if he was of German ancestry. He gave them his last name, Vonnegut.\n\n\"Why are you making war on your brothers?\" they asked him. The question made little sense. He was a Hoosier, not a Kraut. But they weren't completely off base. When he said his own name, he said it, as his father did, in the German way: Kooort.\n\nThe Germans pointed their guns at the Americans. They told Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to march.\n\n* * *\n\nTwo years earlier, he had been a relatively carefree undergraduate, writing columns called \"Innocents Abroad\" and \"Well All Right\" for The Cornell Daily Sun, buying Old Grand-Dad bourbon for a dance he hoped his sweetheart, Jane, would attend. The war meant this to him: Cokes were being rationed on campus. The university was banning house parties and out-of-town dates. Fraternities were going to be strapped for cash. Kurt devoted a whole column to the looming frat-house financial crunch. \"It's a nasty picture no matter how you look at it,\" he wrote in May 1941. \"From an abstract point of view it will be interesting to watch, just like bombing.\"\n\nHe'd been sixteen when the war began. He and two friends were wrapping up a summer road trip by spending a few days as the guests of Frank Phillips of Phillips Petroleum. Phillips had a resort in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, called Woolaroc Ranch. Woolaroc was a teenage boy's fantasy, where Kurt and his pals spent their days riding horses, fishing, and swimming, their evenings drinking beer and smoking twenty-five-cent cigars. They goofed around with the lodge's player piano and ransacked their host's library for spicy crime novels and anthropological accounts of the sex lives of primitive tribes while the radio tallied the mounting threat in Europe. It all seemed impossibly far away. The day they drove home, Hitler invaded Poland. As they pounded the road for seven hundred miles, Kurt had looked back on the whole adventure and wondered if he'd ever be that happy again.\n\nHis family was pacifist; the Vonneguts had always been freethinkers. Kurt clung to his antiwar conviction long after most others had succumbed to patriotic warmongering. In one column for the Sun, he defended the unpopular isolationist sentiments of Charles Lindbergh. In another, he criticized the extreme anti-German bias of the American media. Later, he blasted Wendell Willkie, \"political yo-yo from the Hoosier state,\" for advocating the opening of a second front. It wasn't that he was pro-German. He was just antiwar. He came from a long line of Germans, yes; his grandfather had designed the gorgeous Indianapolis social center formerly known as Das Deutsche Haus. After World War I caused a wave of anti-German sentiment, Das Deutsche Haus was renamed the Athenaeum. But in Kurt's family, ethnicity was less important than ethics, intellect, and wit.\n\nHe had learned early that the best way for a third child to be heard at the dinner table was to crack a joke. Being funny was the only way he got them to stop interrupting and listen to him. Besides, his brother was brilliant, and his sister was artistic and beautiful. He couldn't compete on brains or talent or glamour. So he nurtured his penchant for humor, and this served him well at the Sun. His fellow students at Cornell didn't always agree with his isolationist sentiments, but they liked his snappy writing. In March 1942, he was appointed assistant managing editor of the paper.\n\nHe bragged about that to Jane Cox. He was always trying to impress her. They'd known each other since they were small children. In a way, she was his best friend. He recognized things in her\u2014imagination, ambition, idealism\u2014that he saw in himself. They were going to get married and live a blissful life together, full of books and music and smart conversation and ultimately kids\u2014seven of them. He knew all of this, felt it somewhere deep inside him, even if Jane, busy acing her classes at Swarthmore and acting in plays and going on dates with a roster of eligible young men, hadn't come around to it yet. Kurt wrote it over and over in his letters to her. She was alternately encouraging and distant. She was hell to get along with, Jane, but he loved her, and he always would. Nineteen forty-five was the year he had picked for their wedding. He wrote it in one of his columns.\n\nBefore he left for Europe, they became lovers.\n\nAt Cornell, he had spent all his time working on the newspaper, to the detriment of everything else. His grades in his major\u2014chemistry\u2014suffered. He was supposed to be earning an officer's commission in the ROTC, but he got kicked out after writing an irreverent column: \"We Impress Life Magazine with Our Efficient Role in National Defense.\" In it, he claimed that he and the other ROTC boys had little idea what they were doing, but when a Life photographer visited, they gamely ran around and disassembled a rifle while shouting things like \"Flathatcher! Biffleblock!\" to seem like crack militiamen. The ROTC was not amused. It wasn't the first time Kurt had mocked the warlike exertions of the college boys. An earlier column was cast as a letter to the military department from the school's zoologists, who claimed to be just as ready for service as the chemical engineers and advance drill squads.\n\n\"Up in the front lines our commanding officer will say 'Vontegal... what the hell kind of butterfly is that,' and we'll be the only man in the trench that can tell him. That's the sort of thing that wins wars!\"\n\nIt was, on some level, a sly crack at his brother, Bernard, who was doing war work. He'd been asked to leave his peacetime job and go back to MIT to work in the Army's Chemical Warfare Service laboratory there. He was exempted from the draft because of it. He couldn't tell his family what he was working on, but the family was proud of him; they were always proud of Bernard. How could Kurt resist mocking the notion that scientists would win the war? Besides, that was pretty much the only way he ever got a jump on Bernie: he made fun of him.\n\nBy his sophomore May, Kurt's grades were so bad he was put on academic probation. He made light of his woes in a column titled \"The Lost Battalion Undergoes a Severe Shelling.\" He was the lost battalion.\n\nWhy didn't he just switch his major to English or journalism? He was a newspaperman at heart. In Ithaca, his happiest moments were when he was editing the Sun, just as in Indianapolis they had been when he was editing the Shortridge Echo, the nation's first high school daily. His experience there convinced him that not only did he like newspaper work, he was good at it. Toward the end of high school, he'd even managed to land a job offer from The Indianapolis Times. He wanted to take it. But becoming a newspaperman wasn't what his father and Bernie had in mind for him.\n\nSure, Kurt senior and Bernie agreed, young Kurt could write, and he was funny\u2014the family clown, the class clown\u2014but when he graduated from high school, it was time to get serious. At one point, Kurt thought he might like to become an architect, like his father and his grandfather Bernard, who had designed the Athenaeum. The opulent building was still the heart of the Indianapolis German American community, and Kurt had spent many a night there as a kid, admiring the elaborate woodwork and leaded glass windows as the adults talked or danced or listened to music. It must be nice to make something so beautiful. But that was before the Great Depression had ruined his father. The disheartened Kurt senior wouldn't hear of Kurt following in his footsteps. Be anything, he said bitterly, but an architect.\n\nWhen he was a young man, Kurt's dreams\u2014shared with Jane\u2014were all about writing. They both fantasized about being news correspondents in Europe. Sometimes, when Jane was playing along, they envisioned the house they might share: a courtyard with an oak tree at its center and a studio out back where they would sit side by side and type out masterpieces. But even Kurt had a hard time imagining writing for a living. He would have to do something else to support those seven kids.\n\nBernie knew what Kurt should do; he should be a scientist, like him. So Bernard and Kurt senior decided that Kurt should study chemistry. That was a useful, practical field. Kurt didn't necessarily disagree. He believed, as they did, in science. It had more answers to the questions of life, he told Jane, than fields like psychology or philosophy. Science was going to make the world a better place. To be part of the utopian future, he should do as his brother said.\n\nThe older men didn't think Kurt junior was MIT material, so they settled on Cornell. When it looked as if Cornell might not take him, Bernard drove Kurt to Harvard, where he was given a provisional acceptance. But then Cornell came through, and Bernard thought he would have a better time there. That, Kurt said later, \"was his idea of me, sort of third rate.\"\n\nSo in the fall of 1940, Kurt went off to Cornell to study chemistry. But he wasn't a born scientist like Bernie. When it came to the actual class work, it just didn't grab him. Not the way writing did. So he ignored his classes and did what made him happiest\u2014keeping late hours in the offices of the Sun. Even the warning in his sophomore spring didn't set him straight. By Christmas break of his junior year, he was flunking out. He came down with pneumonia at home and decided not to go back. But his draft number was coming up. In March 1943, he enlisted in the U.S. Army.\n\nSo now the whole chain of events boiled down to this: Private Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a prisoner of war.\n\n* * *\n\n\"The war is over for you,\" the Germans told the Americans. Kurt joined the long line of Yank soldiers marching east, toward Germany. German cameramen stood filming as the prisoners limped along. This might be the Nazi propagandists' last chance to convince the weary folk at home that victory was still within reach. Kurt saw them pointing their lenses at the broken men. Twenty-five years later, in Slaughterhouse-Five, he would describe them as having run out of film\u2014a perfect symbol for the empty pointlessness of it all: the propaganda, the offensive, the Nazi war machine, the whole goddamn war. He picked up his tired feet and marched, past dead soldiers unfurling from tanks, past men frozen in snowy fields, arms stretched toward the sky in fruitless supplication. The Germans did have film. In it, the Americans looked dirty, disheartened, and exhausted. Some supported wounded comrades or lugged makeshift pallets. The rest trudged miserably along. They had survived the German offensive, but many would not survive what lay ahead.\n\nWhen they came to the top of a hill, the captured men could see a long line of prisoners, as far forward as the eye could see. Seven thousand Allied soldiers had been bagged by the Germans. It would have been different if the Allies had been able to get their planes in the air. Air support could have nipped Herbstnebel in the bud. But in all that fog, the airplanes failed them. The weather had fought for the other side.\n\nAs they marched into Germany, some of the prisoners must have known the Germans were wrong about one thing: the war wasn't over for them. Kurt and the other captured American troops were marching into a strange gray area, a place where they were neither soldiers nor civilians, neither at peace nor at war. The autumn fog swallowed them whole.\n\n* * *\n\nBernard Vonnegut's life had always gone according to plan.\n\nAs a kid doing science experiments in the basement, he had planned to go to college and become a scientist. The Depression might have prevented that, but his family didn't let it, keeping him in his elite private high school, Park School. (They economized by enrolling Kurt in public school.) After graduating, Bernard studied chemistry at MIT, publishing his undergraduate chemistry thesis on X-ray analysis of crystalline bromine, then stayed at MIT for grad school, with the help of scholarships and a teaching fellowship. He planned to join his father's fraternity, Kappa Sigma, and by grad school Barney\u2014as his MIT friends had rechristened him\u2014was earning room and board by tutoring Kappa Sigma freshmen.\n\nHe hadn't planned for the swim team to lose every meet in his senior year, but he swam gamely anyway. \"Vonnegut should be commended for his excellent performance in the 200-yard breast stroke event,\" declared the yearbook, Technique. He swam on a 300-yard medley relay team that set an MIT record. He was a good team player. He never needed to be the star.\n\nAfter grad school, his plan was to get a good job as an industrial research scientist and start publishing papers, and that's exactly what he was doing as a chemist at Hartford-Empire Company, working on the physical and chemical properties of glass, when war came. And then his plans started to unravel.\n\nNow here he was, stuck on one of his frequent trips to Minneapolis, where he lived at the Hotel King Cole (Royal Guest Rooms! Food to the King's Taste!), away from his Cambridge apartment and Bow. He had married Lois Bowler just over a year earlier, on Christmas Day. They had been set up by friends, and she fit his plans too. His nickname suited her: with her long brown hair and delicately sculpted features, she was extraordinarily beautiful\u2014even Kurt had to admit it\u2014and also somehow fragile, as if she might come untied. Bow didn't like to be alone; she usually went to her parents' home in Elizabethtown, New York, when Bernie traveled.\n\nNow, instead of working at the glass factory, he was traveling back and forth between MIT and the Ice Research Base in Minneapolis, where he spent his days folding his lanky form into the tiny heated compartment he and his team had fashioned for the B-24 they named \"the Flying Icing Wind Tunnel.\" An Army Air Forces pilot would guide the bomber plane into any available freezing clouds, and a sergeant would open the bomb bay doors and lower from the fuselage an ingenious rotating cylinder device Bernie had designed to measure water content and drop size. As the device slowly iced over, bitter wind would whip through the plane. The sergeant would sit casually by the hole in the airplane floor, reading a comic book.\n\nBut things were about to get back on track. The war was winding down, meaning his job in deicing would soon end. And Bow had recently told him she was pregnant. So in the quiet of his royal guest room, Bernie took a piece of hotel stationery and wrote the date: February 15, 1945.\n\nOne day nearer to victory.\n\nThat was the cheery banner message at the bottom of the page in The Indianapolis Times that listed his brother, Kurt, as missing in action, unaccounted for after the awful, late-stage offensive, the Battle of the Bulge. The family had found out in January. The paper printed a note that read like an obituary: \"He attended Cornell University and after entering the service received ASTP training at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee. When the program was closed, Pvt. Vonnegut was transferred to the infantry and assigned to the 106th.\" That was it, Kurt's twenty-two years summed up in two sentences. The family was not without hope, exactly, but it seemed possible that the war had brought a second tragedy\u2014first their mother, now Kurt\u2014to the Vonnegut family.\n\nHis brother's last letter, written on December 15, had been to Bernard.\n\nBernard was an optimist by nature, not given to brooding or melancholy. The best thing, as he saw it, was to look to the future. He addressed his letter to Chauncey Guy Suits\u2014Guy to his friends\u2014the new director of the General Electric Research Laboratory, the nation's oldest and most renowned industrial research lab. He opened by apologizing for not having written sooner, but he'd been on the go nonstop since leaving Schenectady, New York, ten days earlier.\n\n\"I am very favorably impressed with the facilities of the laboratory, its policy and attitude towards research, and the opportunities there for the sort of work that interests me,\" he wrote. \"As you know from our talk, I am not yet in a position to reach a final decision, however... I am most interested in working for General Electric.\"\n\nHe couldn't say exactly when he'd be free from his war obligations, but they all knew the war was likely to end soon. He stated that he expected a salary of $5,000 to $6,000 a year.\n\nHe was going to have a family to support, after all.\n\nHe had been in Schenectady ten days earlier to talk to Irving Langmuir about ice. It had been a heady experience. The brilliant chemist\u2014the first industrial scientist to win a Nobel Prize\u2014crackled with ideas. Some people's eyes glazed over after only a few minutes of speaking with Irving, but Bernie loved it. For the last few months, he had been corresponding with Langmuir and his assistant, Vincent Schaefer, about aircraft deicing, and even though Bernie was director of the MIT meteorology department's deicing project, he was the one doing most of the learning. Langmuir was a chemist, like Bernie, but he had also done significant work in physics and crossed over into biology, mathematics, and even psychology when it suited him. The scientific disciplines were just beginning to divide into a series of silos, their boundaries patrolled by ever-more-focused specialists, but Langmuir was an old-school generalist. Like Bernie, he had never expected to become fascinated by the problem of deicing.\n\nIcing has been a problem since the dawn of aviation. Ice clogs carburetors, adds weight, and interferes with the wings' aerodynamics. An airplane wing's shape provides its lift: add enough ice and it can simply fall out of the sky. With helicopters, it's even worse.\n\nIn early days, pilots simply didn't fly in freezing conditions. But as aircraft grew more robust, they were expected to fly in any weather. Methods of deicing were invented and tried. There were coatings, heat applications, inflatable rubber boots that would expand and knock the ice off the wing. Sometimes they worked; sometimes they didn't.\n\nBernard had never thought much about aircraft deicing, but he had thought a lot about ice. For his graduate thesis, \"A Freezing Point Apparatus,\" he designed a device to measure the exact point at which water with other substances dissolved in it will freeze. Bernie was proud of it. He liked devising tools and gadgets: his first patented invention was an easy-to-clean pipe he designed jointly with his father. The aircraft program required lots of apparatus, because the scientists needed to understand how ice formed. So Bernie once again found himself doing something fun: conducting experiments and coming up with gadgets to get at data in new ways.\n\nAs a scientist, Bernie was both old-fashioned and newfangled. He was not unlike MIT in that way. When Bernie's father had attended Tech\u2014as its students called it\u2014the college was a trade school that trained students to design electrical systems or engineer wastewater plants. America's top scientific minds had always gone off to Germany for grad school. But as war with Germany approached for the second time, Americans felt a new urgency about training their own scientists. In the 1930s, MIT's president, Karl Compton, and vice president, Vannevar Bush, began shifting the school's focus from practical skills, such as drafting, to pure science.\n\nBy the time Bernie had arrived at MIT, even the undergrad curriculum was centered on pure science. His classes were mostly chemistry, math, and physics, with a smattering of biology and humanities thrown in. He'd had one class in drawing and descriptive geometry, the one required of all first-year chemistry majors. Still, he never shied away from drawing his own illustrations or designing his own instruments. Both imaginative and pragmatic, he actually liked doing paper-clip-and-string kinds of experiments, what he called \"Victorian science.\" When he was first called back to MIT to become a research associate in the Chemical Warfare Service, he was handed a German gas mask and told to reverse engineer it. Bernie got Manhattan District clearance so he could use radioactive tracers to measure smoke penetrations in the mask's filters, then designed an optical apparatus to measure the penetrations quickly. He even applied for a patent on it.\n\nBernie was a tinkerer. For him, tinkering was what science was about. You played around with something until you understood it. He'd been playing around with aircraft deicing since 1942, when a friend invited him to come work on a meteorology project at MIT. He wasn't trained as a meteorologist. He sometimes joked that he'd never really noticed the atmosphere until someone pointed it out. Meteorology had always been a poor stepsister to hard science disciplines like physics and chemistry. But he recognized right away that the field's puzzles were problems of basic chemistry and physics, manifested in everyday life. Rain, snow, clouds, storms: all were deeply familiar yet fundamentally strange. For a scientist driven, as Bernie was, by curiosity, it was an ideal subject. To study the weather was to ask science's most basic question: Why does the world work the way it does?\n\nOnce, when he was in his early teens and the Vonneguts were vacationing in Chatham, on Cape Cod, Bernie wandered down to the beach while the rest of the family slept. He had become enthralled by the dark and the sound of the waves. He walked and walked, passing the lighthouse, winking its beacon into the blackness. When he came to a jetty, he walked out to the end and stood there, surrounded by fathomless dark, hearing only the suck and roar of the ocean battering the breakwater. It was terrifying and thrilling, being so small, so alone in boundless ocean and air.\n\nHe never really lost the feeling. The earth's systems\u2014water and weather and atmosphere\u2014were huge and complicated, full of mystery and delight. Bernie had no idea yet that weather would occupy the rest of his life. Or that his interest in ice and his new deicing colleagues would shape not only his future work but also his brother's. He just knew he wanted to keep conducting the kinds of scientific explorations that fired up his brain. GE seemed like a good way to do that.\n\nAwash in government contracts, GE had expanded enormously during the war, especially the Research Laboratory, and the company planned to continue growing. President Charlie Wilson, known as Electric Charlie, directed Guy Suits and other managers to go on a hiring spree. He planned for GE to become a postwar powerhouse and frequently shocked even fellow executives by citing \"two billion\" as the number he expected net sales to reach before long. But that was going to require new ideas and eager new men. So Suits invited Bernie, among other young men, to apply for a job.\n\nWith war winding down and Bow pregnant, the timing of Suits's letter was perfect. Bernie had responded right away and had gone for an interview in early February. There he met some of GE's scientific luminaries: tall, grave physicist Albert Hull, a pioneer of the vacuum tube; plump and outgoing Saul Dushman, one of the earliest experts in quantum mechanics; Gorton Fonda, whose team had famously developed an American version of the radar screen in just fourteen days. Suits had sent Bernie back to Minneapolis with an application form, and he filled it out in his hotel room. Under \"available for employment,\" he wrote, \"Probably at termination of war.\" For racial extraction, he wrote, \"German.\" Under education, he approximated his class standing, with typical modesty, at \"lower part top half.\" On the line for draft status, he wrote, \"2B\": deferred because of work in a war-related industry.\n\nHe had been spared his brother's fate because he was doing critical work: helping get Allied airplanes safely in and out of their bombing runs.\n\nBernard addressed the envelope and went to bed. There were more test flights to be made on the B-24, more huddling over instruments in the Flying Icing Wind Tunnel. But the war would be over soon; so everyone said. The Russians were moving in from the east, and German cities were being pounded by Allied bombers. The Minneapolis Star-Journal had just run the headline \"2,250 Planes Hit Dresden.\" The German city, one of Europe's most beautiful, was already burning after a night assault by the RAF; now American bomber planes were adding fuel to the fire.\n\nAn Atlantis, Kurt would call Dresden later, sinking beneath waves of flame.\n\nDid Bernie envision firestorms as he drifted off to sleep in his royal bed at the Hotel King Cole? It seems unlikely. There, in the blank white of Minnesota winter, it would have been quite a leap to imagine the storm of flames his work there was meant to enable. A firestorm is the most complex form of artificial weather warring earthlings can conjure. First there's the search for a target city blanketed in clouds. Then the first wave of planes dropping small explosives, to buckle weaker buildings and blow out windows and doors. The people running for safety. The second wave of incendiary bombs falling with a gentle rain-like patter, then bursting to life. The fires, fed by oxygen circulating through the perforated city, building into currents of wind. Hot gales sweeping through the streets; the city melting, escape routes blocked by a greedy whirlwind of death. The aftermath: blackened husks that were once human beings, and basement shelters turned to tombs.\n\nOne thing it is certain Bernard did not imagine: that as he wrote his letter to Guy Suits and laid the plans for his future, his brother was huddled underneath Dresden as the city was wiped from the map. Bernard, his mind fixed on clouds and water and ice, could hardly have imagined Kurt hiding in a slaughterhouse basement, expecting at any moment to die by fire.\n\nIt would be many years before the brothers would learn the code name for the destruction of Dresden: Operation Thunderclap.\n\nPrecipitating Events\n\nSomeone was knocking on the door of Dean Langmuir's apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street. It startled his younger brother Irving. Irving had arrived in New York City the day before, and Dean had put up the usual cot. Hotels had been crowded enough before VE Day. Now with troops on their way home or reassigning to the Pacific, getting a room in New York was downright impossible. Especially on short notice\u2014and short notice was how Irving Langmuir did things.\n\nDean had already gone to his Wall Street job, so Irving opened the door. In the hallway stood two Army officers, and they were looking for him, not Dean. Once inside, they told him they had come to ask him to change his plans. They would prefer that he decline the invitation to Russia.\n\nLess than a month had passed since Germany's surrender. On May 8, 1945, Langmuir wrote \"VE Day\" in his GE notebook and underlined it. Then he started a list of meteorology papers he wanted to read. For the last three years, he had been doing war-related research, taking up whatever question the government needed answered. He had designed smoke generators, investigated airplane deicing, and studied precipitation static\u2014the tendency of airplanes flying in snowstorms to pick up electrical charge that disrupts radio communications. Somehow all the projects he had been handed had converged in the fascinating field of weather study. That was what he was going to work on next.\n\nThe GE Research Lab encouraged its scientists' fixations the way parents encourage a child's passion for dinosaurs or ants. When Langmuir first started there, in 1909, Dr. Willis Whitney\u2014nicknamed Doc\u2014told him to look around and find something fun to work on. That's what all new scientists were told: Doc Whitney was convinced that was the best way to ensure they produced quality work. He was known for making daily rounds in the lab and asking the scientists, \"Are you having fun today?\"\n\nAfter a few weeks of playing around with whatever piqued his interest, Langmuir told Doc Whitney that he was enjoying himself, but he didn't see how this was doing much for the company. Whitney told him not to worry about that; usefulness was Doc's problem, not his. And sure enough, before long, Langmuir's playful experiments had led to a complete redesign of the lightbulb\u2014meaning longer life for customers and a whole new set of patents for GE. Soon after, his goofing around with lightbulbs led to the invention of atomic hydrogen welding. Langmuir had been following his own fancy ever since. And his fancy had led him to weather.\n\nNow the Russians\u2014and who knew more about snow?\u2014were offering him a chance to meet their top scientists. The invitation had come just days earlier, addressed to \"Prof. Irving Langmuir, Shenektady, N.Y.\" Irving and another twenty-five prominent American scientists had been invited on a monthlong, all-expenses-paid visit to Russia to celebrate the 220th anniversary of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Never mind that there had been no Soviet Union 220 years earlier. Irving packed his bag and phoned his brother. The Russians, he told Dean, were picking him up in two days.\n\nWhen Irving got to New York, Dean raised a few concerns. The whole thing seemed haphazard. The invite said very little about the program or schedule. Many of the scientists' names were even misspelled. And did Irving know anything about Russian festivities? He would be expected to drink toast after toast of vodka. To refuse would insult Mother Russia. But to comply... well, one might find oneself in a compromised position. And what were the Soviets up to, less than a month after VE Day, inviting some of America's most prominent scientists\u2014many of whom had been doing war work\u2014on a junket? Sure, the Russians were allies, but after the inaugural United Nations Conference in San Francisco, where their petulance had nearly scuttled passage of a UN charter, American suspicions about Soviet motivations were on the rise.\n\nIrving had dismissed all of this. That was politics, and politics did not concern him. He thought the trip would be scientifically interesting, so he packed his bags. That's how Irving was. It was fortunate he had even remembered to pack: a few years back, he showed up for a weeklong sailing trip in a blue serge suit and dress shoes, without so much as a windbreaker. Irving's obliviousness to real-world concerns was legendary. He could walk right by a colleague without so much as nodding. When a woman fell down on the stairs in front of him, he famously stepped over her and continued on. Once, he stepped in a can of paint, pulled his foot out without pausing, and kept on walking, leaving a trail of safety-yellow footprints in his wake.\n\nSo Dean thought it reasonable to make sure that his brother knew what he was getting into. Irving had assured Dean that it was all cleared with the State Department, so Dean had shrugged and gone to work. And then the Army officers appeared.\n\nIrving listened with his customary air of unruffled intensity, but beneath his patrician reserve he was livid. Born in 1881, Irving Langmuir had grown up in an urbane and academically inclined family, graduating from Columbia's School of Mines and the University of G\u00f6ttingen. At GE, he had gone from triumph to triumph. His initial lightbulb successes were just the start. He was one of the first scientists to conduct experiments on ionized gases with strange electrical and magnetic qualities, which he named \"plasmas,\" inventing the field of plasma physics. He improved sonar detection and advanced understanding of the atom's structure, writing a famous paper describing his \"concentric theory.\" He intuited the relationship between winds and ocean circulation. In 1932, he became America's first industrial scientist to win a Nobel Prize, for his work on monolayers\u2014surface films only one molecule thick. The work launched the field of surface chemistry, with applications in mining, aviation, medicine, and water resource management, as well as in understanding the fundamental structure of matter.\n\nAs GE's celebrity scientist, his salary rivaled those of top executives. He worked on whatever he wanted and traveled as he saw fit, frequently giving papers at academic conferences and before professional societies. His opinion was sought by radio journalists and newspapermen. People asked for his autograph. He was not accustomed to being bossed around, not even by the Department of Defense.\n\nThe officers explained that the Army would prefer that someone with Irving's level of security clearance not visit the Soviet Union at this time. Irving asked if they were ordering him not to go. No, nothing like that, they said. They were requesting that he not go. They told him they had made the same request of the physicist Edward Condon and he wasn't going. They neglected to mention that the State Department had helpfully revoked Condon's passport. Later it would be clear why: Condon had worked on the Manhattan Project.\n\nIrving didn't make trouble. But as soon as they left, he phoned GE. He really wanted to go on this trip. A chance to see Soviet scientific labs and talk to Soviet scientists was a rare and thrilling opportunity. Besides, he didn't know half as much as the Army seemed to think he knew about military secrets. None of the war work he had done was highly classified. The smoke screens he had developed were now being openly used in the Pacific to protect ships from kamikaze attacks. It seemed to Irving that the Army was letting a misplaced concern about secrecy get in the way of scientific learning.\n\nExecutives made a few calls. As one of the government's largest war contractors, GE had sway with the military. The Army rescinded the request, and Langmuir was free to go to Russia.\n\nOn June 10, 1945, one of President Truman's own C-54 transport planes left New York's Air Transport Command airfield. On board were sixteen of America's most prominent scientists: chemists, mathematicians, a hydrologist, and an anthropologist. Conspicuously absent were any physicists. Nevertheless, everyone aboard agreed: once things in the Pacific wrapped up, a new era of peaceful international cooperation would surely begin. And scientists, united by the apolitical pursuit of knowledge, were going to lead the way.\n\n* * *\n\n\"Now, no emotions, please!\" Kurt cried. His adored sister, Alice, ran and hugged him anyway, crying, and he too wiped away some tears. His father hugged him after Alice, and his uncle Alex\u2014another favorite\u2014happily pumped his hand. It's unlikely that any of the soldiers eating ice cream, playing the jukebox, or dancing with WACs at Officer Club 1 paid much attention. This was a familiar scene at Camp Atterbury, with its rows of hastily constructed clapboard barracks lined up like hay bales in the Indiana fields. Now that the war in Europe was over, families\u2014the lucky ones, anyway\u2014were turning up daily to pick up their boys.\n\nIt was the Fourth of July, and Kurt junior\u2014Kay to his family\u2014was home. His family had only found out he was alive when his letter of May 29 reached Indiana the previous month.\n\n\"Dear People,\" it began. He was alive\u2014not only alive, but still very much Kay, simultaneously mordant and offhand as he reeled off the inventory of horrors he had survived in the last six months. The letter\u2014ten succinct paragraphs\u2014was a masterpiece of concision. It was his first attempt to write about his wartime experience, and it would remain his best for a quarter century. Like one of those seeds that lies dormant until the conditions for germination are perfect, it would wait until the Vietnam era to sprout into Slaughterhouse-Five.\n\n\"I've been a prisoner of war since December 19, 1944,\" he wrote, since \"seven fanatical panzer divisions\" cut his division off from the others. After that, \"the supermen marched us, without food, water or sleep,\" for about sixty miles, then packed them into boxcars and shipped them across Germany. The prisoner train was strafed by the British on Christmas Day; a carload of officers was killed. South of Berlin, the men were unloaded and deloused. \"Many men died from shock in the showers after ten days of starvation, thirst and exposure,\" he wrote. \"But I didn't.\"\n\nHe was shipped off to a work camp in Dresden, where conditions were dreadful. One boy starved, and two were shot dead for stealing food. \"On about February 14th,\" he wrote, \"the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden\u2014possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me.\"\n\nThe rest of the story was crammed into short paragraphs\u2014his forced labor carrying corpses for incineration, the evacuation as the Russians approached, the Nazis' abandonment of the prisoners, a bizarre wagon ride across Germany, his final repatriation to a Red Cross camp in Le Havre. He hoped to be home, he wrote, in a month.\n\n\"I've too damned much to say,\" he concluded. \"The rest will have to wait.\"\n\nWait it would. The letter, with its repetitive short phrase, \"But not me,\" was a preview of Slaughterhouse-Five with its ironic catchphrase, \"So it goes.\" Its theme of grim good luck\u2014the meaninglessness of both death and survival\u2014would anchor Kurt's lyrical antiwar masterpiece. The letter's evocation of war was brilliant. Even Bernard could see that. He and Lois gave a copy to Lois's hometown newspaper. The Adirondack Record\u2014Elizabethtown Post printed Kurt's letter on its front page, under the title \"Vet Describes His Experiences as POW of Germany.\" But Bernard didn't tell Kurt about it. In 2008, after Kurt's death, the letter would be included\u2014incorrectly\u2014in a collection of previously unpublished works.\n\nEven before Kurt wrote to his family, though, he had written to Jane. He took a chummy tone, pointing out that they'd parted on pretty friendly terms. He was alluding to the fact that they were lovers and that he'd written to her several times to make sure she wasn't pregnant. That was his typical mode\u2014jokey understatement\u2014when it came to writing about matters of sex.\n\nJane was by then working in Washington at the OSS\u2014the predecessor to the CIA. She had graduated from Swarthmore Phi Beta Kappa in history, even though her thesis was somewhat controversial. She had argued that history teaches us nothing except that history is meaningless. The historians didn't appreciate that much, but Kurt did. He loved the way her mind worked. Throughout boot camp and Army training, he had continued to write her love letters. As his time in the military wore on, he felt as if all his dreams were dying except one: his dream of a life with Jane.\n\nJane, for her part, was as busy as ever. She had other suitors, including a younger man still at Swarthmore, but Kurt was much on her mind. Then her letters of November 27, December 16, and December 27 were all returned to her, with the ominous stamp \"Missing.\" Like his family, she hadn't known if he was dead or alive until she got his letter in late May.\n\nHe told her he was still alive, though he looked kind of starved. He was in possession of some money and a furlough and was hoping she hadn't gone and gotten married.\n\nShe hadn't.\n\nSo Kurt had stopped off in Washington to see Jane on his way to Indiana's Camp Atterbury, and soon she would be back in Indianapolis too. He was planning to ask her once more to marry him, and she was expecting him to ask.\n\nHis family had to be shocked at his appearance. He was forty-five pounds lighter, and his skin had been ulcerated by vitamin deficiency. But he was still the same old Kay. He insisted on taking the wheel, and as he drove the forty miles from Camp Atterbury to Indianapolis, he talked nonstop. The family was transfixed as he unfurled a tale of suffering, near starvation, abuse, and dumb luck. He lamented the destruction of Dresden and railed against the cruelty of the SS. When he got to the part where he and three others were forced to dig a grave for Michael Palaia, a fellow soldier executed for stealing a can of pickled string beans, he burst into tears.\n\n\"The sons of bitches!\" he cried, still driving.\n\nThey all listened intently. No one interrupted, as they would when he was little. No one could correct him or gainsay him, because he was the one who was there. Uncle Alex couldn't get over how articulate the young man had become. Kurt's account of the fall of Germany was terrifyingly observant. And his thoughts about the future were bleak.\n\n\"I know what's going to happen in Europe,\" he said. \"Now the trouble really starts. The French hate the Americans; the Poles and Russians hate the Germans; the Poles hate the Russians.\" Uncle Alex told Kurt he'd have to be patient with \"civilians,\" who would have so little idea of what he'd been through.\n\n\"Oh, hell,\" Kurt replied. \"I want to be a civilian myself. I'm sick and tired of being in the infantry... I've had enough of it. And I'm goddamned sick and tired of the whole damnfool bloody mess.\"\n\nHe was not alone. Many of the citizen soldiers who came back from the war were sick of it. They weren't professional soldiers. They were college boys and local kids, yanked out of normal lives and hurled into a maelstrom. Most who survived just wanted to put the whole thing behind them. Like so many of his fellow vets, Kurt had come home determined to throw himself vigorously into peacetime life. That meant finishing school, getting married, starting a family, and getting a job. The war played no part in any of that. It was time to take up where he had left off, as if the previous two years had never happened.\n\nSo Jane Marie Cox came to Indianapolis to see her mother, and when she went back to her job in Washington, she was wearing an engagement band made from Kurt's mother's ring. The original ring, an artifact of the family's affluent pre-Depression life, had boasted two large diamonds. Bernard and Kurt each got one to give to their wives.\n\nKurt couldn't wait to get on with married life. He was full of dreams and plans for their future, which would begin the minute he got his discharge. The only reason he stayed behind in Indianapolis instead of spending his precious leave in Washington, near his future wife, is that he was stuck at home waiting for Bernie.\n\nBernard had not been there to greet Kurt; he and Lois were in Elizabethtown, New York, awaiting the birth of their first child. They were still living in Cambridge while Bernie wrapped up his deicing work, but Bow wanted to have the baby at the Community House hospital near her parents. Three days after Kurt's homecoming, Peter Vonnegut was born. Bernie sent photographs of the baby, and Kurt and Alice were amazed to see how much like Bernie he looked. It was hard to believe, Kurt told Jane in a letter, that there were now two such creatures on earth.\n\nHe wrote to her every day. After such a long separation, it was nearly unbearable to be apart once more. But Bernie kept delaying his trip. And he was hoping that after his trip to Indy, Kurt would come back to Cambridge with him, to visit and meet his son. Kurt agreed, planning to spend a few days with Bernie and Bow before heading to Washington and Jane. He wanted to see his brother, but he was eager to start his new life. He consoled himself with the thought that maybe the know-it-all Bernie would pass on some explicit marital tips. If so, he promised to relay them to Jane pronto.\n\nWhile awaiting Bernie's arrival in Indianapolis, Kurt went downtown to the offices of The Indianapolis News and asked to see issues from the second week of February. He wanted to find out how the bombing of Dresden had played in America. Later he would describe finding a column half an inch long, a tiny paragraph merely noting that Dresden had been bombed and two American planes had been lost. He had experienced a life-altering cataclysm, and Americans hadn't even heard about it.\n\nIn fact, the paper's reporting on Dresden was much more thorough than he claimed. Strategic bombing was the front-page story, under a banner headline: \"Great US and RAF Air Raids Drive on Reich.\" The paper reported that 2,250 American bombers had attacked industrial centers in Germany, including delivering \"one of the biggest blows of the war\" to Dresden, which was \"already burning from a night assault by heavy R.A.F. bombers.\" The next day the paper reported that Dresden lay in ruins.\n\nIt's not that Kurt lied or even misremembered. The newspaper's story was simply not enough. Surrounded by movie listings, sports scores, bond prices, and ads for hats, given equal billing with Indy getting a new airport and the manpower shortage in trash collection, how could it suffice? All that heavenly life had been going on back home while he was huddled in hell. And the paper, like all American wartime newspapers, took the standard patriotic tone. The morality of firebombing civilians was not brought up. Kurt had watched Atlantis disappear beneath the waves, and the newspaper had merely reported a fruitful rain. Schoolgirls had boiled to death in water tanks; zoo animals had charred to blackened husks. Kurt saw the giraffe and wished he hadn't. To cause that kind of suffering without feeling shame could only be considered a sin.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie arrived in Indianapolis on August 7, 1945. He had repeatedly delayed the trip because Bow was having terrible headaches after Peter's birth and he didn't think he should leave her alone with the baby. Finally, on Monday, August 6, he left, heading to Indianapolis by rail. The trip took the better part of two days. On Tuesday afternoon, the train stopped in Dayton. He called the family to tell them he'd be in Indy at 4:40.\n\nSomewhere in there, he must have seen the newspapers. A single bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, and banner headlines were declaring that the world had changed. \"Atomic Bomb May Spell Annihilation for Japs,\" proclaimed that morning's Indianapolis Star. A drawing just underneath the headline showed a uranium atom being exploded into two new atoms.\n\nThe article called atomic energy \"the most terrible destructive force ever harnessed by man.\" And it was now in U.S. hands. The president was insisting on immediate surrender, or the Japanese could expect \"a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which never has been seen on this earth.\"\n\nBernard knew they weren't posturing. He understood atomic fission; any scientist working at his level did. He had used radioactive tracers in his work with gas masks at MIT. So he knew why the Star, like papers across the nation, had very little to report about what had actually happened to Hiroshima. No trains were going in or out, and the city was under an impenetrable cloud of dust and smoke. The Japanese were reporting that Hiroshima lay in ruins, but many Americans thought they must be exaggerating. Scientists like Bernie knew better. A city had been wiped from the map, and with that the atomic era had begun, born not in the war rooms of Hitler or Hirohito but in America's halls of science. Born in places like the one where Bernie was about to start work. This wasn't Victorian science: this was something completely new and appalling. The usually unflappable Bernie was sick at heart.\n\nHiroshima cast a pall over the brothers' reunion. Bernie took in Kurt's emaciated appearance, and Kurt took in Bernard's horror at the day's news. Kurt hadn't realized, until he saw his brother's face, how dramatically the world had changed. Just that morning, he had written a cheerful letter to Jane with a 7 inscribed in pencil behind the typed words. Seven for the date, for the seven kids they planned to have. When he saw Bernie, his mood changed.\n\nLike everyone else in the nation, Bernie followed the newspapers' race to piece together the story in the days that followed. The United States, in secret from its citizens and Congress, had entered \"the battle of the laboratories.\" It was a two-and-a-half-year effort, employing more than 125,000 people, costing $2 billion, and requiring the construction of three top secret cities\u2014Oak Ridge, Hanford, Los Alamos\u2014but in the end America had won the war of the labs. The White House called it \"the greatest achievement of organized science in history.\"\n\nTwo days later, on Thursday, organized science annihilated Nagasaki.\n\nThe war was over: so the president and the military were saying. Families surged with new hope of seeing their sons. Many Americans, worn down by months of harrowing reports from the front lines of Iwo Jima or the liberation of the Japanese prisoner of war camps, felt a grim satisfaction: The Japs had gotten what they deserved. And it had been American know-how that gave it to them. The Indianapolis Star ran a breathless story under the headline \"Scientists' Dream Comes True\u2014the Atom Is Split!\"\n\nIt was a dream, but it was a nightmare too. In the days following the two atomic attacks, the nation experienced a kind of cognitive dissonance. The newspapers and radio could talk of nothing but nuclear fission, but the conversation ricocheted between hope and dread. On the one hand, there were stories about atomic airplanes and atomic cars, about atomic medicine that would cure cancer and atomic energy that would power the nation for pennies. The National Press Club in Washington introduced an \"atomic cocktail,\" and Hollywood publicists christened the voluptuous new starlet Linda Christian the \"anatomic bomb.\" On the other hand, there was fear. What would happen when some other nation got its hands on the terrible new weapon? That was inevitable, Bernie told Kurt. There was no keeping this secret. War had grown more frightening than ever: it had commandeered the power to destroy the earth. When the Japanese agreed to surrender, revered radio personality Edward R. Murrow summed up the national mood. \"Seldom, if ever,\" he intoned, \"has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sense of uncertainty and fear, with such a realization that the future is obscure and that survival is not assured.\"\n\nBernie's soon-to-be employer was mentioned in many stories about the bomb; GE's contributions had been critical. And lest anyone think that the scientists could now turn to peacetime pursuits, GE was running ads in papers nationwide pointing out that \"military and naval power drove this enemy to defeat down a road built by research.\" Democracy owed its survival to scientific know-how. That work must not cease with the end of war. \"Scientific progress and productive efficiency,\" declared the ads, \"are the most wonderful weapons of all time because they do not have to be laid aside when the fighting ends. They must not be laid aside.\"\n\nBernie returned to Cambridge earlier than he had planned and without his brother. With the end of the war weeks if not days away, he had to get busy wrapping up his government contract. D. E. Chambers, assistant director of the GE Research Lab, had already written to him asking when he intended to report to his new job. Scientific progress, as the ads declared, must remain on the march.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt and Jane took the small, leaky rowboat out onto Lake Maxinkuckee. It was called the Beralikur\u2014for Bernard, Alice, and Kurt\u2014and it had been the boat the kids used every summer, when the family spent weeks at their cabin on the lake and the three kids spent their days running around with a gaggle of cousins and friends. Those were some of the happiest days of Kurt's life.\n\nThe honeymoon trip had a valedictory feel: this boat ride would be the last in the Beralikur. The cottage, a final vestige of the family's pre-Depression prosperity, had been sold; Kurt and Jane would be the last Vonneguts to stay there.\n\nThe papers were still full of atomic horror as the newlyweds rowed out into the lake. They were adrift in a world gone mad, but at least they had each other.\n\n\"I swam all the way across this lake when I was eleven years old,\" Kurt told his new wife.\n\n\"You told me,\" she said.\n\n\"I don't think you believe I could really do a thing like that,\" he insisted. \"But you ask my brother and sister if it isn't true.\" Bernard and Alice had been there, egging him on. He was tall and gangly, a kid once given a Charles Atlas bodybuilding set by a sadistic high school coach. But in the water, he felt beautiful. As he swam across the lake, he'd felt buoyed up not just by water but by his siblings. For once he'd earned their admiration. He wanted Jane's admiration too, but she wasn't about to hand it over for something as banal as swimming across a lake a decade earlier. She had higher hopes for him, the kinds of hopes he barely dared hold for himself.\n\nSometimes he could hardly believe they were married. But it had been real, all of it, the silver vases full of white gladioli on the Cox backyard terrace, the shimmery chords of a harp, modest words spoken by a minister from First Friends Church. The wedding had been moved from September 14 to September 1 after Kurt received orders to report to the Miami Beach Redistribution Center. There was not enough time for Bernard to get there, so Kurt's high school friend Ben Hitz took his place as best man.\n\nIn the newspaper announcements of their wedding, Jane's academic accomplishments\u2014Tudor Hall, Swarthmore, Phi Beta Kappa\u2014outshone Kurt's. He had only \"attended Cornell.\" But there was also a write-up on the Indianapolis News society page where the columnist Filomena Gould had gushed over the young private's \"fresh and cogent humor.\" He even showed her some of his writing about the war, which she declared \"surpasses any firsthand account of an American soldier's existence in enemy hands.\"\n\nJane liked his writing too. She wanted him to keep doing it, and he was; in his free time, he worked on short stories and humorous essays and fired them off to The New Yorker or The Saturday Evening Post, reporting on his submissions\u2014and rejections\u2014to Jane. He assured her, however, that he had no illusions about trying to write full-time, as a career. He'd get a good job to provide for their seven kids.\n\nA loon popped out of the lake and gave its long, mournful cry, and the newlyweds were silent.\n\nIt was all an ocean. That was one of Jane's favorite sayings, from a book Kurt hadn't read: The Brothers Karamazov. The priest Father Zossima says it to the youngest Karamazov brother, Alyosha. The elderly monk is explaining why someone would ask forgiveness of the birds. \"It's all an ocean,\" he says, meaning the birds, the sky, the clouds, even himself; it's all part of one big surging life force, and the name of that force is God.\n\n\"It's all an ocean!\" Jane would cry when she was struck by how everything was interconnected. It made her happy to believe, fervently, in things that lent mysterious magic to the world. She thought Dostoyevsky's treatise on the human need for that magic was the most brilliant book ever written. She suggested Kurt start reading it on their honeymoon.\n\nThe lake, the loon, the forgiveness of birds, the rain-like patter of incendiary bombs, the exploding sun over Hiroshima: It was all an ocean, but how did it fit together? Kurt knew there were currents connecting the ruin rained down on Japan with the firestorm that haunted his dreams. The link between Hiroshima and Dresden was indiscriminate bombing, what the Allies called total war. But it was deeper than that; it was something about man's inhumanity to man, about technocrats who valued demonstrations of know-how so much they lost sight of the fact that they were killing people: schoolgirls and geezers and mothers pushing babies in prams.\n\nDresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki: the world was spinning off into a series of atrocities, each one worse than the last. It was enough to make a man lose his faith. Kurt's buddy Bernard V. O'Hare had told him on the ship home that the war had killed his faith in God. Kurt didn't believe in God, but he still thought that was too much to lose. But now he too was losing his own faith, faith in knowledge and technology. As a child, Kurt had drawn pictures of futuristic cars and planes and houses. As a young man, he had acquiesced in his brother's and father's desire that he dedicate his life to science. Now it seemed that the urge to discover, to invent, was not noble at all, but evidence of a sickness in the human soul. \"Scientists' Dream Comes True.\" What kind of dream was destruction and death in industrial quantities? This could only be the dream of a species that hated the earth and hated itself too.\n\nJane said they could build a life of poetry and art and beauty. They could go back to school, leaving science to others, and throw themselves into the study of the human soul. They could have friends and raise kids and build a home filled with music and books, rich conversation, and a well-stocked bar. They could make paintings and write stories and make those things their life, a life that, in its own small way, would help change the world. She showed him another of her treasures, a slip of paper given to her by a professor who copied a quotation for each student at semester's end and tucked it into a walnut shell. Jane's quotation was \"Some good sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.\"\n\nRight there on their honeymoon, Kurt painted his first painting. For his subject, he chose a chair\u2014something solid, and homey, and redolent of possibility. And he started reading The Brothers Karamazov.\n\n\"My brother asked the birds to forgive him,\" Father Zossima told Alyosha. \"That sounds senseless, but it was right for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth.\"\n\n* * *\n\nIrving Langmuir took his seat in a room full of people who had just changed the world. It was September 19, 1945, and every famous physicist in the nation\u2014along with eminences from other sciences and humanities as well\u2014seemed to be here at the University of Chicago. Langmuir had seen some of them at a dinner the previous month for the American-Soviet Science Society. Now they had all been summoned to Chicago by the university's dynamic young chancellor, Robert Hutchins, for a secret conference on the scientific and social ramifications of the atomic bomb.\n\nChicago had played a critical role in the Manhattan Project: Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard had achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction there in 1942. Now many of the nation's most prominent physicists were headed for Chicago to join its new Institute for Nuclear Studies. But it was crucial that the bomb be contemplated not just as a technical problem but as a social one. The atomic era had begun, and no one knew what came next.\n\nThe general mood was grim. A terrible thought was troubling many scientific minds: not every scientific advance was necessarily good for humanity. Leo Szilard set the conference's tone with a speech full of foreboding. The bombs that had fallen in Japan, he said, had a one-mile radius of destruction. Atomic bombs in ten years would have a destruction radius ten times greater. The Soviets would inevitably get the bomb, probably in two and a half years, and in six years they would have enough of them to destroy every major city in America. The United States by that time would have built enough atomic bombs to destroy every major city on the planet. The only hope was international control of all atomic energy, which required something drastic: world government. This would probably only come about through World War III: he estimated the chance of instituting world government without war at only 10 percent.\n\nSome in the audience objected to such a dire forecast, arguing that world peace could be possible without world government. Others argued that Szilard was probably wrong about the Soviets getting the bomb so soon. Irving Langmuir spoke up then. He had been to Russia just a few months earlier, he said, and he agreed with Szilard. The Soviets would catch up in less than five years, probably more like two or three. Their science would surpass ours in ten. The critical question was how much information the United States should share with them. In his opinion, the United States should share its science freely.\n\nMany scientists agreed. Science abhors secrecy. It was said that the Army was going to seek legislation giving it total control of all atomic bomb research so it could continue to keep the details classified. But to the scientists, the idea of keeping the atomic secret was absurd. Other nations would get atomic capability; the only question was when.\n\nWhat the scientists hoped for was international control, including an inspection system that would keep nations from building more bombs. Langmuir pointed out that it wasn't such a bad thing that the Russians would have the bomb soon: once other nations had nuclear weapons, it would be less likely that the United States would use them. The military strategist Bernard Brodie was there, and he agreed with Langmuir. The following year, he would publish \"War in the Atomic Age\" in a collection called The Absolute Weapon. The essay would be a founding text of what came to be known as the theory of nuclear deterrence.\n\nBut many in the room recoiled from the idea of peace through a balance of power based on fear. To most of those present, seeing atomic war as a kind of game was morally repugnant. Worse still would be a world in which nations raced to out-arm one another, building bigger and more fearsome weapons. Already the Manhattan Project physicist Edward Teller was advocating building a \"Super bomb,\" a hydrogen atomic bomb that would make the first A-bombs look puny. But not many in Chicago agreed with him. Most of the scientists gathered there were convinced that an atomic arms race would be nothing less than the end of the world.\n\nIn fact, many seemed to feel guilty about their role in having created the first superweapon. This seemed illogical to Irving. The atomic bomb had ended the war and unquestionably saved many lives, Japanese as well as American. Yet many of the Chicago scientists seemed to feel it shouldn't have been dropped or even that they shouldn't have made it. \"The physicists have known sin,\" the head of Los Alamos, J. Robert Oppenheimer, would later declare, \"and this is a knowledge they cannot lose.\"\n\nMany scientists had read H. G. Wells's 1914 novel The World Set Free, a story that takes place in a future where scientists have harnessed atomic energy. Rather than ushering in a new era of ease and enlightenment, atomic power causes massive social upheaval and world war. The world is finally \"set free\" when humans realize that a technological advance as momentous as atomic power calls for an end to nationalism and a new era of world government in which science becomes \"the new king of the world.\"\n\nSzilard was so taken by the book that he ordered a copy of it for the Chicago scientists. Along with most of the conference participants, he agreed with Wells's main thesis: once scientific knowledge reaches a certain level, separate sovereign states are no longer possible. In the atomic era, nations would go the way of coal: they would be replaced by something better.\n\nAt the conference, the scientists hammered out a consensus based on three simple points: there was no secret that could be kept, there was no defense against the bomb, and there must be international control of atomic energy. They decided to form a group, the Federation of Atomic Scientists (later changed to the Federation of American Scientists), dedicated to educating the public\u2014and the government\u2014about this new technology. It was, the anthropologist Robert Redfield declared, their moral duty. With that, what was known as the Scientists' Movement was born. It made its public debut with a two-page statement published in Life magazine. The statement hewed to the three main points: no secret, no defense, international control.\n\nAs one of America's most famous scientists, Irving Langmuir was in a position to take their message to the people. He stuck to the script, at least at first. In October, he testified before a Senate subcommittee, predicting that Russian science would trump America's in ten to twenty years. In November, he addressed a joint meeting of the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences, insisting that an atomic war could make the earth uninhabitable and that \"world control of all atomic energy seems the only alternative.\" But in late November, back before the Senate to argue for an international agreement, he urged that \"the Governments of the United States, Britain and Canada make immediate contacts with the Russian government to secure, if possible, their tentative agreement instead of relying solely on the more cumbersome machinery of the United Nations.\"\n\nAt heart, Irving was a pragmatist. Sure, he'd had his youthful flirtation with socialism, but like so many men of his age and status he had settled into a low-key laissez-faire conservatism. Theoretically, he had no problem with the concept of world government. But instituting it was likely to be difficult. Science would progress most smoothly if the Western powers simply stuck together and did their best to pacify the Russians.\n\nAlso unlike many of his colleagues, Irving knew and accepted that science would never return to its prewar openness. He was not an academic but an industrial researcher at one of the nation's biggest defense contractors. Government security clearance had always been an informal requirement at the GE Research Lab. Soon it would become mandatory for employment. This didn't worry Irving. He didn't see how it could possibly become a problem.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt stood in the shower, thinking of Jane. His wife, Woofie. That was her old nickname. \"Woofie on the dance floor or Woofie in a seminar or Woofie in a bull session or Jane Marie out for tea,\" declared the 1944 Swarthmore Halcyon, \"is the same piquant treat.\" Jane was putting a stop to that now, though. Sometimes he called her Wifey. He was trying out other nicknames too: Lovey, Sweety, Dear Heart, Darling, Lambykins. They were jokey, but his love was real.\n\nWater was drenching him in a shower stall in Kansas, but he was seeing Jane standing in the Florida ocean. Her dress was hiked up around her hips\u2014oh, how he loved those hips\u2014and her ankles were being licked by the waves. She had come down to Miami Beach while he was there awaiting his post-combat reassignment to Fort Riley. They had stayed at the Roney Plaza Hotel: palm trees, cabanas, pool, ocean beach, and their own bed; it was bliss.\n\nWhat other shores, she had wondered there in the surf, had the water molecules that were touching her touched before? She was always saying things like that, brilliant things that emerged from the part of her he thought of as her fourth dimension, the part full of wisdom and inspiration and poetry. There was Jane, the smart, charming woman the world knew, and there was Jane Marie, his Jane Marie, lyrical and spiritual and capable of depths that other people could only imagine.\n\nAt Fort Riley, he had been assigned the job of clerk-typist. In between typing up reports of correspondence received, he was writing to anyone he could think of to speed up his discharge. At least he had finished reading The Brothers Karamazov. Here, in the miserable flat Kansas landscape, where he cycled between apathy, depression, and joyful memories of Jane, the book was like a beacon of sanity. Dostoevsky was saying something he had always suspected: that if there wasn't a God, humans would have to invent him. They needed that order, that illusion that things made sense. But the real salvation, the true holiness of the world, came only from the world itself.\n\nNext up, he was going to read War and Peace. Also a life of Beethoven and a textbook on calculus. He had to be worthy of Jane\u2014and of the University of Chicago.\n\nThe day the acceptance letter arrived was the happiest in his life. He was going to finish his undergraduate degree on the GI Bill, and this time it wouldn't be in science. He would study anthropology\u2014which at Chicago was a program that led to a master's degree, not a bachelor's. And Jane had been given a fellowship for grad school in Slavic languages and literature. They would enroll\u2014if his damn discharge papers would finally come through\u2014in the winter semester. They would finally start living the beautiful, intellectual life they had always wanted.\n\nChicago had been an easy choice. Kurt had thought about going to its law school even before going to war. His cousin Walter, a close friend, was studying philosophy there now, also on the GI Bill. Walter came from the \"artsy\" side of the Vonnegut family: his parents were actors. And he and Kurt had another thing in common: Walter had been a navigator on B-17s during the war, and after being shot down, he'd been a German POW for two years.\n\nKurt couldn't wait to be done with the Army. Fort Riley was dreary, and he had little to do. The only good part was he had enough free time to write short stories. One of the very first he attempted was \"Atrocity Story,\" a thinly disguised account of his fellow POW Michael Palaia's execution. Kurt changed his name to Steve Malotti and set the story in the Red Cross camp at Le Havre, where the narrator and a couple of others try unsuccessfully to get the bureaucrats in the War Crimes Commission tent interested in Malotti's case. The story ended\u2014as the real event had\u2014in a frustrating lack of closure. But Palaia's story haunted Kurt, and it would until he got it right.\n\nPaper was scarce, so he typed his stories on the backs of the meteorological briefs that rolled off the office Teletype: \"Scattered thundershowers occurred early this morning in Minnesota, northern Wisconsin and western Upper Michigan, and are occurring again this afternoon in Northern Minnesota.\" On the flip side of the weather report, he typed another attempt at his war material: \"Brighten Up!\" This time, he aimed for a lighter tone than in \"Atrocity Story,\" focusing on the black marketeering of a \"dissipated little weasel\" named Louis Gigliano, who manages to use his time as a POW to rack up massive profits. It was an improvement, story-wise, funnier and not so pedantic. Friends of his at the base who read it said he could write.\n\nWhen he finished his stories, he sent them to Jane. It was her critical eye he really cared about. She had been an editor on Swarthmore's literary magazine, The Dodo, and could write herself. He trusted her. She typed up his stories, editing them in the process. She picked out a selection to send to the \"writer's consultant\" Scammon Lockwood to get some advice. Kurt waited anxiously, fearful of what she might think of him if Lockwood said he was a hack. Fortunately, Lockwood thought he had promise and for another twenty dollars, would help edit his work. They declined, because they didn't have the cash. But Lockwood's praise convinced Jane more than ever that Kurt could write for a living one day. He protested: How could he support seven kids on a writer's income? He thought he should get a job in a newsroom or a school. He knew from his misery at Fort Riley that an office job wasn't for him. But something steady and salaried, that's what he wanted. Jane was wonderful, but she was impractical. He told her she didn't understand finances. She said that she just knew it would all work out.\n\nSometimes it scared him, Jane's conviction that he would become a great writer. She told him he was a modern-day Chekhov, that if he'd lived in the Elizabethan age, he'd have been Shakespeare. She believed his works would help create the literature of the postwar era. He thought that was pushing it. It was easy to believe he was a genius when he and Jane were daydreaming, but now, as he toiled away as a clerk-typist in Kansas, it seemed like mere fantasy. They were just normal people, he told her; they should not aim for greatness. Bernie was the great one in the family, the one who was going to make a contribution.\n\nBut one day in November, reading the foreign affairs section of Newsweek, he had a strange sensation. He knew about these things. In fact, he knew more than the writer did. He knew what Europe looked like, how it tasted. He knew what artillery sounded like coming in, what it felt like to be crammed into a boxcar with sixty smelly men, what it sounded like to be bombed, what it felt like to begin to starve. He knew how to make iron ration soup, how a man who had given up hope stared into space with blank despair. He knew all this because he was there. His experience had taught him things that were important. Writing about them wouldn't be just for him. People should hear about what he knew if they were going to make better decisions in the future. He told Jane in a letter that he would take his writing seriously. She had given him the courage at least to do that.\n\nWhen his discharge finally came, he was ready. He was going to go back to school and to write. From this point on, he was going to live his own life.\n\nHead in the Clouds\n\nSchenectady, New York, was divided into three parts. South of downtown lay neat rows of modest homes, where almost all of the workers lived. In the east, just beyond the leafy campus of Union College, was the GE Realty Plot, where the managers and executives had stately homes. And in the center, just south of the Mohawk River, belching and clanking at the end of Erie Boulevard, were the machines.\n\nThe sprawling Schenectady Works, as the industrial complex was known, was GE's world headquarters and one of its largest factories. A brick and steel compound ringed by a fence, the hulking, humming city within a city contained forty thousand employees in more than two hundred buildings. The Works had a hospital, a fire station, a power plant, and a foundry. It had clubhouses, restaurants, employee stores, its own sound studios, and a radio station, WGY. Blinking down on all of it through the smokestack haze was the sign atop Building 37: yellow letters ten feet tall spelling out \"General Electric,\" crowned by the giant red GE insignia. \"The initials of a friend,\" the company called its logo. Employees called it \"the meatball.\"\n\nFor the last three years, the Works had turned out the tools of war in quantities never before imagined. Now its three daily shifts cranked out the fruits of peace: the steam turbines, generators, motors, electrical equipment, and control systems that would help build the nation's postwar prosperity. Americans and foreigners alike came to gape at the wonder of it. Tour groups clutching maps followed guides from building to building, wide-eyed at this mecca of American industry.\n\nBernard wanted to be close to work, but he didn't want to live in the noisy, bustling factory town. Bow had grown up in a sylvan village in the Adirondacks. They had a dog that needed room to romp. He ran ads in the Schenectady Gazette for a farm or a home in the country. Postwar housing was tight, so when something came on the market that was almost in the country, he grabbed it. The house was in Alplaus, a tiny village right across the Mohawk River from Schenectady. It sat on the village's main street but was set far back on a big lot, and one whole side hung out over a tangle of trees and vines at the edge of Alplaus Creek. It was a peaceful spot, just a short walk to the block-long village center, with its firehouse, grocery store, and post office at the back of a bike shop. Most of Alplaus's residents worked for GE. It was a short drive to the Works, and if Bow needed the car, Bernie could take one of the daily buses that ran from Alplaus to the GE gate.\n\nThe buildings at the Works were numbered so people could navigate the sprawling complex, but Bernie was lucky: he only had to get himself to Building 5, right near the gate. The GE Research Lab's cozy connection with management was reflected in its location right next door to Building 37, the main administration building; the two brick office blocks were connected by an arched sky bridge. In the midst of the sprawling Works, the Research Lab stood apart, a cluster of workrooms where brainy Ph.D.'s cooked up experiments with little regard for their practical value. It was a temple of science lodged in a city of trade. Yet the Research Lab was the branch of GE most essential to proving the company motto: \"Progress is our most important product.\"\n\nThe General Electric Research Laboratory was the brainchild of GE's first celebrity scientist: Charles Proteus Steinmetz. A four-foot-tall, hunchbacked, cigar-puffing socialist, the eccentric Steinmetz was a mathematical and electrical genius who dominated GE in the early twentieth century. GE's generators wouldn't have been the same without him. One of the most famous stories told about Steinmetz is probably apocryphal, but it conveys the reverence in which he was held. Mid-career, the story goes, Steinmetz was called in to look at a broken generator in one of GE's plants. Steinmetz asked for the generator's mechanical drawings and spent a couple of days poring over them. Then he approached the machine and put his ear to it. After a few moments, he took out a piece of chalk and marked an X on the side. Open the generator there, he told the engineers, and remove so many turns of wire from its turbine. Asked the fee for his services, he said $1,000. Shocked by the amount, the plant engineers insisted on an itemized invoice. Steinmetz sent them a bill. It said,\n\nMarking chalk \"X\" on side of generator: $1.\n\nKnowing where to mark chalk \"X\": $999.\n\nThat was Steinmetz's particular genius: knowing where to mark the X. And yet the company was initially reluctant to embrace his plan for a research lab\u2014until 1900, when GE patents began to expire. Facing the loss of market dominance in lightbulbs, management suddenly saw Steinmetz's point: keeping a group of research scientists on the payroll meant anything they invented or discovered would be the property of GE.\n\nOther industrial labs were narrowly focused on churning out new or improved products. GE's was different. In a radical new approach to industrial research, the scientists worked only part of the time on practical tasks like coming up with new patentable types of lamp filaments. The rest of the time they were allowed to conduct pure research.\n\nIt was a fantastic success. Given the opportunity to explore freely, the scientists came up with all kinds of new inventions. By World War II, the GE Research Lab could claim responsibility for the electric range, transoceanic radio, the portable X-ray machine, the turbo-supercharged jet engine, and autopilot. Its contributions to both world war efforts further boosted its importance to a company whose growth was increasingly driven by government contracts. GE dubbed it \"the House of Magic.\" The scientists hated the name\u2014they were doing science, not magic tricks\u2014but the boys in PR loved it.\n\nBernard fit the place temperamentally. The Research Lab was sometimes described as having a university atmosphere. But in its early days, it was more like a salon, a mecca of what Bernie called Victorian science: the eccentric but brilliant researchers followed their curiosity wherever it took them, moving easily between physical, material, and even biological sciences. Having a Ph.D. in physics didn't mean you couldn't work in neurology if you liked; having a Nobel Prize in chemistry didn't mean you left statistics to the mathematicians. The scientists discussed their work with each other in weekly cross-disciplinary presentations and frequently had far-flung hobbies outside the lab as well: Steinmetz had kept a greenhouse full of strange plants and a menagerie of deadly animals, including alligators, black widow spiders, and rattlesnakes. The lab's director, Doc Whitney, was famous for his obsession with turtles. Albert Hull taught Greek before becoming a physicist and contributed the many classical coinages for the lab's new inventions\u2014thyratron, magnetron, kenotron, dynatron\u2014that one inventor later dubbed \"Graeco-Schenectady.\" Irving Langmuir spent much of his spare time studying the hydrodynamics of the Adirondacks' Lake George, where he had an island house, and his assistant Vincent Schaefer collected arrowheads, archaeological artifacts, and natural history specimens.\n\n\"Research is appreciation,\" Doc Whitney liked to say. He often told the story of how, as a young professor at MIT, he had given students an assignment in which they combined the elements of sulfur and iron in a glass tube and heated them over a Bunsen burner. As the iron and sulfur combined into iron sulfide, the vessel was suffused with a bright glow. Students writing up the experiment almost inevitably reported that the elements had combined. When they did, Whitney would send them back to the lab with the instructions \"Repeat and note the glow.\"\n\nBernard never had to be told to note the glow. Like Whitney, he considered research an expression of appreciation for the natural world and its principles, and he couldn't wait to get down to doing it. But almost as soon as he arrived in Schenectady, he was denied the opportunity. GE was on strike.\n\nAlmost before the VJ Day celebrations wound down, the nation was swept by a wave of strikes. Throughout the war, laborers had accepted wage controls and strike bans, even while upping production, and profits had soared. Workers expected corrective wage increases once the war was won. Instead, after VJ Day, employers, fearing the loss of government contracts, began laying off workers and cutting hours. So in the fall of 1945, union members across the nation\u2014oilmen, coal miners, autoworkers, truckers, meatpackers, newspaper printers, phone and telegraph operators\u2014began walking off their jobs.\n\nBernie probably hadn't expected to see it happen at GE, any more than President Charlie Wilson had. The company was supposed to be a liberal, employee-friendly place: it was widely known that in 1937, while other corporations were fighting unionization, GE had willingly hammered out a contract with the United Electrical Workers. Employees called it the \"Generous Electric Company\"; management didn't think its workers would strike over a smaller-than-requested pay raise. Yet in early January, a hundred thousand of them did.\n\nThe strike hobbled the entire company. Dozens of factories, including the Schenectady Works, were effectively shut down as picketing electrical workers denied access to everyone, including non-union, white-collar employees. Bernie, along with all the Research Lab scientists, was told to work from home.\n\nPublic opinion favored the striking workers. Desperate to avert a public relations disaster, GE settled with the union on a wage increase of eighteen and a half cents an hour. Now at last Bernie could start his new job\u2014by looking around for a good problem to work on. If he didn't find something quickly, someone would assign him something, and he preferred to choose a research project himself. So, after years of wartime interruption, he finally got his life back on track.\n\n* * *\n\nChicago was a dream come true. Kurt and Jane's apartment on Ellis Avenue was within walking distance of the university and from Walter and his wife, Helen, who lived on Lake Park Avenue. The cousins were frequently at each other's homes or strolling down to Lake Michigan together. Kurt and Jane loved the lake. They loved having Walt and Helen in town, and they loved the university. Chicago was a heady place to be. The school had always been a magnet for leftists, skeptics, bohemians, and civil rights activists; now the issues raised by the bomb gave its intellectual life a new urgency. But Chicago's thinkers weren't wallowing in atomic dread. They were stepping up to help shape this new atomic age. Hyde Park buzzed with a new prospect: that, just as in H. G. Wells's novel The World Set Free, humanity had learned its lesson at last.\n\nKurt and Jane embraced the idea. The horror of Hiroshima could at least bring this new hope: that human beings might finally change, might finally move beyond the outmoded nation-state and form a world government. If so, there might be hope for the elimination of war. Some scientists were even acting on their conviction that they must lead the way in renouncing violence. In the spring of 1946, as the government prepared to test atomic bombs by dropping them on a fleet of captured enemy ships at Bikini Atoll, some prominent scientists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, refused to take part.\n\nIt was gratifying that Chicago was at the center of this movement. Chicago chancellor Robert Hutchins and physicist Leo Szilard were leading spokesmen for the world government cause. The Chicago-based Federation of American Scientists published the first issue of its journal, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the month after Kurt and Jane arrived. Soon after that, it put out the bestseller One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb, a collection of passionate essays advocating international control of atomic energy. Contributors included Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, Edward Condon, and Irving Langmuir.\n\nKurt's own anthropology professor Robert Redfield had helped form the University Office of Inquiry into the Social Aspects of Atomic Energy and had joined Chicago's Committee to Draft a World Constitution. He believed that the social sciences\u2014especially anthropology\u2014were going to be critical in helping humanity adjust its institutions for the new atomic age.\n\nKurt admired Redfield, whose work he began to follow when he switched his specialization to cultural anthropology. He had started off studying physical anthropology, which had charts and maps and measurements and all kinds of complicated theories, making it comforting to someone who valued scientific thinking. But there were also tedious scientific tasks, like measuring the size of early human brains by pouring grains of rice into their skulls, then measuring the rice. Disappointed, Kurt had gone to his adviser and confessed that the science bored him; he would rather study poetry. The adviser had recommended cultural anthropology, \"poetry which pretends to be scientific.\" Kurt liked the idea, and he threw himself into the new field.\n\nHe filled his notebooks with cramped notes: phases of different cultures; notes on cultivation, ceramics, human sacrifices, and metallurgy; ideas about literacy, agriculture, the development of moral orders. He learned about a vast array of cultures: Finns, Kazakhs, South Pacific Islanders, Mayans, Incas, ancient Chinese, Turks, Native Americans. He devoured journal articles, marking them up with red pencil. He studied Turkish linguistics. It was still rigorous and precise. But now all that precision was being directed toward something he actually cared about: not molecules or cells or atoms, but human beings and the cultures they made.\n\nHe was especially taken with Professor Redfield's ideas about the changes and dislocations that result when small isolated communities\u2014Redfield called them folk societies\u2014evolve into sprawling, heterogeneous cultures. Culture, Professor Redfield declared, was in a constant state of flux; even the moral order was always forming, dissolving, re-forming. Culture wasn't something that simply happened to humans; it was something they could tinker with. You could see it happening as the atomic age washed over Chicago and the university's best minds worked on reshaping the culture to accommodate it.\n\nKurt could play his part in that by writing. So he attempted, once more, to write about his Dresden experience in an essay called \"Wailing Shall Be in All Streets.\" It was, like his letter home, pointed and concise. It began with an account of basic training and how the infantry were urged to \"kill, kill, kill,\" without being told very clearly why they were fighting. \"A lot of people relished the idea of total war,\" he wrote; \"it had a modern ring to it, in keeping with our spectacular technology.\" But the war, he wrote, had left him \"sick at heart.\" The reason was simple: \"In February, 1945, Dresden, Germany, was destroyed, and with it over one hundred thousand human beings. I was there.\"\n\nI was there. It was something he would say again and again.\n\nHe went on to tell of his experience helping to find and burn bodies after the firestorm. But then the essay devolved into several pages of outright moralizing.\n\n\"There can be no doubt that the Allies fought on the side of right and the Germans and Japanese on the side of wrong. World War II was fought for near-Holy motives. But I stand convinced that the brand of justice in which we dealt, wholesale bombings of civilian populations, was blasphemous.\"\n\nHe sent \"Wailing\" to The American Mercury, which rejected it, but editor Charles Angoff suggested Kurt send the magazine something else.\n\nHe tried a different tack in an essay called \"I Shall Not Want,\" where he tried to convey what it felt like to starve. Here he tried to keep the tone light, thinking maybe he could sell it to Gourmet. Some parts worked, such as his account of how the prisoners kept journals full of fantastical descriptions of meals they would eat once free, arguing about whose imagined menus were best. But other parts were over-formal, tendentious even. Jane went through it with a pen, striking out stilted constructions and wordiness. It helped, but not enough. Kurt sent it off to The New Republic's college essay contest. The prize was a summer internship at the magazine. He didn't win.\n\nIn July, Kurt and Jane vacationed at Lake Maxinkuckee with Walt, Helen, and their baby son, Kit; Kurt and Jane were his godparents. The two couples played cards and stayed up late talking about politics. That month, Congress passed an act creating the Atomic Energy Commission. It felt hopeful: like the first step on the road away from madness and toward sanity through world government.\n\n* * *\n\nNot long after his arrival at GE, Bernie dropped in on the lab of his old deicing acquaintances. Irving Langmuir was away for most of the spring, giving the prestigious Hitchcock Lectures at Berkeley, but Vincent Schaefer was in Schenectady, moving forward with their new investigations. Bernie told Vince that he had grown interested in the process of supercooling: lowering the temperature of a liquid or gas without converting it to a solid. Vince said he and Irving were working on the same thing. Specifically, they were trying to figure out if they could manufacture snow.\n\nSnow had brought Vincent Schaefer and Irving Langmuir together. Vince was president of the Schenectady Wintersports Club, and Irving, who also adored skiing, was a member. In the early 1930s, Vince got the idea of sponsoring a snow train for skiers out of Schenectady. Irving, an avid pilot, offered to take him up to look for likely routes in his open-cockpit Waco plane. Before long, the startled Vince found himself flying the plane\u2014banking, turning, diving, even practicing stalling and recovering, all under the tutelage of the brilliant scientist. They flew over the Catskills and scouted out ski hills. By the time they landed, Vince was groggy with incipient hypothermia. Langmuir took the younger man to his own house, and Marion, Irving's wife, fed him hot tea and cookies until he felt better.\n\nTo some people, Vince seemed an unlikely assistant for Irving Langmuir: he had never even finished high school. His father was sickly, and Vince had to leave school at sixteen in order to help support the family. On the advice of an uncle, he joined the GE apprentice program and trained as a machinist, landing a job as a drill press operator. Eventually graduating to model maker for the Research Lab, he quickly became known as the person who could put together any kind of apparatus the scientists needed. Intelligent, ambitious, and with a burning desire to be a \"real\" scientist, he was soon not simply making lab machinery but helping in the design of experiments.\n\nIn 1932, when Langmuir's old assistant retired, Vincent became his right-hand man. Vince called Irving \"the Boss,\" but they were really scientific partners. Irving put little stock in degrees or credentials: he cared about whether a person was curious and thoughtful. Bernie was the same way: it never seemed odd to him that Vince had made himself indispensable.\n\nLike Bernie, Irving and Vince had grown intrigued by supercooling during the war. In their work on precipitation static, they had attempted to conduct experiments at the research station on New Hampshire's Mount Washington, home to some of the worst weather in the world. One day, as they were hiking up\u2014they preferred to hike up and ski out when they had work to do at the summit\u2014Langmuir stopped and indicated some clouds that hovered on the mountain's peak. They were heavy and ominous, but only one lone snowflake drifted to the ground.\n\n\"Look, Vince,\" he said. \"With all these clouds everywhere, there's only a flake here and a flake there. Why? I think we ought to do some more studies on that.\"\n\nThey knew that the clouds on the mountain peak were often supercooled. Objects at the summit research station could amass ice three feet thick without a drop of rain or snow falling. Irving intuited that this must happen because the clouds passing over the peak contained large numbers of water droplets that were colder than 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Those droplets didn't freeze until something disturbed them, such as sudden contact with a metal surface. It was the same process that caused airplanes to accumulate ice when flying through supercooled clouds. But were there ways to force the supercooled water droplets in a cloud to freeze spontaneously, after which they would fall as snow or rain?\n\nPeople have dreamed of inducing precipitation for as long as they have been thirsty. But efforts to make rain were usually mystical, not scientific. Military men had long claimed that rain tended to fall after big battles, leading to the idea that firing cannons into the sky might \"bust\" the clouds. In the nineteenth century, some scientists argued that filling the air with particulate matter was likely to bring down rain; James Pollard Espy, the nation's first government meteorologist, proposed burning large swaths of the nation's forests to make rain for the arid West. But most purported rainmakers were charlatans and con men. No one really knew how to make rain because no one understood how rain happened.\n\nSnow and rain seem like some of the most basic phenomena on the planet, yet they were still largely mysterious. Meteorologists knew that clouds form when moist air cools to its dew point, converting its water vapor to cloud droplets. At some point, some of those droplets would convert to ice crystals. The ice crystals would collect water and grow until they were heavy enough to fall. But what made those first droplets turn to ice?\n\nIn the 1930s, the meteorologist Walter Findeisen proposed that they required a nucleus\u2014a small atmospheric particle of dust or salt spray for the water to cling to. Findeisen suggested that if he was right, it should be possible to introduce artificial nuclei into clouds to stimulate rain. Langmuir and Schaefer had not yet read Findeisen's foundational work; they preferred to start their work with experiments, rather than the literature. But they had guessed correctly that the cloud droplets require a nucleus to convert to ice. So, with the war over, they had decided to test different chemical substances for their ability to do just that.\n\nBecause Vince was already conducting experiments on supercooled water, Bernie decided that he would focus on supercooled metals. But he kept in touch, dropping in on Vince periodically to see how he was progressing. In the early summer, Vince had an idea that was startlingly simple. He requisitioned a GE chest freezer. When it arrived, he lined it with black velvet and aimed a light at its innards. He chilled it to 10 degrees below freezing and breathed into it, and voil\u00e0\u2014his breath made a cloud! Because cold air is heavier than warm, the cloud stayed there in the freezer, even with the lid open. Now, with a laboratory cloud, he could begin trying to make laboratory snow.\n\nFor several weeks, Vince assailed his cloud with substances that might function as ice nuclei: sulfur, magnesium oxide, volcanic dust, talc, diatomaceous earth. As the summer heated up, his lab partner Katharine Blodgett\u2014the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge University\u2014noted that his experiment was cleverly timed: it required him to spend sweltering days in the lab hanging the upper half of his body into a freezer. But one day in July, it got so hot the freezer couldn't keep up. To get his freezer back down to the right temperature quickly, Vincent got a large block of dry ice, which the Research Lab always had on hand, and threw it in. To his surprise, the entire cloud inside instantly converted into shimmering crystals of snow. After all the substances he'd tried, dry ice\u2014nothing more than solid carbon dioxide\u2014had nucleated the cloud.\n\nVincent wrote up the experiment in his lab notebook: \"I have just finished a set of experiments in the laboratory which I believe points out the mechanism for the production of myriads of ice crystals.\" When he wandered into the adjoining lab, he was less circumspect. To the astonished scientists he announced, \"Now I know how to make it snow.\"\n\nWhen Langmuir returned to Schenectady in late July, Vincent showed him the freezer experiment. The Boss saw the point at once. In his GE lab notebook he wrote, \"Control of Weather.\"\n\nThey both knew this was their next big project. Irving had recently heard that his name was on the list of prominent figures President Truman was considering to head up the Atomic Energy Commission. But now nothing could be further from his mind than atomic bombs and nuclear power. He was onto something even more important. In his small notebook, he recorded his plans. They would fly to the tops of clouds and seed them with pellets of dry ice or a stream of liquid carbon dioxide. They would make flights through various types of clouds measuring wind speed, temperatures, vertical currents, and the distribution of water droplets. \"Develop theory of growth of rain drops,\" he wrote. \"Can we cause cloud of uniform droplets to give rain?\"\n\nHe spoke to Guy Suits about getting a plane. But he would also need instruments to record all the data they would collect. Then he had another thought.\n\n\"What is Vonnegut doing?\"\n\n* * *\n\nOn the last day of August 1946, The New Yorker dedicated its entire issue to John Hersey's thirty-one-thousand-word article \"Hiroshima.\" Rather than report on the event in the traditional way, Hersey followed six characters in detail from the moments just before the bomb fell, documenting their activities in the horrific days that followed. Written in a flat, almost clinical tone that avoids overt moralizing or rhetorical flourish, the piece piles detail upon detail until the cumulative result is far more harrowing than any attempt to sermonize. The issue sold out at newsstands in a few hours. Rarely has a magazine piece\u2014which soon became a book\u2014caused such powerful soul-searching. Albert Einstein sent a thousand copies to fellow scientists, urging them to consider its implications.\n\nIt was the sort of response Kurt would have liked to provoke with \"Wailing Shall Be in All Streets.\" But his little piece on Dresden was not gaining traction. After The American Mercury rejected it, he sent it to Harper's, The Atlantic, Time, and The Yale Review. Edward Weeks at The Atlantic was positive enough that Kurt revised it and sent it again. But in the end, no one wanted it. He threw himself back into his anthropology studies at Chicago.\n\nAnd then, before the fall semester could even get going, Jane told him she was pregnant. It had happened: an atom of Kurt and an atom of Jane had smashed together and split into two new cells. Two to four to eight to sixteen to thirty-two and on and on\u2014a chain reaction bringing life, not death.\n\nShe would drop out of school. That's what women did. Together they went looking for her adviser, a gloomy Russian who had fled Stalin and washed up on the shore of Lake Michigan to bestow the pearls of Russian culture on frat boys, ex-GIs, and coeds. They found him in the library. Jane told him she was going to resign her scholarship and drop out of grad school. And then\u2014she couldn't help it\u2014she broke down and wept.\n\n\"Mrs. Vonnegut, pregnancy is the beginning of life, not the end of it,\" he sniffed.\n\nYes, it was a beginning, the beginning of a life they had imagined together, their married life with seven kids. But it felt like the end of something too. They shared so many dreams: to write, to learn, to travel, to help cure an ailing world. Having seven kids was among their dreams, but now it was cutting to the head of the line, especially for Jane.\n\n* * *\n\nWhen he heard the whine of an airplane over the village of Alplaus, Bernie rushed outside. He had come home for lunch; his house was just a mile from the airport. Vince and Irving were still at the airstrip, experimenting. In fact, that might be Vince overhead. Bernie peered at the airplane intently. Sure enough, a long unnatural trail of something that looked like ice crystals was streaming out behind it. He ran for his camera.\n\nBernie was now officially part of Langmuir and Schaefer's team. They had invited him to join them soon after Schaefer's freezer experiment. For months now, Vince had been conducting more freezer tests while Bernie scoured the crystallographic tables, trying to find other substances that might nucleate ice crystals. Meanwhile, Langmuir was filling his notebook with theoretical calculations of the number and size of snow crystals likely to be produced in different circumstances.\n\nThey had all been longing to try out dry ice nucleation on a real cloud. But the fall had been frustratingly mild: sunny, warm days, with barely a cloud to speak of in the heavens. The bright blue Schenectady skies deepened to a rich royal tone at dusk, and the stars blinked the promise of another clear day. Every morning, Vincent was up at dawn, scanning hopefully for clouds. He told the others he was so eager to test his theory he couldn't sleep.\n\nBy November 12, unable to bear the suspense, they had decided to make a practice flight. They rented a single-engine Fairchild plane and got Curtis Talbot of the GE test flight division to fly it. Using a motorized dispenser he had designed, Vince released crushed dry ice into cumulus clouds at three to five thousand feet. But the cloud temperature was nowhere near cold enough to produce snow. There were some more promising stratus clouds at around twelve thousand feet, but Talbot told them the single-engine plane could go no higher than ten thousand feet.\n\nA day later, the weather had finally given them what they wanted. The temperature was around freezing, and the sky to the east and north of Schenectady was filled with parallel bands of thick stratus clouds. An excited Vince had called Talbot as soon as he stepped outside, then driven to the local dairy and bought six pounds of crushed dry ice. Now he was up there, dispensing it.\n\nBernie retrieved his camera and went back outside. He fumbled with the aperture setting, then searched the sky again for Curtis and Vince in the Fairchild. Langmuir had had a two-way radio installed on the plane after the previous day's flight, so he was probably talking to them now from the tower.\n\nThe plane Bernie was watching flew in an odd pattern, the trail of snow behind it tracing its path. The path was growing more elaborate. It almost looked like a P. Then it looked like an E. Suddenly his heart sank.\n\nP... E... P... S... I...\n\nIt was not Vince and Curtis at all. Bernie couldn't help but laugh at himself. Ruefully, he went inside and put his camera away.\n\nBut when he got back to the lab, everything was in an uproar. Vincent had not done any skywriting that morning. He had done something even better: he had made snow.\n\nIrving and Vince recounted the story over and over. The stratus clouds were high up in the sky, so after takeoff Curtis had begun climbing, taking forty minutes to reach ten thousand feet. Vince spotted a promising cloud in the vicinity of Mount Greylock, over the Massachusetts border. Its base was well above them at around thirteen thousand feet.\n\n\"Can we get to it?\" he asked Talbot. Curtis, getting into the spirit, nodded and urged the little plane upward.\n\nThe plane's single propeller churned away. It seemed to take forever. The last four thousand feet took half an hour to climb. Looking into the cloud, Vincent saw shimmering iridescent ice crystals around its edges\u2014a sign that the inside was probably supercooled. He checked the thermometer. It read \u221217.5 degrees, and its bulb was beginning to ice over. Curtis swung the airplane around, and they flew into the cloud. Vincent dispensed three pounds of dry ice. Then his ice dispenser jammed. He was breathing heavily. His head swam, and his heart pounded\u2014the effects of altitude in the unpressurized plane. He picked up the cardboard box and opened the Fairchild's window. Wind sucked the remaining dry ice into the white.\n\nAfter that, they made a big loop and flew back through the cloud again. This time, they were surrounded by glinting crystals of snow.\n\n\"We did it!\" Vince cried over the roar of the engines. He and Curtis shook hands on their triumph.\n\nIn the tower, Langmuir had his field glasses glued to his eyes. Shortly after the plane disappeared into it, the cloud almost seemed to explode. Then it began to split horizontally, dividing into two parallel clouds. Falling from the space between them were long streamers of snow.\n\n\"It works,\" Irving wrote in his notebook. When the plane landed, he rushed across the tarmac to greet Vince.\n\n\"This is history,\" he said.\n\nBack at the lab, the normally reserved Langmuir could hardly contain himself, glowing with excitement as he described the snow they had made.\n\n\"I could see it forty miles away,\" he marveled.\n\nGuy Suits pointed out that they would soon need a better plane to continue the experiments. He had worked closely with the military during the war, heading up GE's war research division, and had many close contacts there. He proposed bringing in General Curtis LeMay. Surely the Air Force would be interested in a technique for dissipating fog and clouds.\n\nBefore long, the phones were ringing. GE's publicity department, the News Bureau, was staffed with real journalists, and like reporters everywhere they had a nose for breaking news. Before long, two men from the News Bureau had arrived at Building 5 with portable typewriters and were tapping away as fast as Langmuir could talk. The PR men returned to the News Bureau that evening, bursting with reports of man-made snow. An assistant editor at The GE Monogram\u2014the company's in-house magazine for managers\u2014was there to hear the tale.\n\n\"Well, Schaefer made it snow this afternoon over Pittsfield!\" he reported to his colleagues back at the Monogram. \"Next week he walks on water.\"\n\nThe GE press release went to the papers the very next day: \"Scientists of the General Electric Company, flying an airplane over Greylock Mountain in western Massachusetts yesterday, conducted experiments with a cloud three miles long, and were successful in transforming the cloud into snow.\"\n\nThe release quoted Langmuir's estimate that a single pellet of dry ice the size of a pea \"might produce enough ice nuclei to develop several tons of snow.\" He went on to give a primer in cloud physics. When a cloud was seeded and its water droplets froze, he said, latent heat was released. Ironically, the freezing process generated heat in the cloud, which would produce turbulence, the kind that causes cumulus clouds in thunderstorms to billow upward. The turbulence, he said, \"enables the process to spread as a type of chain reaction and draws more moisture into the active region.\"\n\nIt was typical of Langmuir's brilliance that, although not trained as a meteorologist, he had intuited something fundamental about clouds. They are not, as most people think, reservoirs of water hanging out in the sky. They are hives of activity, constantly taking on water vapor from the atmosphere, the ground and surface water, and sometimes converting that water to precipitation. Langmuir had figured out that seeding did more than force clouds to release stored water. It could literally make clouds more efficient. He and Schaefer had discovered a method not of \"milking the skies,\" as it was sometimes described. They had found a way to build better clouds.\n\nThe newsmen were less interested in cloud physics than in what this all meant for the man on the street. They packed the press release with thrilling claims. Scientists could now fill reservoirs, deliver more water to hydroelectric dams, clear dangerous clouds that iced airplanes, make snow over ski resorts, and divert storms from urban areas. A new era of managed climate was dawning.\n\nIt was headline news. \"Snowstorm Manufactured,\" announced The Boston Globe in inch-high banner type. \"Three-Mile Cloud Made into Snow by Dry Ice Dropped from Plane,\" said The New York Times. \"Man Does Something About Weather\u2014Makes It Snow,\" declared the New York Post, and Newsweek quipped, \"Deliver One Blizzard.\" Time described the event as if the dry ice had been an atomic bomb and the cloud had succumbed to radiation sickness: \"Almost at once the cloud, which had been drifting along peacefully, began to writhe in torment. White pustules rose from its surface. In five minutes the whole cloud melted away, leaving a thin wraith of snow.\"\n\nFile clerks struggled to keep pace as more than ten thousand clippings descended upon GE. Delighted newsmen took publicity photographs of the News Bureau snowed under with news.\n\nFor Bernie, Vince, and Irving, the next few weeks were a whirlwind. Letters and telegrams poured into the Research Lab. It seemed almost everyone had ideas about how to use this fabulous new tool. Airline meteorologists wanted to dispel icing clouds and dissipate fogs. Water managers and irrigation districts wanted to produce more rain. A Chilean government agency requested a team of GE scientists to draw up a plan for fixing Chile's arid areas. A U.S. Marine Air Corps navigator offered to fly the GE scientists to Seattle to dispel fog that was slowing rescue efforts for a plane that had crashed near Mount Rainier. Ski clubs and ski resorts offered their slopes to further the work. A classroom of California schoolkids sent postcards requesting a snowstorm. A film crew wanted snow for a shoot in Buffalo. Buffalo itself wanted snow sent back over Lake Erie.\n\nThere were naysayers, but not many. The Boston Herald editorialized that \"bringing more snow to snowy New England is very much like carrying coals to Newcastle... Can the General Electric create a snow-repellant as well as a snow-producer?\" A columnist in the New York Sun had more philosophical objections to monkeying with nature, asking, \"Who wants to see a child look out the window at the crystals from fairyland on a winter morning and exclaim, 'Oh, mumsy! Look what General Electric is doing'?\" Vincent, riding high on his new fame, sent the columnist a sardonic apology, claiming that he was \"repenting inside the igloo doghouse\" to which he'd been consigned and assuring the columnist that \"the day will never come when each and every snowflake carries a G-E monogram.\"\n\nBut most of the world seemed giddy at the prospect of GE snow. And why not? Only a year earlier, scientists had harnessed the most fundamental power in the universe and used it to end a seemingly endless war. Why shouldn't they move on from mastery of atoms to atmosphere? This was just the next step in man's taking control of nature.\n\nOne letter sounded a different theme, one of particular interest to Guy Suits. Simon Goldstein, an insurance broker from New York City, wrote to warn GE about the many injurious effects that a manufactured snowfall might cause: car accidents, falls, floods, property damage, even the expense of snow removal. \"This is likely to produce lawsuits against your Company,\" he wrote. \"It would therefore seem dangerous to leave yourselves unprotected in these circumstances. May I hear from you?\"\n\n* * *\n\n\"Time to go home, Barney,\" Katharine Blodgett called out as she gathered her things. It was 5:30, and everyone else had already left. But Barney\u2014Bernard's undergraduate nickname had followed him to GE\u2014was huddled over Vincent's freezer. Approaching him, Katharine realized he wasn't likely to be heading home anytime soon. He was on the trail of something interesting and was determined to see it through.\n\nThat was the quality in Bernie that made him such a good scientist\u2014and also at times such a frustrating husband, father, or brother. Once he got some new idea in his teeth, no force on earth could tear him away from it. Now his obsessive nature was zeroing in on a new method of cloud seeding: silver iodide.\n\nHe had paged through the entire crystallographic handbook, looking for things with crystal structures similar to water. He had found three promising substances and tried them in Vince's freezer. Only one seemed to have any effect. So he had been trying it in different forms, including smoke. When he vaporized silver iodide, it worked like a charm. Not only that, but the ice nuclei created with silver iodide lasted for half an hour or more. They lasted even after more moist air was added to the freezer. The effect was as striking as what happened with dry ice, and it was likely to be even more durable.\n\nHe was trying, he told Katharine, to figure out if silver alone would do the trick, or iodine alone, or if it had to be silver iodide. He had hours of experimenting to do, and he wasn't about to stop now. Bernie would stay in the lab for as long as it took, because he was onto something big. Dry ice seeding was causing a national sensation. But Bernie might have found something even better.\n\nThe next time Vincent went up in the Fairchild, Bernie went with him. They conducted two days' worth of inconclusive tests with dry ice. On the second day, Vincent thought perhaps they had over-seeded the cloud, producing so many ice nuclei that they were too small and light to fall. But Bernie couldn't help but notice that even when their seedings produced immediate and dramatic results, they did not propagate further snow. Dry ice worked, but only for a short time.\n\nBack in the lab, he built a small smoke generator based on the ones Langmuir and Schaefer had made during the war. He put silver iodide in it and ran it for fifteen seconds, and the lab filled with nuclei. When he blew a puff of air into the freezer, it filled with ice crystals. The effect persisted for an hour. Bernie put the device on a windowsill and let it blow silver iodide smoke out into the atmosphere. But it was late in the day and dark, so there was no telling if the chemical had any effect on the clouds.\n\nIn early December, Bernie, Irving, and Vince met with the Army. After a formal lunch downtown at the Hotel Van Curler, they gave Dr. Michael Ference of the Signal Corps a tour of the lab. Vincent created an ice crystal fog in the freezer. Bernard brought a balloon filled with silver iodide smoke he had produced in the boiler of Building 37, and they created another round of ice crystals with that. Ference was impressed. He thought they could work out a contract for at least a year, including the long-term loan of a bomber plane and its crew.\n\nOn December 20, Vincent and Curtis went up in the Fairchild again. Bernie and Irving were in the tower, but the airplane radio failed, so they had to wait for the plane's return to hear how the seeding went. After landing, Vince reported that they had made four runs dispensing dry ice and liquid carbon dioxide. On their way back to the airport, they saw a new cloud full of fine crystalline snow hanging just below the cloud deck. They figured it had been made by seeding.\n\nThe first snowflakes fell shortly afterward. Snow fell all afternoon and into the evening. By the time it stopped, around 11:00 p.m., Schenectady was buried under nearly ten inches of snow.\n\n\"A very interesting storm,\" Langmuir wrote in his notebook.\n\nFor the next couple of days, they researched it. Bernie collected data on snowfall times and measurements for all Weather Bureau stations within two hundred miles of Schenectady. They made maps showing the storm's development. Irving woke up before dawn with equations filling his head, waiting until 9:00 a.m. before calling Vincent or Bernie to talk it through. Once they felt certain, Irving called Guy Suits and told him what they had concluded: their seeding had caused the unusually heavy snowfall in the Schenectady region and beyond.\n\nSuits told him not to tell anyone.\n\nBut on the day after Christmas, Irving wrote to C. N. Touart in the Air Weather Service of the Army Air Forces. \"Schaefer made some seeding runs Friday morning, Dec. 20,\" he wrote, \"which look as though they may have produced wide-spread effects upon the development of the snow storm that swept over parts of New York state and New England.\" If Suits didn't want to go public, the best way to ensure continued research was to keep the military interested.\n\n* * *\n\nThe meteorologist Harry Wexler, chief of scientific services for the U.S. Weather Bureau, respectably liveried in flannel suit and wire-framed glasses, sat up in his conference chair and gaped. He had come to Boston to learn what could be learned for the good of his governmental agency, but he hadn't expected anything as dramatic as this. At the front of the room, Vincent Schaefer was showing slides of man-made snow while Irving Langmuir predicted GE's imminent victory over the climate.\n\nWexler was at the joint meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The whole conference was abuzz with the GE scientists' bombshell. The night before, GE had hosted a cocktail reception in the Georgian Room of the posh Statler Hotel. Vincent had brought the laboratory freezer he had used to make his early experiments, and as the assembled reporters and scientists drew near, he had breathed into the box to create a cloud. Ice cubes rattled in glasses as the gods of this miniature world waved their hands and filled its sky with shimmering snow.\n\nNow Langmuir was talking in sweeping terms about their experiments outdoors and what would come next: deserts would bloom, storms would be quelled, snow would fall where people wanted it and not where they didn't. After the official paper was over, he spoke even more broadly. He told people about the flight of December 20 and the unusual snowfall that had followed. Cloud seeding, he was telling people, had created a spectacular snowstorm.\n\nHarry Wexler had studied meteorology at MIT, under the supervision of pioneering Swedish meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby, and gone on to become an editor at the Journal of Meteorology and a member of the council of the AMS. He had joined the Weather Bureau in 1934, and he was now on a mission to bring the new, mathematically rigorous meteorology of the Scandinavians to the United States. He had an ally in the Weather Bureau chief, Francis Reichelderfer. Long a bastion of old-school weather mapping and forecasting, the government's weather service was undergoing a makeover under Chief Reichelderfer. He was going to drag it\u2014kicking and screaming, if necessary\u2014into the new scientific age.\n\nAs Harry and Chief Reichelderfer saw it, the facts were simple. The laws of physics underlay all weather, from the tropical hurricane to the sudden gust of wind. The planet spun, the sun shone, the tides rose and fell, the winds blew, all of it following basic equations of hydrodynamics that had been around for two hundred years. With enough study, it must be possible to come up with a mathematical model of the atmosphere that would enable accurate forecasts of its future behavior. This, after all, was the scientific revolution's great insight: that the universe could be described\u2014all of it\u2014in purely numerical terms. In other words, it was knowable, and if it was knowable, it was predictable.\n\nScientists had a name for this insight: the clockwork universe. In 1814, the French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace had imagined a creature intelligent enough to \"comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated... an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis.\" For that creature, \"nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes.\" Scientists had made up a name for this mystical being with perfect knowledge. They called it \"Laplace's demon.\"\n\nHarry Wexler had dreamed of being able to modify the weather. What meteorologist hadn't? But one of his favorite quotations was from Ben Franklin: \"He who would master nature must obey her laws. He must learn her laws and then obey them.\" If weather control ever became real, Wexler knew it would be the result of what he had dedicated his life to: learning the physical dynamics of the atmosphere. It would happen when humans had learned enough to become like Laplace's demon. That's what the atomic scientists had done: they mastered nature's laws to master nature. But here, at the AMS meeting, scientists who knew nothing about the mathematics of atmospheric circulation were announcing they could make snow\u2014when they didn't even know how nature made snow! It was as if the nuclear physicists of 1942 had been approached by a couple of chemists who claimed to have gone outside and smashed some atoms.\n\nThe GE scientists' revelations were the \"outstanding contribution\" of the meeting, Harry Wexler reported to Chief Reichelderfer. But they were meteorologically naive, and their approach was downright primitive. The real way to take charge of the climate was through something more rigorous\u2014like the ten nonlinear equations on punch cards Harry had right there in his briefcase. He had brought them to Boston to see if he could get some time on Harvard's high-speed calculating machine. Once the equations were solved, he would take them back to Princeton, New Jersey, where the Weather Bureau was taking part in an all-out mathematical attack on the weather. Because as Harry Wexler saw it, the future was not in experiments but in equations\u2014equations so complex they had to be worked out by an artificial brain. Laplace's demon might finally be coming to life, not at GE, or in any human mind, but in the tiny, electrically ignited glow of a vacuum tube.\n\n* * *\n\n\"I promise to scrub the bathroom and kitchen floors once a week,\" Kurt typed, \"on a day and hour of my own choosing. Not only that, but I will do a good and thorough job, and by that she means that I will get under the bathtub, behind the toilet, under the sink, under the icebox, into the corners; and I will pick up and put in some other location whatever moveable objects happen to be on said floors.\"\n\nThe baby wasn't even born yet, but things would never be the same. Jane missed going to class, and she had terrible morning sickness. She pestered Kurt so much about the household chores that in January he finally typed up a contract in which he promised, in addition to scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom floors weekly, to take out the garbage promptly, hang up his clothes, and refrain from putting out his cigarettes or dumping his ashes in wastebaskets. If he failed in these duties, Jane was \"to feel free to nag, heckle or otherwise disturb me until I am driven to scrub the floors anyway\u2014no matter how busy I am.\"\n\nAnd he was busy. With the baby coming, Kurt had taken on a job in addition to his schoolwork. He was moonlighting for the City News Bureau, the team of crack reporters who provided much of the copy for Chicago's papers. He wasn't experienced enough to be taken on as a reporter, so he was toiling away as a copy boy on the night shift. He'd come home for a few hours' sleep before going off to classes.\n\nHe was happy to be back in a newsroom again. But the move was driven more by necessity than desire. He was a family breadwinner now.\n\nIt was exhausting, but he still loved Chicago. It all seemed so relevant. A foolish fight might be raging in Congress over whether David Lilienthal was sufficiently anticommunist to head up the new Atomic Energy Commission, but Chicago thinkers were already past such ridiculousness and hashing out a draft of a world constitution. In the anthropology department too, Kurt felt as if he had found a sort of extended family. It was a small community working together to figure out big questions about people and their cultures. He wanted to be part of it, to be one of them.\n\nHe finished up his contract with Jane by declaring it effective until the baby was born, \"when my wife will once again be in full possession of all her faculties, and able to undertake more arduous pursuits than are now advisable.\" He was looking forward to that.\n\nSomehow Kurt managed to paint: he exhibited three paintings in an open student exhibition on campus. None of them sold. No matter. He bragged about the exhibition in a letter to Walt and Helen. The point of doing art was doing art. He was his own man now, finally freed from the hyperrational world of science to focus on what he really cared about: human beings.\n\nBolt of Lightning\n\nPeople said John von Neumann was a demigod. He had made a good study of Homo sapiens, declared his colleagues in Princeton and Washington and Los Alamos, so good he could impersonate our species with nearly perfect panache. Every so often, though, when he cut quickly to the heart of a mathematical quandary or began reciting from memory a book he'd read decades earlier\u2014in ancient Greek\u2014or when one totted up the sheer number of appointments and directorships and consultancies the man held, then the facade would slip. The dapper suits, the glittering parties, and the urbane aplomb that won him the nickname Gentleman Johnnie\u2014sometimes all of it just couldn't disguise the obvious: this creature could not be human.\n\nHarry Wexler liked him a lot.\n\nThey were alike, Harry and Johnnie. Both were Jewish mathematicians, Wexler the son of prosperous Russian immigrants, von Neumann from Hungary's Jewish upper class. Harry had taught at the University of Chicago and Aviation Cadet School during the war; von Neumann had taught in Berlin before joining the exodus of professors fleeing Germany in the 1930s. Harry found his home at the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1934, one year after Johnnie found his at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.\n\nKnown as a \"paradise for scholars,\" the Institute for Advanced Study was founded in 1930. It's not a part of Princeton University but a private research institution located in the same town. Von Neumann became one of the initial five members, along with Albert Einstein and the mathematicians Oswald Veblen, Hermann Weyl, and James Alexander. Johnnie was the youngest of these luminaries, but he had already made vital contributions in the mathematical fields of game theory, measure theory, fluid dynamics, quantum mechanics, and ergodic theory\u2014the study of long-term average behavior in dynamic systems like traffic jams and weather. Like Harry, he had a reputation for asking searching questions and efficiently getting to the heart of a matter.\n\nBoth Harry and Johnnie felt comfortable working with the military. Von Neumann had done the math confirming the implosion method used in the Trinity test and in the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki, but in contrast to many scientists he had no moral qualms about his work on the bomb. He had been present for the Trinity explosion and the nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll. Like his friend Edward Teller, he believed the United States should get on with building the \"Super\"\u2014a thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb. In fact, he was an advocate of preventive nuclear strikes: it was what game theory said a rational actor should do. But now, he told people, he was thinking about something much more important than bombs. He was thinking about computers.\n\nIn 1946, \"computer\" was generally understood to mean a human being\u2014usually a woman\u2014who sat with a slide rule or an adding machine and did equations. But although Johnnie was known to have an eye for pretty women, in this case he was thinking about something else: high-speed calculating machines\u2014the mechanical computers that would soon replace the human ones. Von Neumann had served as a consultant on the design of the world's first electronic general-purpose computer, ENIAC, but even before the Army received it in 1946, he was consulting on the design of an improved computer, EDVAC. Now he was refining the architecture for an even better one he planned to build at the Institute for Advanced Study. And that's where Harry Wexler came in.\n\nVon Neumann needed a problem he could give his new device publicly to demonstrate its chops. The military-funded machine would mainly be used to run calculations for the hydrogen bomb, but those calculations would be secret. Johnnie needed something he could talk up for reporters, and weather modeling would be perfect. He was an expert in hydrodynamics and was friends with the eminent meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby. Past attempts to model the weather with numerical methods had failed for lack of computing power. John von Neumann's new machine would solve that problem.\n\nVon Neumann brought in a friend from RCA Labs, the engineer Vladimir Zworykin. Zworykin was a radio pioneer whose work would lay the foundation for television, but he also had an interest in weather. In October 1945, Zworykin issued \"Outline of Weather Proposal,\" a report for which von Neumann wrote an enthusiastic letter of support. The outline declared that advances in computing technology would now \"permit the prediction of [air] mass movements for perhaps several days in advance with results obtained within a few minutes.\" Once the weather prediction problem was solved, he wrote, attention could be turned to weather control.\n\nZworykin and von Neumann went to the Weather Bureau in January 1946, where they painted a dramatic picture of the climate tamed: rain made by seeding clouds with dust or chemicals, storms redirected with flamethrowers or atomic bombs, water temperatures raised by spreading oil over water, and air temperatures increased by painting the earth with carbon or aluminum to increase absorption or reflectivity. The ultimate goal, as the outline put it, was to \"channel the world's weather, as far as possible, in such a way as to minimize the damage from catastrophic disturbances, and otherwise to benefit the world to the greatest extent by improved climactic conditions where possible.\"\n\nThe first step was to develop a whole new approach to weather prediction. In the past, meteorologists had made forecasts by comparing present weather maps with past ones, assuming the atmosphere would behave much as it had before. Numerical weather prediction would be different. Von Neumann planned to divide the atmosphere up into a grid and collect as many data about each point in the grid as possible. He would then apply mathematical equations from thermodynamics to predict the likely future behavior of each point given the behavior of the points near it. It was a wholehearted embrace of the clockwork universe: turn the weather into an equation and solve for X.\n\nThe Institute for Advanced Study's Meteorology Project, funded by the Office of Naval Research in May 1946, was designed to take the \"first steps towards influencing the weather by rational, human intervention.\" By the time GE announced the manufacture of snow over Mount Greylock, Johnnie was assembling a meteorology team in Princeton to restate meteorological problems as equations in fluid dynamics, then feed them into his artificial brain. At the same time, he was gathering a team to build that brain. It was a method about as far from the GE scientists' approach as could be imagined. Instead of staring at the sky, the institute team would be staring at their calculations. Instead of conducting experiments in the natural atmosphere, they would program a machine to do math. But the goal was the same: figure out how the weather worked so that they could bend it to their will.\n\nThe Weather Bureau's man on the project was Harry Wexler.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie lowered his popgun into Vince's freezer and squeezed the trigger. He had bought the gun for seventy-five cents in the toy department of H. S. Harney, downtown. It went off with a pop that sounded like a firecracker or a fart.\n\nBeans, beans, the magical fruit:\n\nThe more you eat the more you toot...\n\nBernie loved that rhyme. He wasn't as big a fan of slapstick as Kurt and Alice, but like them he had an earthy sense of humor. Farting was funny. Poop was funny. Playing jokes was funny too, and the popgun was a kind of joke on nature. When he popped it, the cloud chamber filled with ice nuclei. It was just the kind of experiment he liked: a trick played on the natural world to make it yield up its secrets. It worked because the air in the popgun was under pressure. Compressing gases increases their temperature; decompressing them cools them. When released, the air in the popgun expanded rapidly, cooling the air around it, and the cold nucleated the ice. The same thing happened, Bernie found, when he opened a bottle of soda pop in the cooler or popped a bubble in a sheet of bubble wrap. He did it over and over, grinning every time, until Katharine Blodgett, a few feet away at her desk, thought she might go mad. But the lab's constant stream of visitors loved it.\n\nAt the meeting of the American Physical Society at Columbia University that January, Bernie, Irving, and Vince delivered a joint paper and demonstrated seeding with the freezer, using dry ice pellets, the popgun, a bursting balloon, and a hot wire carrying silver iodide. The New York Times ran a story about their paper the next day, pointing out that \"work has not progressed far enough to permit predicting actual uses.\" GE was now insisting that they be much more circumspect in explaining what they were up to.\n\nSince the first media frenzy, Research Lab director Guy Suits had been worrying about legal entanglements. Now every time something strange happened with the weather, GE was suspected of interfering. So many clippings credited Vincent Schaefer with strange weather phenomena that when the director of the Berkshire Museum was injured slipping on a patch of ice, someone sent Vince the clipping, noting that for once he wasn't blamed.\n\nBut Suits had a plan for limiting liabilities. In February, he sent Bernie, Vince, and Irving copies of their new contract with the government. GE would no longer be engaging in airborne experiments to modify the weather. Instead, flight experiments would be \"conducted by the government, using exclusively government personnel and equipment, and shall be under the exclusive direction and control of such Government personnel.\" The lead agencies would be the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Office of Naval Research. GE employees working on the project were merely advisers and were to \"refrain from asserting any control or direction over the flight program. The GE Research Laboratory responsibility is confined strictly to laboratory work and reports.\"\n\nTheir project was being handed off to the military. But no one was terribly upset. The experiment was the heart of the matter, and for it to go forward, the lawyers needed to be appeased. The idea that cloud seeding would be used as a weapon didn't seem real, the military men around them just an irritating condition of work. Besides, there were advantages. The Signal Corps had smart scientists and even better airplanes than GE. And they were all given raises when the government contract went into effect. For Bernie, it was his second raise that month. They discussed a code name for the program. Vincent suggested \"Project Cirrus.\"\n\nThey all applied for security clearance. President Truman had just announced a new loyalty program for federal workers mandating FBI investigations of all government employees and making it possible to dismiss any federal worker who could be shown to have \"sympathetic associations\" with organizations deemed communist, fascist, or subversive. Just to be safe, Irving resigned his sponsorship of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. Membership in such organizations could get one investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, as was happening now to the physicist Edward Condon, whom Truman had nominated to head the National Bureau of Standards. The former Manhattan Project physicist was a follower of the suspiciously \"revolutionary\" theory of quantum mechanics, and had come out strongly in favor of civilian control of atomic energy. Now he was undergoing a direct personal attack by Representative J. Parnell Thomas, the chairman of HUAC.\n\nThat wasn't going to happen to Irving. His resignation letter struck all the right notes, disavowing his previous positive attitude toward Russia, equating \"appeasement\" with \"national suicide,\" and noting that unless the United States got tough, the Russians would build atomic bombs. He did not mention that he himself had told Congress that Russia would inevitably have atomic bombs within five years. For all his absentmindedness, Irving was no political novice.\n\nBernie didn't have to worry about such things. He had his political views, but he kept them to himself. He was more of a behind-the-scenes innovator, not someone who put himself forward, who got asked to put his name on the letterhead of organizations like the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship.\n\nGE and the Army Signal Corps jointly issued a press release announcing the creation of Project Cirrus. In keeping with their new publicity aims, the announcement focused on more modest effects than the ones Irving liked to tout: it mentioned dispelling fogs and clouds over airports, noting that only after much more research might the work lead to \"manipulation of gigantic natural forces for the benefit of mankind everywhere.\" GE made sure to note that its scientists would \"provide advice and instruction, but [would] not take part in the flight program.\"\n\nAnd then things returned to what passed for normal at the House of Magic: Vincent continued making flights, Langmuir continued working out equations, and Bernie built a generator on the roof of Building 5 to dispense silver iodide into the Schenectady sky.\n\n* * *\n\nAs the baby's arrival approached, Kurt amped up his efforts to find a \"real\" job. He and Jane might fantasize about writing for a living, but with a baby he needed a paycheck and security. He'd applied for a job writing catalog copy for Sears & Roebuck\u2014getting as far as being given a tour of its Chicago offices\u2014but no luck. In the solicitation letter he sent to a range of possible employers, he described himself as about to receive a master's degree from Chicago, \"twenty-four, married, and the father of a very young child.\" He mentioned his service in the war and noted that his anthropology work had been \"extremely satisfactory from a personal standpoint.\" His grasp of human relations, he said, should make him valuable as a \"personnel or labor relations man.\"\n\nHe got back some positive replies. He'd been offered a couple of copywriting jobs at ad agencies. He could continue on as a reporter. He had an offer of a teaching post in a private school and another for an editorial spot at an educational publisher. All he had to do was finish up the degree. So, as Jane's due date approached, he hammered out a thesis plan. Called \"A Comparison of Elements of Ghost Dance Mythology with That Mythology of a More Tranquil Period,\" it proposed comparing late-nineteenth-century Native American uprisings with the work of Cubist painters in Paris in the early twentieth century. To his mind, it was bold and original, the kind of work other people in the department did: drawing connections among cultures without suggesting one was better than another, striving to find the elements that made human beings in one time and place much like those in another.\n\nOn May 11, their son was born. Mark, named after Mark Twain, came squalling into the world right around the time the University of Chicago anthropology department rejected his father's thesis proposal.\n\n* * *\n\nOnce again, Bernie had to get out his popgun. The demonstration always amused him, but lately it sometimes felt as if they spent more time glad-handing visiting dignitaries than doing science. On this bright August day, a team of high-ranking Army and Navy men had come to Schenectady for the official launch of Project Cirrus. They got the tour and the cold-box demonstrations that were beginning to become a little like a dog-and-pony show. But the military brass loved it. Weather was almost like a new toy for them. As Rear Admiral Luis de Florez had written in The American Magazine the previous September: \"We must consider the possibility that man-controlled weather can become a terrifying weapon. We must reckon with rivers and lakes as potentially terrible enemies. Sea disturbances\u2014call them man-made tidal waves\u2014may well be a factor in the next war... America must expand the scope of her thinking if she is to retain her position among nations in the world of tomorrow.\" The article was titled \"Weather\u2014the New Super Weapon.\"\n\nThat wasn't the kind of application Bernie hoped to see their work producing. He would rather see it used to save lives. That's what he'd tried to do earlier that month, when a telephone call came into the lab asking Project Cirrus to help put out a forest fire in California.\n\nThe fire had started in early August, in the tinder-dry brush north of Pasadena. Within a day, warm southwest winds had swept the flames through Big Tujunga Canyon, where they consumed more than three thousand acres. On August 6, a forest service employee and a volunteer were killed as they frantically worked to make a firebreak. Residents were evacuated, highways were closed, and the Navy dispatched 280 seamen to help. Still the supervisor of the Angeles National Forest went on the radio pleading for more volunteers. As many as 800 people were fighting what was called the worst wildfire in a quarter century when someone thought to call GE.\n\nFrank Backus of the Los Angeles GE office was on the line when Bernie got to the phone. The Los Angeles Times had lined up a DC-3 and four hundred pounds of dry ice. What should they do now?\n\nBernie had tried to explain how to seed a cloud. But even as he talked, he knew it was futile. The problem was the clouds were low in the sky. The plane was above them at fourteen thousand feet, meaning that in California's climate they were probably too warm to contain supercooled water. Still, the flight crew wanted to try. They made five passes over the cloud deck, dispensing 60 to 120 pounds of dry ice each time, as per Bernie's instructions. Unfortunately, the cloud, reported the Los Angeles Times, \"failed to cooperate.\"\n\nThe effort was unsuccessful, but it had illuminated the high stakes of getting this right. Once Bernie got silver iodide to work in the natural atmosphere, it would be easier than ever to bring water and life, instead of fire and death, down from the clouds. At least that's what Bernie was hoping for. The Signal Corps colonel and the Army brigadier general visiting the lab might have had something else in mind. Perhaps they were thinking of what General George Kenney, of the Strategic Air Command, had recently told the graduates and alumni of MIT: \"The nation that first learns to plot the paths of air masses... will dominate the globe.\"\n\nBernie lowered his popgun into the freezer and seeded the miniature cloud. This time, it was for the News Bureau photographer too. The PR men never missed an opportunity to show GE in the nation's service, and the colonel and the general looked impressive, their lapels paved with rows of colorful ribbons. In the photograph sent to newspapers, Bernie would be smirking as he popped the toy gun. The officers would be smiling slightly too as they leaned forward to look into the freezer. The bursting flashbulbs would catch something slightly acquisitive in the military men's expressions, perhaps an eagerness for a time when the freezer would be replaced by the sky and the gun they aimed would be real.\n\n* * *\n\n\"To Walt and Helen.\" Kurt and Jane clinked martinis. Walter had graduated, and he and his family had moved to the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington. They were going to be homesteaders, building their own cabin, growing their own food, probably raising sheep and knitting sweaters from their wool. It was an admirable escape from everything\u2014money pressure, school pressure, job pressure. Kurt and Jane missed them, and they envied them a little too.\n\nNext they raised their glasses to the UN Atomic Energy Commission, which had been spending August hammering out plans for international control of atomic energy at the UN's temporary home in Lake Success, New York. Two days earlier, the United States, Great Britain, China, and France had given the plan their support. Kurt and Jane let themselves enjoy a moment of optimism about a peaceful future, free from fear of the bomb. It was August 31, the eve of their anniversary, and they were celebrating at the restaurant Jacques. It was an overpriced French joint, with a mural of the Eiffel Tower and waiters sporting fake French accents, but they needed a treat. They sat outdoors on the famous flagstone terrace and contemplated possible futures.\n\nMark was now almost four months old. But the joy of a new baby was somewhat undercut by the financial anxiety that arrived as predictably as night feedings and dirty diapers. Kurt's job as a copy boy at the City News Bureau paid next to nothing. And because the anthropology professors hadn't gone for his comparison of Native American uprisings and Cubist painters, he'd had to spend the summer cooking up a whole new thesis project\u2014with money from the GI Bill running out.\n\nThe department's unanimous rejection of his thesis proposal had been galling. It was as if they were suggesting he was no better at this than he had been at science. As if they considered him third-rate.\n\nHe'd gone back to his writing. While working on a new thesis outline, he had fired off stories and essays to magazines. Finally, he'd finished the new proposal and in late summer had submitted it to the department. In response to their earlier comments, it was much more modest. His new project took as its starting point the philosopher Georges Sorel's claim that periods of social change cause the rise of new mythologies. Looking at Native American religious and spiritual movements in the late nineteenth century, he was going to analyze what effect the rapid assimilation caused by white colonist expansion had on the Indian myths. It was less ambitious, less creative, less out there than his previous effort.\n\nThe department didn't hate it. Some of the professors even said encouraging things. With some more effort, the message was, he would get this right. But in August, he was offered the opportunity to become a reporter\u2014full-time\u2014at the City News Bureau. He took it. He'd had enough of the eggheads humiliating him. Pounding the streets looking for good copy\u2014anything involving a dead body was best\u2014that was something he felt confident he could do. He could be a reporter and keep working on his own essays and stories. Somehow he would also find time to work on his thesis.\n\nBut August brought a relentless flood of rejections. \"Wailing Shall Be in All Streets\" had been rejected six times. \"Brighten Up!\" was rejected by Glamour on August 11. He sent it off to Charles Angoff at The American Mercury, reminding him of his encouraging note a year earlier. Angoff returned it a week later, just a couple of days after \"I Shall Not Want\" was rejected by Coronet.\n\nHis writing was getting nowhere. And the City News Bureau job was grueling, all wrong for a family man. He was exhausted, and he and Jane hadn't had a Sunday together in weeks. It was time to start considering other options. So over martinis and pricey French food, they talked through the possibilities.\n\nA job offer from The Dayton Daily News was tempting, because Kurt loved being in a newsroom. But there was also an offer from the educational publisher Bobbs-Merrill in Indianapolis. There was a lot of appeal in the idea of going back to Indy. Their kids could grow up near their grandparents and with the kids of their old friends. But the couple would have to face the stifling social life of a city where family connections had carved out roles for them already. Besides, a new option had recently come into the picture: Schenectady and GE.\n\nEarlier that week, Kurt had gotten a phone call from George Griffin at the GE News Bureau. He was responding to a letter Kurt had sent at Bernie's suggestion. Bernie had already told George his younger brother might be a great hire for the News Bureau: he had a science background and real newspaper experience. The GE News Bureau was a publicity department, but it aimed to be as much like a real newspaper as possible\u2014minus the objectivity, of course. In exchange for giving up journalistic credibility, one got the security and perks of a corporate position.\n\nThe GE job paid better than the others. It was in Schenectady, not too far from New York City, the center of the publishing world. And it was also near Bernard. As much as Kurt chafed under his brother's influence, he also longed to be surrounded by family. Their kids could play together. Their wives would have each other for support. It was a new town and a new start, but with Bernard there it wouldn't be lonesome. For the first time, they wouldn't have to worry about money. They could buy a house. And without having to work nights and weekends, maybe Kurt could get some real writing done.\n\nJane agreed it was a good opportunity. The GE recruiter dropped by their house the very next night, as they were still basking in the mellow martini haze of their anniversary dinner. It was a great job with a real future, he assured Kurt. Of course, GE only hired college graduates. Kurt assured the recruiter that wouldn't be a problem. He would soon be in possession of a master's degree from Chicago. He was still planning to take his exams and write his thesis. He'd just have to do it while working.\n\nTo take the job at GE would be once more following his brother's plan for his own life. But Bernie was only acting in Kurt's best interests. Why resist?\n\nHe told the GE man yes.\n\nEye of the Storm\n\nBernard was treating Kurt like a prince. First he had helped him find a nice house\u2014two bedrooms and an alcove where he could have an office\u2014right around the corner from Bernie and Bow in Alplaus. Now he was taking Kurt appliance shopping. GE employees got discounts on the best new models\u2014another reason the company was known as Generous Electric.\n\n\"I own a home now,\" Kurt wrote proudly to his father. \"Albeit humble, it's ours, and we'll love it I'm sure.\" He was in an expansive mood, because by cashing in some bonds, he'd been able to handle the $7,000 price tag without taking on debt. He felt manly enough to sign his telegram to Jane, as he did whenever he felt plucky, \"Tarzan.\" Jane was still in Chicago packing up their furniture, which they would store in Bernard's barn until they could move into their own house.\n\nAt the employee store of the Generous Electric Company, Kurt ordered a refrigerator, a stove, and an automatic washer that he was convinced would make Jane's life easier. In his letter to his father, he called it a \"Bendix.\" He hadn't yet realized that in Schenectady, you didn't call a GE refrigerator a Frigidaire or a GE washer a Bendix. GE expected every one of its employees to serve as brand ambassadors for the company.\n\nAnd what a company! GE was bringing in more money than ever before. In 1947, the company's net sales topped $1.3 billion, more than double the sales of the peak prewar year, 1940, and rapidly rising toward Charlie Wilson's magical number of $2 billion. World War II had been good to GE. The company had produced more for the war than anyone else, cranking out $4 billion worth of what America needed to win. Aircraft turbochargers! Bazookas! Howitzers! Gun turrets! Turbines! Three-quarters of the Navy's propulsive power! Radar detection equipment, gun directors, generators, and electrically heated flight suits for pilots! Searchlights so strong a man eight miles away could read the newspaper by them! The company had met the war's more quotidian needs too: fuses, wires, and, of course, the start of it all, lightbulbs. A B-29 Superfortress bomber carried 170 electric motors, 26 motor-generator sets, and 15,000 feet of electric wiring, all of it made by GE.\n\nThe company put out a book celebrating its war effort in 1947. Men and Volts at War described the Schenectady Works as \"the nerve center of one of the world's biggest and most complex war machines.\" Postwar, the company was still a war machine, a paragon of the new and powerful alliance between industry and the military. When Kurt arrived, GE was building the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, a nuclear research facility it was going to manage for the government, next door to its new state-of-the-art campus for the GE Research Lab. It was already operating Hanford, the government nuclear production complex in Washington.\n\nGE's non-war-related industries were surging ahead too. The company was building a huge turbine construction facility in Schenectady, to keep pace with the nation's increasing demand for electricity. It had just completed three new chemical plants and a top-of-the-line electronics facility in Syracuse and broke ground on a new induction motor plant in San Jose, California, and an artificial-lightning research facility in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. But consumer products were where the real growth was. A GE stove and refrigerator in every kitchen! A GE washing machine in every house! A GE toaster on every counter and of course GE lightbulbs in every socket, from Park Avenue to Skid Row and everywhere in between, lightbulbs issuing forth from its five new lamp plants, lightbulbs that lasted longer and shone brighter and grew cheaper all the time, because as the company motto said, progress was its most important product. Progress! Ever onward GE marched. It had armed the nation for war, and now it was equipping America for peace, for the electrically lit and atomically powered prosperity that know-how would deliver next.\n\nAs a \"junior writer,\" Kurt would, for the first time in his life, be making enough money to support his wife and son in true American style: a house, a yard, a pension plan, a kitchen full of GE appliances, the monogram on each one shining like a promise of the best of everything. And at least his job would be writing. He knew how to craft news stories, to dig up information, and to shape it into a magazine feature or science story. And that was exactly the skill the News Bureau wanted.\n\nFounded in 1919, the GE News Bureau was a novel approach to corporate publicity. Instead of issuing standard press releases\u2014thinly disguised ads, accompanied by unappealing illustrations\u2014GE hired professional reporters to pitch newsworthy stories, including layouts with illustrations and photographs. A News Bureau story wasn't just press agent puffery. It was a ready-made piece of journalism, with a hook, supporting information, quotations from experts, and a sense of the big picture.\n\nBy the time Kurt arrived, the News Bureau's light blue envelope had become a welcome sight on many editors' desks. The department had originally been located downtown, to emphasize its separateness from the advertising arm, but not long after Kurt arrived, the bureau moved into the Schenectady Works. There, it became part of the company's increasingly impressive corporate communications wing, the largest corporate publisher in the nation. GE produced internal publications like the Schenectady Works News (for blue-collar workers), the General Office News (for white-collar employees), and the Monogram (for managers). There were also internal publications that were distributed beyond the company: the GE News Graphic (for appliance salesmen), the GE Review (for engineers), and the GE Digest (for overseas personnel). It produced a magazine for young people and well-packaged scientific reports. GE didn't just manufacture goods: it mass-produced ideas.\n\nHis new bosses gave him a physical. They gave him a desk. They gave him a typewriter of his very own! They gave him a beat: the Lighting section, the Service Engineering section, and the Schenectady Works Research Lab\u2014a lab less prestigious than the GE Research Lab, where Bernie worked. Get out there and find stories that would get the GE name in front of America's eyeballs; that was his mission. Stories about things like a set of mechanical hands for working on radioactive materials, or the GE sales force refrigerator named Junior that walked and talked\u2014and even once got arrested in Cleveland for whistling at pretty girls. It wasn't like covering thirteen police stations, two Coast Guard stations, and a fire department, and he was glad of it. The work would be easier. He could handle it and get his thesis done too. Maybe he'd even be able to spend some more time doing his own writing.\n\nSo Kurt joined the human tide of workers arriving at the plant every weekday, flowing in four lanes of bus and car traffic down Erie Boulevard to the Works, a sea of fedoras and overcoats surging through the huge plant gates. When he walked through the entrance, Building 5, where Bernard worked, was on the right. Directly across the street, Kurt turned left, in to Building 6.\n\nThe press room of the News Bureau looked like the newsroom at any paper. Desks were shoved up against each other and strewn with papers, ashtrays, pencils, beer cans, Remington manuals, and rotary phones. A table along one wall held a row of portable typewriters, to be grabbed for jobs on the go. A pin board above that was pasted with eight-by-ten publicity photographs. The fact was not lost on Kurt that many of them featured the impish grin and distinctively cumuliform pompadour of his older brother.\n\n* * *\n\n\"A hurricane is a complicated thing,\" Vincent told the reporters, \"not the simple whirl of an artist's conception.\"\n\nVince was grasping at straws. He was exhausted. He'd flown to Florida and back in the last four days, a twenty-six-hour round-trip. He'd barely landed in Schenectady before GE hauled him to a press conference and reporters started pelting him with questions. What they all wanted to know was, what just happened?\n\nThe problem was, Vince couldn't tell them. It wasn't that he didn't know. He wasn't allowed to tell them. There'd been too much talk already; GE was in damage-repair mode.\n\nFrom the very start, Irving, Bernie, and Vince had dreamed of cloud seeding hurricanes. Once Project Cirrus was formed and their experiments were officially attributable to the government, it began to seem possible. GE was insulated from liability concerns by a solid wall of military brass. The team had access to military airplanes and pilots who wouldn't balk at flying into huge storms. They had a steering committee that included meteorologists from the Navy and the Army Signal Corps and bosses eager to try out this new tool. Finally, they were in a position to attack a real hurricane and see if they could change its course.\n\nHurricanes begin when warm water evaporates from the ocean surface. As the water condenses in the air, it releases latent heat. This heat builds up, and the warm air rises, creating a low-pressure area. Air rushes into this depression, creating winds. Because of the Coriolis effect\u2014a slight deflection of moving objects caused by the earth's rotation\u2014the winds begin to spiral inward toward the center of the low-pressure region, clockwise in the southern hemisphere, counterclockwise in the northern. As the storm spirals, it pulls in more water vapor, which condenses and creates more latent heat. Eventually, bands of showers and thunderstorms begin to form. The most intense band, the eye wall, encircles the calm eye at the center. Hurricanes spiral their way with the prevailing winds until they reach colder water or land where there is no more warm water vapor to serve as \"fuel.\"\n\nHurricanes are the most vicious storms on earth, causing billions of dollars' worth of destruction, along with injury and death. An average one contains hundreds of times more energy than an atomic bomb, a fact Irving Langmuir liked to repeat. The military had upped its hurricane research program during the war, beginning a regular program of flying airplanes into hurricanes to collect temperatures and wind speeds as an aid to forecasting. But the Project Cirrus scientists were convinced they could do better than studying the storms. They wanted to alter them.\n\nEveryone agreed that \"busting\" a hurricane with dry ice seemed unlikely, given the enormous amounts of energy involved. But diverting one\u2014changing its course just enough to send it harmlessly out to sea\u2014that could be possible. Especially if they cloud seeded it when the hurricane was young, before it had built up an elaborate storm system. After all, a giant boulder rolling down a mountain could change its path after hitting the tiniest pebble. Like Steinmetz marking his chalk X on the faulty generator, all they had to do was figure out where to put the pebble. The steering committee drew up an official plan for the experiment, stating its goal as determining whether seeding could \"modify the normal growth and development of tropical storms.\" And then the scientists waited for the right hurricane to come along.\n\nSeveral promising hurricanes hit in September, but the team hadn't lined up all its planes. Finally, in October, a good-sized storm headed up through the Caribbean toward Florida. The Weather Bureau didn't yet have a protocol for naming hurricanes, but the Project Cirrus team had been christening the storms in alphabetical order. In October, a team flew to Florida to cloud seed Hurricane King.\n\n\"We accomplished our purpose,\" Vince told the reporters in Schenectady, \"to obtain scientific data on the hurricane.\" It was what he had been told to say. \"We never had any plans or hopes to break up the storm.\"\n\nThat's not what The New York Times had reported just days before. As Hurricane King spiraled toward Florida, the paper reported that Project Cirrus was planning to spray a thousand pounds of dry ice into the storm to see what effect it would have. \"The result of this will lead us to further accomplishments in efforts to break up a hurricane,\" Navy meteorologist Daniel Rex of Project Cirrus told the Times as the Project Cirrus team was en route to Florida.\n\nFor more than a month, in fact, newspapers had been full of reports that Project Cirrus was going to attempt to bust a hurricane. \"The next great tropical storm to whirl through the Atlantic,\" reported the Associated Press, \"will be dusted with carbon dioxide (dry ice), silver iodide or some other cooling crystal which\u2014perhaps\u2014will condense its water vapors, cause a record-smashing rainfall at sea, and dissipate the swirling air mass.\" The giddy reporting caused some anxiety at Project Cirrus. It sounded great, but what if they didn't deliver? Or worse, what if something bad happened? The steering committee composed a press release insisting that \"contrary to earlier, unofficial reports, plans do not call for any 'hurricane-busting' attempts.\"\n\n\"We are in far too preliminary a stage to think of stopping a hurricane,\" Langmuir was quoted saying in the release. \"At this point, we are only interested in seeing and recording any effects the dry-ice technique will have.\"\n\nNevertheless, when the Project Cirrus team stayed overnight in Mobile, Alabama, en route, Vince awoke to the local newspaper headline \"Hurricane-Busting Plane Lands in Mobile as Storm Approaches Miami and Florida East Coast.\"\n\nBy the time the Navy plane arrived at MacDill Air Base, near Tampa, Hurricane King, traveling in a northeasterly direction, had already crossed the tip of Florida, leaving a trail of devastating floods across the Everglades and the southeast coast. According to the Weather Bureau, it was heading out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean and weakening quickly. Thinking it might be too small to bother with, the team debated whether to return to New York. But hurricane season was almost over, so they decided to carry on with the experiment.\n\nThere were three planes. Kiah Maynard, a junior team member recently recruited by Bernie, was on board the seeding plane, a B-17 flying just above the cloud deck. The second plane, flying higher up, carried military photographers. Vince was on the third plane, a B-29, which stayed eight thousand feet up and fifteen to twenty miles back, putting him in the best position to see larger patterns and changes.\n\nWhen they caught up with the hurricane, about 350 miles northeast of Jacksonville, they realized immediately that the Weather Bureau had been wrong. The storm was not weakening but maintaining its fierce spiral, a large, intense squall line at its outer edge. It was chugging steadily out to sea on an east-by-northeast course.\n\nThe seeding plane dropped eighty pounds of dry ice along a 110-mile-long track parallel to the squall line and another hundred pounds into the top of a large cumulus cloud boiling up from the storm. At first, it looked as if this produced little or no effect. But as the planes circled to take more photographs, observers saw a new line of rain falling parallel to where they had seeded. It looked like a trench shoveled out of the hurricane's spiral of clouds. Commander Rex estimated that about 300 square miles of storm had been affected. They took 250 photographs and flew back to Florida.\n\nThe next morning, Vince settled into his seat on the plane home, notebook in hand. He had thirteen hours in the air and was planning to use the time to record his observations. But not long after the B-17 was airborne, it began to buck and rattle. The turbulence increased until it was the most intense buffeting any of the passengers had ever experienced in the air. Vince's handwriting grew steadily worse, until writing was out of the question.\n\nLater, they found out the reason for the rough skies. Immediately after they had seeded it, the hurricane made a dramatic dogleg turn. Inscribing a huge 7 over the Atlantic Ocean, it turned westward and plowed back to the mainland. It was battering Savannah with eighty- to one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds when they flew over. As the unknowing scientists clutched their armrests in the sky above, a thousand people were taking shelter in Savannah's city hall. Windows were smashed, boats were tossed ashore, sugarcane fields were flattened, a downtown bank lost its roof, and several parked planes were destroyed. Charleston took a hit too, with waves topping its seawall, parts of the city flooded, and a lumberjack killed by a falling tree. All in all, damage from the storm's second landfall was estimated at $23 million.\n\nBy the time the team landed in Schenectady, a storm of outrage was following in the hurricane's wake. A letter writer in the St. Petersburg Times declared that locals blamed GE and were \"pretty sore at the army and navy for fooling around with the hurricane.\" A Miami weatherman called the diversion a \"low Yankee trick.\" The sheriff of Savannah declared that if anyone from Project Cirrus showed up in his town, he'd throw him in jail.\n\nWhich is why GE had hurried Vince into a press conference: the company needed him to convince reporters that Project Cirrus was not responsible for the storm's change of course.\n\n\"Could you see any effects?\" reporters demanded. Vince told them he was not allowed to say; the Army had classified all the reports. They asked him if he thought that the team's experiment had caused the storm to alter its course. He said no. Reporters were not convinced. Hurricanes just didn't behave like this one had, heading one way, then suddenly making a hairpin turn. Even the fiercely loyal Schenectady Gazette said the question had to be asked: \"Did science, for the first time in history, 'bust' a hurricane on October 13?\"\n\nIrving Langmuir was certain that it had. And he was elated. The redirection of the hurricane proved that he really was on the verge of something huge. His dreams of widespread weather control were not pipe dreams at all. He couldn't wait to tell the world\u2014even if GE was insisting he keep it quiet.\n\nHe seemed oblivious, however, to another implication of the hurricane experiment, one that would come to haunt Bernie more and more: the possible busting of Hurricane King was the first suggestion that you didn't necessarily have to be planning to make a weapon in order to make one.\n\n* * *\n\n\"Perhaps you saw the news reports that mentioned Bernard as having been aboard the hurricane-busting B-17,\" Kurt wrote to their father. \"This was a newsman's mistake. Bernard got into the farewell picture but not into the plane.\"\n\nHe enjoyed being able to report on his brother's activities. But that wasn't the main reason he had set up an office for himself at home. His plan was to make progress on his master's thesis. He had hoped he might even take some trips to New York City, where he could work at Columbia's Butler Library. It weighed on him that he had told the recruiter he would have his diploma before starting, as GE required for white-collar jobs. Without a college degree, he didn't deserve his position or his paycheck. What would happen if somebody in Schenectady found out he lacked credentials? This wasn't the kind of town that laughed things like that off.\n\nSo he set up a desk where he could work on his thesis. And then he sat down at it and began writing stories.\n\nIt was another secret, this desire to write, his ambition as confidential as his un-degreed status. GE was better off not knowing that one of its junior writers had aspirations beyond making GE look good. Nor did his new colleagues need to be made aware that he was different. Methodically, he went to work and found GE stories and typed up GE press releases; he bantered with his fellow writers and took part in Monday meetings. But at home, he was just as methodical in figuring out how to break into the magazine world as a writer of fiction.\n\nHe knew he had to write what editors wanted. Clearly, they didn't want his war stories. So he turned his mind toward figuring out what they did want. As always, Jane helped. They studied the magazines together, trying to determine where he had the best shot. Like any aspiring author, Kurt longed to see his byline in The New Yorker. To get in there was to join the pantheon of Writers Who Mattered. But there were other periodicals that also bestowed literary prestige: Story, The Yale Review. Then there were the popular magazines that were still highbrow: The American Mercury, The Atlantic, Harper's. Beneath those were the \"slicks,\" the general-interest glossies that published scads of short fiction: The Saturday Evening Post, Tomorrow, Collier's, Life, Esquire. They liked their stories punchy and quick, with surprising plot twists or unexpected revelations right at the end. In the 1940s, all the magazines did, even The New Yorker. Before television, fiction was popular entertainment.\n\nAt the bottom of the ladder were the \"genre\" magazines, pitched at readers who liked a specific kind of story: detective tales, westerns, science fiction. Magazines like Spicy Detective, which Kurt read as a kid, and those he had never read, like the women's magazines: Redbook, Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, McCall's. To appeal to editors there, stories had to feature things women cared about: relationships, family, love. He and Jane bought copies of those too and read them, analyzing the fiction they published.\n\nKurt was not above shaping his stories to an audience, even an audience of women. He wrote stories that were classic women's magazine fodder: one called \"Ruth\" about a young war widow coming to terms with the possessive grief of her mother-in-law, another called \"City\" that narrated the thoughts of a man and a woman who cross paths at a bus stop and long to speak to each other. He wrote a novella called \"Basic Training\" about a young orphan who goes to live with his cousins in the country and falls in love with one of them, disrupting the harsh militaristic rule of their father. He submitted them all to women's magazines, but they rejected them, like everyone else.\n\nEven as the negative responses piled up, Jane's confidence never wavered. Kurt tried to let her faith in his genius buoy him as it did her. They put candles in three miniature wine bottles, one for \"keep,\" one for \"on,\" one for \"trying.\" It had become their unofficial motto. He felt bolstered when the rejections were at least encouraging. Sometimes an editor wrote a brief note at the bottom: \"Sorry, not for us, but try again!\"\n\nJane had always said he was really a writer. He had insisted that he was just a regular Joe. Now, as he pretended to be a regular Joe, he was beginning to realize it wasn't what he wanted to be at all.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie left Building 5, merging into the mass of people flowing out Gate 85. He went to the parking lot and joined the glacier of cars inching out of the Works and down the blazing \"white way\" of Erie Boulevard, the enormous artificial moon of the GE sign behind them. Schenectady was a bustling town, especially with the holidays approaching. Shoppers were rifling through Harney's, Sears, and Carl's, revelers were spilling out of bars and restaurants, the four downtown movie palaces were ablaze, and a man dressed as Mr. Peanut was coaxing hungry shoppers to stop for a snack. Bernie barely noticed any of it. He was looking forward to his latest nighttime pursuit.\n\nAs he walked into his house one early winter night, it had occurred to Bernie that the moisture in the cold, clear air must be supercooled, just like water in a cloud. He went inside, got an electric heater, doused it with silver iodide, and turned it on. When he went outside and waved it around, he could see a fog of ice crystals materializing around it. It was more proof of how effective silver iodide was.\n\nHe couldn't get far enough with the electric heater, so he put some silver iodide on a newspaper and stuffed it into an oil burner. Then he went for a walk. It was beautiful. The fog crystallized around him like smoke, drifting from his hand and down through the dark village streets. Now, whenever it was cold enough, he experimented outside. Often their new junior teammate Kiah Maynard would come over, and the two of them would make fog, then get in the car and drive around to see where the wind took it. Sometimes they found it as much as a mile away.\n\nTonight, however, he was alone. Everything was quiet: The grocery store was closed, the post office at the back of the bike shop shuttered. Even the firehouse was dark. The comfortable houses of Alplaus gave off the soft glow of families at home having dinner, couples listening to the radio, kids taking their baths and going to bed. Outside, Bernie walked alone, fog streaming behind him like a wake.\n\nShortly after Bernie got home, his phone rang. It was his neighbor John Fisher, a fellow GE employee and a friend; John's wife, Jo Ann, was in the GE Research Lab Newcomers' Club with Bow.\n\n\"You fooling around?\" John asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" Bernie said. \"Why?\" John explained that he had looked out his window and noticed that even though it was a clear night, the house next door to his was shrouded in a thick miasma.\n\nYes, Bernie told John. He had made that fog.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt rolled a piece of paper into one of the News Bureau typewriters and went to work. He was answering a request for a photograph. The photo was of Bernie.\n\n\"The photograph of General Electric's Dr. Bernard Vonnegut originated from our office,\" he typed. However, he informed the requester, there were no more prints, and the negative belonged to the Army Signal Corps. \"Moreover,\" he typed, \"we have a lot more to do than piddle with penny-ante requests like yours.\"\n\nHe'd only been at GE for about a month when the letter had landed on his desk. It was from his own uncle Alex, sent originally to the Schenectady Gazette. Alex had seen a photograph of Bernard in his hometown paper, with a photo credit from the Gazette. He wrote asking for a copy, explaining that he was \"a wee bit proud\" of his famous scientist nephew. He enclosed a dollar for the newspaper's trouble. The Gazette passed the request on to the GE News Bureau, source of the photograph, and George Griffin\u2014out of courtesy or mischief, who can say\u2014gave the job of responding to Kurt.\n\nHe must have snickered to himself as he typed. \"We do have some other photographs of the poor man's Steinmetz,\" he wrote, \"and I may send them to you in my own sweet time. But do not rush me. 'Wee bit proud,' indeed! Ha! Vonnegut! Ha! This office made your nephew, and we can break him in a minute\u2014like an egg shell.\"\n\nIt was true too; Kurt could see that now. The News Bureau was HQ for the corporate boosterism that poured down on Schenectady as steadily as the Works soot. The scientists were celebrities because the News Bureau promoted them as such. In other words, it was Kurt's office that made people like Bernie into stars.\n\nSurely, he thought, Uncle Alex would realize it was all a joke\u2014especially when he got to the final lines, where Kurt closed by returning the dollar, pointing out that \"one dollar to the General Electric Company is as the proverbial fart in a wind storm.\" He signed off \"Guy Fawkes: General News Bureau.\"\n\nThere actually was a guy named Fawkes in the News Bureau, but Guy Fawkes\u2014surely Uncle Alex wouldn't think someone would actually be named after a notorious English traitor. He sent the letter off, thinking it was a hilarious family prank. Later, he would find out that Uncle Alex had been outraged. He even consulted a lawyer, asking how he might demand compensation for such shabby treatment. Poor earnest Uncle Alex stewed over the insult until someone pointed out to him that Guy Fawkes was clearly a joke name and reminded him that his nephew Kurt worked in the GE News Bureau. Surely Alex was the victim of nothing more than a jesting sibling rivalry. Who but Kurt could so deftly manage to praise and insult his brother simultaneously by calling him the \"poor man's Steinmetz\"?\n\nLater, Kurt speculated that his favorite uncle must have been furious with him. But Alex said nothing at the time. He simply held on to the offending letter. And at some point, he gave it to Bernie.\n\n* * *\n\nHarry Wexler grew increasingly outraged as he listened to Irving Langmuir talk about hurricanes. Langmuir was giving the keynote address before the National Academy of Sciences, and even though it was clear GE's legal team had eliminated any verbiage that might implicate their company in property damage or worse, Irving's excitement was palpable. He clearly believed Project Cirrus had accomplished something by seeding a hurricane with a couple of hundred pounds of dry ice. He seemed to think, in fact, that they had changed its course. At the end of his heavily vetted account of Hurricane King, he declared that he planned, the following year, to study hurricanes some more \"to see if we cannot, by seeding them, in some way modify them or shift their positions.\"\n\n\"I think the chances are excellent,\" he declared, \"that with increased knowledge... we should be able to abolish all of the evil effects of these hurricanes.\"\n\nHurricanes! Harry Wexler knew hurricanes! He was the first meteorologist to fly directly into a hurricane for the purpose of collecting data back in 1944. He and two Army Air Forces pilots took an A-20 Havoc right into the eye of the storm, riding its updrafts as coolly as businessmen taking an elevator to the fortieth floor. The New York Times had even written it up! Harry probably knew more about hurricanes than anyone else alive. Certainly he knew more than Irving Langmuir, who had just declared\u2014incorrectly\u2014that it was atypical for hurricanes to have squall lines. Harry Wexler had published a paper about squall lines just last year! Project Cirrus was wading into the meteorologists' territory, but its scientists weren't bothering to educate themselves about the meteorology field.\n\nAfter the talk, Langmuir was even more unrestrained, declaring that seeding by Project Cirrus had almost certainly altered the track of Hurricane King. He also talked about a new theory he was developing, that raindrops could be formed inside clouds not just by nucleation but by a kind of chain reaction. A single ice crystal or droplet of water might, under the right conditions, trigger an increasingly large event. One snowflake would lead to two, two would lead to four, four to eight, eight to sixteen, and so on, until the entire cloud would precipitate. The theory accounted for rain in places where clouds did not always reach the freezing point before precipitating. It also meant, he said, that it could be possible to induce rain simply by seeding clouds with water. A bucketful could cause the chain reaction, or even a single drop\u2014just as smashing a single atom could wipe Hiroshima or Moscow or even Schenectady right off the map.\n\nChief Reichelderfer was at the meeting too, and he was as appalled as Harry. Project Cirrus's fantastic claims were increasingly causing headaches for the real weather experts at the bureau.\n\n\"Army and GE Join to 'Make Weather.'\" \"Rain to Order.\" \"Snow Made in a New Way.\" \"Scientists Get Ready to Do Something About the Weather.\" It seemed as if a week didn't go by without some outlandish headline announcing a story about weather control, thanks to the experimentalists of GE. The company was cranking out press releases with an avidness that suggested America's weather was soon to be issuing forth from Schenectady as reliably as America's washing machines.\n\nWorse still, the public wanted the government to get on board. Letters poured in to the Weather Bureau insisting that the agency make rain, eliminate hail, put out forest fires, and bust hurricanes, and with each one Reichelderfer and Wexler seethed a bit more. Langmuir and his team didn't even understand the mathematics of the atmosphere. And yet their reckless claims were building up the public's expectations to the point where, every time the Weather Bureau failed to forecast a freak storm, someone started making noise about cutting the bureau's budget, because the military, or even private industry, could do its job better.\n\nWhich is why the bureau had gone on the offensive. Harry was following up on every Project Cirrus report, going over the raw data in an attempt to find errors. Chief Reichelderfer convened an advisory committee on cloud physics to reproduce the experiments and refute the claims of Project Cirrus. And he assigned a full-time Weather Bureau observer to Project Cirrus: William Lewis. Lewis was a young bureau meteorologist whom Harry had sounded out on the topic of cloud seeding. He was sufficiently skeptical. Assigning Lewis to the Project Cirrus team would make it look as if the bureau were taking the project seriously, while providing Reichelderfer and Wexler with a mole to report back on the goings-on in Schenectady and help them to prove once and for all that the GE scientists were not rainmakers but charlatans.\n\n* * *\n\n\"Some 15 different types of finely divided soil, mostly from desert or arid regions of the country,\" Kurt's story began, \"have been found to be capable of producing snow in the laboratory, Vincent J. Schaefer... revealed recently in Chicago.\"\n\nIt was an odd situation. The GE Research Lab was not on Kurt's beat: manager Roger Hammond had the plum assignment of writing almost all of the Project Cirrus publicity. But now, in April, the News Bureau had sent Kurt to Chicago with Bernard, Vince, and Irving for the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. To the bureau, it must have made sense: Kurt was a former chemistry major. He had worked in the Chicago newspaper world, so he had the contacts to place his stories there. And he was a graduate of the University of Chicago\u2014or so they thought.\n\n\"Mr. Schaefer, Dr. Irving Langmuir and Dr. Bernard Vonnegut, G-E snowmaking scientists, spoke recently before the 113th national meeting of the American Chemical Society,\" Kurt typed. That was GE-speak, always hypercorrect about everyone's titles and credentials.\n\nKurt didn't often get a chance to hear Bernard publicly presenting his work. Privately, of course, Bernie talked of almost nothing else. Clouds and nuclei and ice and precipitation\u2014he could go on about theories and experiments for hours, blissfully unaware if he was boring his listeners. That was Bernie. He didn't love playing in the snow the way Vince and Irving did\u2014two months earlier he had fractured an ankle when Vince tried to teach him to ski\u2014but he had endless stamina for talking about the stuff.\n\nGE cultivated this obsessiveness, this focus on science and science alone, by making the Research Lab into a kind of playground. The Research Lab scientists didn't have to punch a time clock. They didn't have to do whatever tasks their bosses assigned them. They didn't have to get approval for a lousy two-page press release from the News Bureau boss, the contracting agency, Engineering, Patents, Legal, the Works office, and the Atomic Energy Commission. They were in the business of seeking truth\u2014not, as some folks considered publicity, buggering truth for money. And truth meant whatever nifty scientific puzzle was at hand\u2014not the truth of the real world, where things were very likely going to hell. The GE scientists could remain completely withdrawn from the outside world if they wanted to. Did Irving Langmuir even know that the planet was seemingly on the brink of World War III? The Soviets had just ordered Allied military personnel out of East Germany and were putting increasing pressure on supply lines to West Berlin. Kurt read the newspaper avidly and worried about things like that. But as far as he could tell, Irving paid no attention to anything outside his own research.\n\nWorse than that, he didn't worry a whit about what use might be made of his inventions. He just fiddled away on the strings of his brain as if it were a toy violin and his whole purpose on earth was to play it. During the last AMS meeting, Irving had some time to kill, so he went to the American Museum of Natural History. He got so engrossed in pondering the exhibits that he failed to hear the closing announcements or notice when everyone else left. He stayed lost in thought until the lights went out, and he had to grope his way along dark corridors for half an hour before finding a surprised security guard to let him out.\n\nBernie could be like that too. He wasn't quite as absentminded as Irving Langmuir, but he was often lost in his own head, unaware that others might not share his enthusiasm for its contents. Kurt could get annoyed at his brother's endless talk about his own work. But often he was interested in what Bernie had to say. Sometimes he even solicited scientific explanations\u2014as he had when he read a Fortune magazine piece, \"Weather Under Control,\" that February. The magazine reported that Irving had answered a fundamental question: why supercooled water droplets nucleate into ice crystals at \u221239 degrees, even though theoretically they should stay liquid forever. The answer had to do with ice-2.\n\nIf subjected to enough pressure while at around \u221236 degrees, supercooled water forms an ice crystal that looks like a tetragon, rather than its usual hexagonal shape. The scientist who discovered this, Percy Bridgman, named the crystalline variant ice-2. Irving realized that cloud droplets are so tiny that their small surface area squeezes their contents, increasing their internal pressure. If small enough, a droplet's high pressure causes it to convert to ice-2. After crystallizing, it grows again and reconverts to regular, six-sided ice.\n\nKurt had not realized that there were different kinds of ice crystals. Of course, Bernie was happy to explain. He told Kurt to imagine cannonballs stacked on a courthouse lawn. Just as the balls could be piled up into different shapes, ice crystals could stack up in different configurations. In fact, Bridgman had described a whole series of ice phase variants, ice-1 through ice-6. And who knew\u2014there might be more to come.\n\nKurt socked away that idea and the image of cannonballs on a courthouse lawn. Bernie might be pedantic sometimes, but his explanations were often damn good.\n\nIt was regular old ice that Bernie was talking about at the Chicago conference. He was describing a spray-nozzle smoke generator that would burn a combination of hydrogen and silver iodide, vaporizing the silver iodide into tiny particles perfect for precipitating snow. He described lab experiments that showed that the vaporized silver iodide particles continued to exist in a supercooled cloud long after being introduced, causing snow crystals to form for as much as an hour afterward.\n\n\"He contrasted this to seeding with dry ice,\" Kurt typed, \"which generates large numbers of minute ice crystals immediately upon contact with the supercooled cloud.\"\n\nIt was the clearest statement yet of why Bernie was convinced silver iodide was the real future of rainmaking. Sometimes Kurt's explanations were damn good too.\n\n* * *\n\nAs the boat from Henderson Harbor neared Association Island, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, the men on board could see the funnel of a tuba rising over a throng of straw boaters. The band was playing \"Marching Along Together,\" the Camp GE theme song for 1948.\n\nSwinging along with GE.\n\nWorking along in stride\n\nWithout a question\u2014without a doubt\n\nWe're GE's fighting crew\n\nOh rum ti-did-dle di let's all shout\n\nTwo billion we will do.\n\nVince filed off the boat with the others toward the banner reading, \"Welcome: Camp General Electric.\" Here was the ultimate proof that the company valued him: he had been invited to Camp GE with 270 other men, managers from every branch and byway of GE. Every second summer, up-and-comers were invited to a three-day festival of networking, team building, and leadership training. Happily, he walked down the gangplank and got in line, awaiting his turn to be handed his GE monogram T-shirt, his camp boater, and his songbook. His tent number was 47. His team was Blue.\n\nHe'd heard about Camp GE for years. Irving and Doc Whitney were frequently at the island, representing the Research Lab. Guy Suits had gone too. Now it was Vince's turn. This honor followed close on the heels of another one: that June, the University of Notre Dame had granted him an honorary doctorate. He was deeply gratified; unlike Bernie and Irving, Vince actually cared about such formalities.\n\nVince had worked as Langmuir's right-hand man for decades. He had contributed immensely to Langmuir's research and published papers in respected scientific journals. He was a scientist, no doubt about it. But he had never been \"Dr. Schaefer.\" It had always been \"Mr. Schaefer.\" Now, even though it isn't customary for recipients of honorary degrees to use the title \"Doctor,\" Irving Langmuir had begun referring to Vince as Dr. Schaefer, and it stuck.\n\nSo the newly minted Dr. Schaefer was ready to stand tall during the flag-raising ceremony, to play pinball or Ping-Pong in the Tom Catte room, to gather under the Old Elfun Elm during the inspirational \"charge to the rookies,\" and to do his best for the Blue. Divided into four teams, Blue, Green, Gold, and Red, the men competed in a variety of sports. Volleyball, shuffleboard, trapshooting, and horseshoes were all possibilities, but the big event was the softball game. Competition was fierce, with friendly rivalry amplified by signs planted in the public gathering spaces saying things like \"The green team welcomes you to Camp General Electric!\" At the end of the three days, whichever team had the most points won the coveted title of Camp Sports Champions. Vince's camp songbook had the words to the Blue team's war cry, sung to the tune of \"Yankee Doodle\":\n\nBlue's the best team on the Island\n\nThe others should have stood in bed\n\nWe have no trouble with the gold and green\n\nAnd say the hell with the red.\n\nThe songbook also had the words to the marching song, the president's song, \"GE Will Shine\" and \"Underneath the Elm,\" and, of course, all the classics: \"Roll Out the Barrel,\" \"Auld Lang Syne,\" \"My Wild Irish Rose,\" \"Pack Up Your Troubles,\" and \"I Want a Girl.\"\n\nEach morning, there were business meetings\u2014lectures about marketing and manufacturing, research and public relations, as well as skits based on the year's leadership theme: \"Our Heritage! Our Responsibility! Our Destiny?\" The skits were written by Lemuel Boulware, manager of employee relations. Boulware had been appointed to his position after the strike of 1946, when plants under his management had stayed on the job. A zealous free marketeer, Boulware was on a mission to reeducate GE employees: his skits were ideological pageants about the evils of unions and the rewards of unfettered commerce. The company's president, Charlie Wilson, would be at Camp GE as well. He usually arrived late, and a song would be sung in his honor to the tune of \"Auld Lang Syne\":\n\nStrong hearts and hands across the land\n\nThe loyal men and true,\n\nFrom Eastern coast to Western strand,\n\nCharlie, they're all for you.\n\nThe afternoon was dedicated to sports and to impromptu amusements like the insurance game Police Protection. In the late afternoon, cocktail hour began, followed by dinner and entertainment, and the famous brotherhood ceremonies led by an actor dressed as an Indian.\n\nVincent joined in with his usual vigor and team spirit. He carefully saved his program, his tent assignment, and his songbook. But he was also eager to get back to work. He had an even more exciting trip to take in the fall: Project Cirrus was heading out west. They were planning to start their program of large-scale weather control with a particularly useful undertaking: making rain in the desert.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt was doing his best for GE. But it wasn't enough to applaud every new gadget or machine the company cooked up as if it would change the world. It wasn't enough to obey your GE boss and play softball on a GE team and buy your appliances at the GE employee store. The company wanted to tell you how to think too.\n\nEvery week or so, a new poster went up, Lemuel Boulware's florid signature at the bottom. \"Why must we SAVE more\u2014as well as PRODUCE more?\" \"Should pay be equal everywhere?\" \"What is Communism? What is Capitalism? What is the Difference to You?\" You could be sure Mr. Boulware\u2014a.k.a. Mr. Bullwhip\u2014would tell you the answers. He had all the answers, Mr. Bullwhip did. Mr. Bullshit was more like it, at least as Kurt saw it. Boulware's messages to the employees were unabashedly pro-America and antilabor. Higher wages? Bad for workers because they increased inflation. Equal pay? A fallacy. Huge corporate profits? A clear sign of virtue. Communism? Nothing less than slavery. Redistributing wealth? The end of America.\n\nKurt's boss, George Griffin, was not much better. He had been a colonel in World War II, and he never seemed to forget it; now he was a company man through and through. George taped cartoons to his office door, like the one showing two executives looking at a chart of crashing sales. \"It can't be our product's quality,\" one was saying to the other. \"We make the finest buggy whips in the world!\" George saw it as a crack at other companies. GE wouldn't be caught dead making buggy whips. Its most important product was progress.\n\nKurt tried to fit in, but he had brought some of his Chicago bohemianism to GE. He wore sneakers to work, shed his jacket as often as possible, and sometimes completely forgot his tie. He took up a collection at the office for the United World Federalists, an organization dedicated to the cause of world government. He got all his fellow junior writers to give a dollar each. Colonel Griffin did not appreciate these efforts. In Monday morning staff sessions, Kurt frequently found himself on the listening end of a lecture.\n\nAt least he had companions. Kurt's friend Ollie Lyon was a hell-raiser too, a fellow infantry veteran who had been on the same troopship to Europe as Kurt, though they didn't meet then. At GE, they became friends. Kurt also got to be friends with Bob Pace, another junior writer and a fellow graduate of Shortridge High. Bob had been two years ahead of Kurt there, and now they remet at GE. It was all an ocean, as Jane said.\n\nOn slow afternoons in the pressroom, the junior writers would repair to Walker's Pharmacy on State Street to eat pickled hard-boiled eggs washed down with beer. They talked politics, and there was plenty that summer to talk about. The Allied airlift had subverted the Soviet blockade of Berlin. American and British pilots, flying around the clock, were averting World War III, at least for now. But at home, Red-baiting was becoming the norm. Attacks on scientists were growing frequent, and it had taken prolonged exertions from the scientific community to stop the long and brutal smear campaign against the physicist Edward Condon, whom the Atomic Energy Commission had finally cleared to continue as director of the Bureau of Standards. But the HUAC chairman, J. Parnell Thomas, was not backing down. He was claiming that the Oak Ridge atomic laboratory was \"heavily infested\" with Reds. Government security clearance was now necessary to work in the GE Research Lab, and those who were denied it had no recourse. Frequently, they didn't even know the cause.\n\nMost Americans felt it was reasonable for the government to keep track of communists; it followed that it was only right for GE to be careful about whom it hired. If you didn't have anything to hide, people figured, you didn't have anything to fear. They didn't know that the FBI was compiling dossiers on the GE scientists, that even scrupulously correct Irving Langmuir had an FBI file listing luncheons he had attended, speeches he had made, phone calls he had received, positive statements about him printed in The Daily Worker. The government is reasonable, people thought. It wouldn't ruin a man's career without good cause. And GE... most people trusted GE even more than they trusted the government. Kurt saw that as a kind of sickness.\n\nKurt and Bob Pace often talked about how to avoid catching \"GE Disease.\" The main symptom was an overidentification with General Electric\u2014or \"the Company,\" as such people called it. The affliction wasn't uncommon. In fact, GE encouraged it, especially among the PYMs, the Promising Young Men. The PYMs joined company discussion groups about protecting the free market and angled for invites to leadership conferences and Camp GE. They took memory-building classes at the Schenectady YMCA or attended GE colloquiums, all in the interest of becoming better organization men.\n\nTucked away at Walker's Pharmacy, out of sight of the electric boosterism of the company sign, one could gripe about GE. It was a relief to spend time not putting on an act. Quietly, Kurt was also keeping his eyes open in case a better job turned up. At the end of his first summer at GE, he submitted an essay to The Reader's Digest on the pleasure of working with one's hands. In his cover letter, he casually inquired about job openings there. Editor DeWitt Wallace wrote back to say they had none but would keep Kurt's qualifications in mind if any arose.\n\nIn the fall, an opportunity came up to better his position at GE. The News Bureau needed another writer in the magazine division, and Kurt lobbied hard to get the position. Being responsible for pitching stories to magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and Life meant reading those magazines would be part of his job. Meeting editors would be a cinch. Perhaps he could parlay it into selling some of his own work too.\n\nKurt got the promotion. It was a step up at GE. But it was also one step closer to what Jane had always said he should be doing, writing for a living. More and more, he knew that she was right: he was biding his time at GE, but secretly he was planning his escape.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie was frustrated. He wanted to try out his silver iodide burner, but he couldn't get his hands on any hydrogen to fuel it.\n\nIt was October, and Project Cirrus was in New Mexico on an exploratory mission. Langmuir had decided that they should try to modify storms not in the East, where they simply traverse the land, but in the desert, where storms actually start. And Vincent had lined up an invaluable contact in the region: Everly John Workman, known as Jack.\n\nBernie liked Jack Workman; they all did. Acting president of the tiny New Mexico School of Mines, Jack was busily remaking a sleepy trade school for mining engineers into a serious institute of technology with a specialty in his passion: atmospheric physics. Many of his initiatives\u2014such as requiring calculus for all students and disbanding the school's basketball team\u2014were wildly unpopular. But he was energetic and pugnacious, and he always got his way. Best of all, he was a paper-clip-and-string scientist, like Bernie. He had cobbled together a passionate team and a ragtag weather research caravan: vans and old school buses and former Army trucks all kitted out with jerry-built instruments aimed at the sky. Barreling through the desert on the heels of a thunderstorm like a steampunk motorcade, Workman's group was Victorian science at its best. Jack's personal storm chaser was an open Packard to which he'd welded a lightning-proof steel roof mounted with electric field meters. It seemed perfectly safe, except for the part where he would floor the accelerator and then dive beneath the dashboard to read his instruments while the car careened down desert roads. The first time he ever did this with Project Cirrus team members in the car, it was raining, and the car careened wildly in the muddy road, nearly sliding off one side, then the other. Everyone was terrified except Irving, who calmly took out a notebook and scribbled calculations before announcing that the car's cyclic maneuver had a frequency of 176 per minute.\n\nThey were all excited about studying clouds and rain in New Mexico. The Southwest's weather is as different from the East's as its traffic. Both skies and highways are congested in the East, clogged with huge flows from countless sources. But out in the open desert, especially in the summer, there are few big weather fronts. Instead, the warm air rising off the sun-heated ground forms small, isolated clouds that typically move only a few miles before dissipating in the dry New Mexico air or boiling up into dramatic, short-lived thunderstorms.\n\nWorkman's team had agreed to help Project Cirrus with radar tracking and photography. And the Project Cirrus team only had three days there, so they got right to work. On October 14, they seeded a cumulus cloud with dry ice. The results were spectacular. The cloud billowed into an angry thunderhead and promptly produced reams of precipitation. Doing the calculations later, Langmuir concluded that the storm had produced rain over a forty-thousand-square-mile area, about a quarter of the state of New Mexico. He attributed it all to the seeding. \"The odds in favor of this conclusion,\" he wrote, \"as compared to the assumption that the rain was due to natural causes are many millions to one.\"\n\nMeanwhile, Bernie was determined to get his silver iodide generator up and running. But he spent all three days trying to lay hands on some hydrogen out there in the middle of nowhere. By the time he finally acquired the fuel, the Project Cirrus group was preparing to leave. Fortunately, Workman's team was eager to continue the work, so Bernie left a spray-nozzle silver iodide generator behind. The School of Mines researchers agreed to run it sometimes, as he requested, after the Project Cirrus scientists left.\n\nIt had been a frustrating trip, but he went back to Schenectady with high hopes. The hot, open desert sky seemed as if it might provide what the humid, busy air of the East was refusing him: definitive proof, in the real atmosphere, of what silver iodide could do.\n\nWatersheds\n\nBernie's work space was a disaster area. Bottles, beakers, Bunsen burners, microscopes, thermometers, cameras, tubes, and every other conceivable piece of lab equipment commingled on his workbench with the flotsam and jetsam of work life: pens and notebooks and coffee cups and ashtrays brimming with butts. Vincent even noted Bernie's mess in his work review but added that it wasn't really a problem. No one complained. Doc Whitney had once done a statistical study of workplace tidiness, showing that the most productive scientists were the ones with the messiest desks, so official Research Lab policy was to leave the slobs alone. Occasionally, however, an incredulous co-worker couldn't help commenting on the chaos.\n\n\"If you think that's bad,\" Bernie once replied, tapping his head, \"you should see what's up here.\"\n\nNow Bernie and his mess were moving to \"the Penthouse,\" GE's name for the huge top-floor laboratory designated for Project Cirrus in the company's new facility. The Knolls Research Laboratory had not been officially christened yet, but by late 1948 most of the scientists had moved in. The $10.5 million building sat high on a bluff over the Mohawk River in Niskayuna, a sleepy little town about five miles east of downtown Schenectady and the Works; a bus constantly ran the \"GE Loop\" between them. The suburban locale gave the place a self-contained, campus feel. The new building housed a library, a cafeteria, an auditorium, and an employee store. The grounds had once been a private estate. Its mansion was restored and occupied by the Research Lab employees' exclusive Whitney Club, and its tree-lined drive and formal gardens lent it a patrician grandeur.\n\nThe sleek modernist building was designed to be a researcher's dream. Walls, piping, and wiring were modular, so they could be easily reconfigured for evolving projects. Compressed air, steam, hydrogen, and illuminating gas were piped in along with hot and cold water. There were even vacuum pipes. You turned on the tap, one scientist told the Schenectady Gazette, and \"nothing\" came out. That might have been Bernie; it was his kind of quip. In the Penthouse, he now shared a huge lab\u2014a combination of rooms 507 to 513\u2014with Vincent and Katharine Blodgett; Irving had a private office nearby. On the roof was a complete meteorological station that captured a constant stream of weather data recorded on instruments in the offices below.\n\nThis place was designed not for Victorian science but for the specialized, industrialized discipline that was coming to be called Big Science. The electron microscope, vacuum furnace, and low-temperature lab were up and running; the future would bring a chemical pilot plant and a radiation building with betatrons, synchrotrons, and high-voltage X-ray equipment. And next door, the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL)\u2014a government facility operated by GE\u2014was nearing completion. KAPL would be focused on military projects like designing nuclear submarines, but the alliance between it and the similarly named Knolls Research Lab was unmistakable. The white-collar world of the scientists, allied with the government and the military, was edging away from the blue-collar world of the Works and into its rarefied technocratic sphere. One News Bureau liaison was given an office in the Knolls. The rest of the News Bureau\u2014including Kurt\u2014stayed behind at the Works.\n\nIrving was not there for the move; he was home, recovering from cataract surgery. But he'd be back in full swing soon. Langmuir was approaching seventy, but he had no intention of letting age run him out of science. Once, Dr. Michael Ference, the team's Signal Corps representative, made the mistake of asking Langmuir how his retirement might affect Project Cirrus.\n\n\"You'll know when I'm retired,\" Irving snapped. \"I'll be dead.\"\n\nWhy would he retire when he was just commencing the most significant work of his career? Project Cirrus was now working like a well-oiled machine. With two B-17s fitted with special instruments for recording atmospheric data, as well as photo panels to document results, the team had carried out more than fifty experimental flights, seeding clouds over Cape Cod, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, over the Catskills, the Berkshires, and the Adirondacks. They had attacked stratus clouds and cumulus clouds with dry ice. They had even tried seeding clear skies.\n\nWith their new planes, they were finally getting some good documentation. In November near Schenectady, they had dispensed dry ice in the pattern of a Greek gamma twenty-four miles long, then photographed it from above. The gamma shape was entirely clear. Within half an hour, they could see the ground through its opening. When Vincent drove north to Rotterdam to photograph it from below, the seeded opening stretched from horizon to horizon, and curtains of snow were still falling from its edges. Later the same day, they attacked a cloud bank that was sitting over Rome, New York, this time flying a racetrack pattern. Below, controllers at the Rome airport gaped in wonder as two parallel bands of blue suddenly opened up in their otherwise overcast sky.\n\nProject Cirrus had seeded clouds using Bernie's silver iodide technique only three times. On all three, observers on the planes agreed that the silver iodide had affected the clouds. But while the dry ice seeding runs were producing dramatic photographs, the silver iodide runs yielded only blurry fields of gray that looked as much like abstract paintings as they did clouds. Bernie's project remained a low priority.\n\nScience Newsletter ran a story about his seeding method, putting his picture on the cover above the words \"Fire for Rain.\" He stood behind his ground-based hydrogen burner igniting an aerosolized solution of silver iodide. The streaking lines of fire cast his tall form and curly pompadour in shadow so that he looked like a movie mad scientist. It was a nifty photograph, but it was all smoke and mirrors until he could prove that silver iodide worked in the real world, not just in the lab.\n\n* * *\n\nShop Electric threw its holiday bash at the Rotterdam Democratic Club. Wire and Cable joined forces at the Town Tavern. High Voltage, Nucleonics, and Tool Design all had theirs at the popular Hans Grell's. Production took over Lloyd's with piano playing, singing, and dancing; one eager employee even attempted an Irish jig on the tabletop. By late November, reports of such antics at the holiday parties were crowding the gossipy pages of the Schenectady Works News.\n\nKurt, like the nation, was upbeat. The threat of nuclear annihilation seemed to recede as time passed. No other country had yet succeeded in getting the bomb, and there was still hope for averting a nuclear arms race and instituting some kind of world government. The United Nations was getting a chance to prove its effectiveness, working on brokering an armistice between Egypt and Israel. The Berlin Airlift had now been supplying West Berlin for five months, proving it was possible to stand up to Soviet aggression without provoking war. Best of all, the incumbent, Harry Truman, defeated the Republican challenger, Thomas Dewey, in the presidential election, upending the experts' predictions. The close race had led to the conservative Chicago Tribune's famously mistaken headline: \"Dewey Defeats Truman.\" Kurt undoubtedly laughed about that; he despised the Trib. And the election was close not because national sentiment was moving to the right. It was close because the six left candidates on a ticket of eight had divided the progressive majority. Kurt considered himself a socialist, but he'd take Truman over Dewey. Things, it seemed, were moving in the right direction, even if they weren't yet perfect.\n\nAs Kurt and Jane prepared to go out on the last Friday in November, Kurt was in an ebullient mood. They were headed for a festive black-tie affair in the ballroom of the Mohawk Golf Club\u2014the first dance of the season for the Schenectady Junior League, where Jane was a provisional member. Their friends Ollie and Lavina Lyon were babysitting, and when the Lyons arrived, Kurt came downstairs in his tuxedo. On his feet were sneakers. It was something his sister, Alice, used to do: go to school dances in a party dress with sneakers on her feet. She was so beautiful and exotic that somehow she could pull it off.\n\nJane told him to go upstairs and change his shoes. She liked wackiness too: it was her nail polish on the nails of their claw-foot tub after all. But they were still carving out their place among the swells of Schenectady. They had made friends with other GE couples and attended cocktail parties and bridge games. Jane had joined the PTA and the American Association of University Women. She volunteered one night a week at the local hospital. Kurt had signed on as an Alplaus volunteer fireman. They were fitting in, or at least pretending to.\n\nOn weekdays in Building 6, Kurt performed the role of the dedicated junior writer, buckling down to pitch compelling stories about GE to editors, trying to flood them with the conviction that whatever new gadget GE was about to unveil would top the second coming of Christ. In his new position at the magazine division, he was churning out peppy overviews of subjects as unpromising as a leak detector shaped like a football or the new lab for low-temperature physics. He had spent enough time studying magazines to predict what editors wanted, and he seriously hoped to land GE an article in one of the national glossies. It would make things better for him at work. But he knew that he lacked what the company men had: some fundamental organ or special circuitry in the brain that would have enabled him to form an emotional attachment to the company, or even just to give a damn.\n\nSo in the evenings and on weekends, he parked himself at the tiny desk he and Jane had set up at the end of the upstairs hallway and wrote. From wherever she was in the house, Jane could hear the sound of typing. She was getting to recognize its rhythms. A smooth, steady clacking meant things were going well. When the typing stopped, she worried. If the writing was going badly, Kurt was hell to live with.\n\nOnly a few trusted friends knew about Kurt's aspirations. Ollie was one. The Lyons hesitated to drop by unannounced on evenings or weekends. They knew they'd find Kurt at his desk, smoking Pall Malls and typing, and they didn't want to bother him. Plenty of guys had literary dreams, but Kurt also had discipline.\n\nBehind the facade of the hardworking junior writer, the good team player, the loyal employee, the tiny flickering hope would not be extinguished: that one day he might quit and write for real. Jane remained convinced that her husband was a genius and that the world would figure it out eventually. Her faith didn't waver as the rejection slips piled up: she simply decoupaged a wastepaper basket with them. Kurt used them as scrap paper. When Jane gave him a grocery list, asking him to pick up corn, six wieners, Duff's devil's food, Junket, and instant icing, he jotted the items down on the back of a rejection slip from Reader's Scope.\n\nBut all that was unknown to most of his colleagues. Good company men dreamed of nothing more than steadily ascending the company ladder. And Schenectady was a company town full of company men. They rode on company buses wearing company suits and company fedoras. They had immaculate company wives and adorable company kids, and they lived in leafy company neighborhoods. That's not to say the company owned their homes, but in a community where two out of three schoolkids had a dad who worked for GE, where the baseball teams, bowling leagues, and ski trains were sponsored by GE, where people's social lives centered on GE clubs and GE lectures and GE parties, and where the local newspaper could pretty much be counted on for a GE story on the front page every day, it was hard not to feel that the company owned your soul.\n\nThat wasn't him: he was holding his soul apart. Still, when Jane asked, Kurt went upstairs and changed his shoes. He understood the need to fit in, and he was doing his best. But it made him nervous. He had a sneaking suspicion that if you pretend to be something for long enough, you might actually become it.\n\n* * *\n\nA few days before Christmas, Bernie oversaw Project Cirrus's fourth airborne attempt to seed clouds with silver iodide. It was flight fifty-seven for Project Cirrus. He had devised a new method for getting the chemical into the sky: impregnating small chunks of charcoal with silver iodide, then loading them into a burner that projected from the tail of the B-17. The scientists could light and unlight the burner as the plane flew.\n\nThe bomber plane took off from the Schenectady airport. It was a gray day, the sky slabbed with the concrete clouds typical of winter in upstate New York. The B-17 easily reached seventy-two hundred feet and began flying a gamma-shaped pattern over a solid bank of gray stratus clouds. Dry ice was dispensed first, for about a minute. Then Bernie's silver iodide burner was turned on for fifteen seconds, burning three or four pounds of silver-iodide-infused charcoal. Then another round of dry ice was released, to bracket the seeded spot. Kiah Maynard, the designated GE observer aboard the plane, scrupulously noted everything in his GE notepad. Bernie listened in from the tower.\n\nWhen the plane circled back over the seeded area, everyone on board could see the results. Like the dry ice, the silver iodide had attracted water vapor from the cloud's supercooled droplets. Three long furrows had opened up, each filled with sparkling ice crystals. Man-made snow was falling. The Signal Corps photographer shot forty-four pictures.\n\nBack at the lab, the photographs were developed. When he saw them, Bernie was elated. Flight fifty-seven had produced the first photographic evidence that silver iodide seeding worked on actual clouds. Excitedly, he calculated the probable number of snowflakes his seeding had produced. Five hundred per square centimeter of cloud, he figured. That was equivalent to dry ice seeding.\n\nThe implications were huge. Dry ice seeding was limited to local effects. Silver iodide's persistence offered the chance to change the weather for real\u2014and not just one cloud at a time. If Bernie's silver iodide smoke could be introduced to the right air current, the results could be seen across entire weather systems. He just had to convince the rest of the team.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt was convinced he had invented a winner: Alfred Moorhead, a classic company man. Alfred was saddled with the usual accoutrements: a dull job, a numskull boss, a nagging wife. Would it be so bad if he figured out a way to take harmless revenge on all of them? And so, right there in Building 6, his first successful GE story began to take shape.\n\nAlfred is an office functionary in a huge corporation: the United Manufacturing Company. He's nothing special until he takes a company seminar in mnemonics. At United Manufacturing, as at GE, a good memory is considered a business asset. So when Alfred becomes a memory whiz, his career takes off.\n\nHis old boss and his nagging wife hardly know what to think of this new and improved Alfred. Magically, he's been transformed from a loser to a winner. What no one realizes is that Alfred's new memory power comes from attaching violent images to anything he has to recall. When he has to remember the date he started work at the company, he thinks of a crashed airplane with soldiers marching past it carrying a flag emblazoned \"17.\" This brings to mind the date March 17, 1929\u2014the year of the \"crash.\" To recall his boss's extension, 717, Alfred imagines the boss with two 7-shaped hatchets in his body and a 1-shaped dagger in his throat. When his wife calls and asks him to pick up carrots, molasses, Dreft detergent, and liverwurst, he doesn't need to write it down. He just imagines sticking carrots in her ears, dumping molasses and soap flakes on her, and stuffing a liverwurst in her mouth. For the last item on the list\u2014matches\u2014he adds a backdrop for his sadistic tableau: the United Manufacturing Company in flames.\n\n\"The More Vivid, the Better\" was a nasty little story, an office revenge fantasy with a dollop of marital resentment. But it worked; Kurt was pleased with it. He redrafted it a couple of times, changing its title to the catchier \"Mnemonics.\" He figured it was just the kind of thing the magazines were looking for. It had a \"hook\" and humor and was set in a milieu that people would recognize.\n\nIt was also in keeping with the times. Like so much of the era's fiction, \"Mnemonics\" openly expressed anxiety about the conformist corporate culture taking shape in the nation. But Kurt still couldn't separate that anxiety from the war. The downed airplane with its (B-)\"17,\" the marching soldiers, the factory in flames: on some level, the Bulge and Dresden were still haunting his imagination. Like Salinger's \"Perfect Day for Bananafish\" or Sloan Wilson's Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the early version of \"Mnemonics\" hints that the corporate blandness of the company man might be concealing war trauma. There was logic to this, coming so soon after the liberation of the Nazi death camps. Organization men were followers, and Dachau, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen had introduced the world to the destruction blind followers can wreak.\n\nKurt sent the story off to The New Yorker. It was rejected right away. He told himself to keep on trying, but he felt disheartened: he knew it was his best effort yet. He put \"Mnemonics\" away instead of sending it somewhere else. Maybe he wasn't cut out for the writing life after all.\n\n* * *\n\n\"There is no use worrying about a need of one hundred pounds of dry ice,\" Irving told the audience at the January 1949 meeting of the American Meteorological Society in New York City. \"One gram is enough to do a good job.\"\n\nThey still weren't presenting their experiments on silver iodide; they didn't have enough data. But Bernie was in the audience as Irving and Vincent outlined their latest thinking about the correct amounts of dry ice to use in seeding clouds. The team was coming to think that sometimes less was more. Vince showed photographs of the trenches and L-shaped channels they had carved in the clouds. At the end of his talk, Irving gave an account of an October flight experiment in New Mexico, on a day when the Weather Bureau had not predicted any rain for the state. But after Project Cirrus seeded a large cumulus cloud near Albuquerque, the cloud became a thunderhead and precipitated. More clouds developed in the wake of that one. Irving showed slide after slide of the seeded cloud growing and developing into a squall line. He estimated that a hundred million tons of water had originated in that single seeding.\n\nWhen Irving was done talking, Ross Gunn stood up to comment. Director of physical research for the Weather Bureau, he was head of the Cloud Physics Project, designed to check the claims of Project Cirrus. Gunn pointed out that he had often seen cloud troughs such as those in the Project Cirrus pictures while flying and doubted they were the result of seeding. Project Cirrus could show all the photographs they wanted, but they didn't prove anything. And it was simply outrageous to claim that mile-wide holes could be produced in a stratus cloud deck by a mere pellet of dry ice.\n\nThen came the Cloud Physics Project's report. Recounting their experiments to date, the Weather Bureau scientists announced their conclusion: clouds could be somewhat modified in appearance by seeding, but there was no evidence that these modifications could induce self-propagating storms.\n\n\"The experiments showed that the artificial modification of cumuliform clouds is of doubtful economic importance for the production of rain,\" the report declared. Nor was the attack over: immediately after the Cloud Physics Project report, Weather Bureau chief Reichelderfer gave the conference lunchtime address, and in it he proposed that money be spent attempting to predict the weather accurately, rather than on attempting to control it. He didn't say it outright, but Reichelderfer, like Harry Wexler, was pretty sure he knew how better weather prediction was going to be achieved: with John von Neumann's computer. Once they had that up and running, it was going to be easier than ever to dismiss the work of Project Cirrus.\n\nAfter the talk, Irving took Reichelderfer aside. Why was he saying such starkly negative things when the evidence was still coming in? Reichelderfer had a blunt reply: to counteract Irving's exaggerations.\n\n\"Which of my statements do you consider the worst?\" asked Langmuir, with his usual scientific detachment.\n\nThat was easy. Reichelderfer said it was Irving's claims that the seeding of hurricanes should be studied with an eye to learning how to steer them. Particularly deplorable was Irving's National Academy of Sciences speech, where he had announced that \"with increased knowledge we should be able to abolish all of the evil effects of these hurricanes.\" It was a gross exaggeration, Reichelderfer said.\n\nIrving was unruffled. The larger the storm, he said, the more energy in it, and the more energy in it, the easier it should be to have a big effect on it. A hurricane could probably be modified by just a single pellet of dry ice. You just had to know where to put the pellet. To think otherwise, he told the astonished Reichelderfer, was like claiming that a massive forest fire could never be set by a single match.\n\n\"Rain-Making Held of No Importance,\" declared The New York Times the next day. \"Weather Men See Little Value in Scientists' Efforts to Alter Natural Patterns.\" GE dispatched Bernie to do the rounds of the radio networks: he was a good interview subject, able to explain things clearly. Patiently, soberly, he described how cloud seeding worked and explained why they believed the experiments should keep going forward. But the battle lines had been drawn. The GE scientists led one side, and the Weather Bureau headed up the other. Maybe, Vincent told Bernie and Irving later, they should start seeding clouds in the pattern of the GE logo, imprinting the \"meatball\" on the sky instead of racetracks or gammas. Then people might believe they had done something.\n\nIrving had a better idea. As soon as he got back to Schenectady, he began arranging for the Norwegian meteorologist and D-Day forecaster Sverre Petterssen to visit GE and go over the Project Cirrus findings. Petterssen was highly respected and scientifically rigorous. But he was also now the director of scientific service for the Air Force Air Weather Service, and while the Weather Bureau might be staffed with naysayers, the military could be counted on for enthusiasm.\n\nThat was becoming evident to Bernie as well. The Navy and the Signal Corps liked his silver iodide generator so much, they were refusing to declassify information about it. And not long after the AMS conference, he received a letter from the Office of Naval Research informing him that a group of high-ranking officers was coming to Schenectady to discuss the cloud nuclei counter he was developing. It would be sometime next month: they would get back to him with the exact date. They simply assumed Bernie would be there to tell them what they wanted to know.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt was thinking about what might happen if a scientist refused to tell the military men what they wanted to know. A scientist had recently done just that: Norbert Wiener.\n\nProfessor Norbert Wiener of MIT was one of the world's leading mathematicians. He was good friends with John von Neumann, but the two men could hardly have been more different. In January 1947, Wiener had made national news by canceling a talk at an MIT symposium on high-speed calculating machines because the conference was funded by the military. Just before the conference, The Atlantic had published Wiener's open letter to an aircraft company researcher who requested a copy of a paper on controlled missiles Wiener had written during the war. Wiener refused to give it to him. It was simple, Wiener wrote. He had done that work under government contract because he thought he should assist the war effort. But then he had seen the results.\n\n\"The policy of the government itself during and after the war, say in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,\" he wrote, \"has made it clear that to provide scientific information is not a necessarily innocent act, and may entail the gravest consequences. One therefore cannot escape reconsidering the established custom of the scientist to give information to every person who may inquire of him.\" Scientists had now become arbiters of life and death, he declared, and he was censoring himself because \"to disseminate information about a weapon in the present state of our civilization is to make it practically certain that that weapon will be used.\"\n\nWiener's letter had made a big impression in Schenectady. The scientists Kurt knew at GE often discussed issues like those he raised. Had it been morally right to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima\u2014and on Nagasaki? If morally wrong, were the scientists who built the bomb as guilty as the generals who decided to use it? Wiener's vow of noncompliance was admired by many in the Scientists' Movement and beyond, but it was disturbing too. Should scientists censor themselves? Didn't knowledge belong to the world at large?\n\nTwo years of debate had not settled the question. In November 1948, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had published Wiener's follow-up essay, \"A Rebellious Scientist After Two Years.\" Again, Wiener pulled no punches. \"The degradation of the position of the scientist as an independent worker and thinker to that of a morally irresponsible stooge in a science-factory has proceeded even more rapidly and devastatingly than I had expected,\" he wrote. \"In view of this, I still see no reason to turn over to any person, whether he be an army officer or the kept scientist of a great corporation, any results which I obtain if I think they are not going to be used for the best interests of science and of humanity.\"\n\nA morally irresponsible stooge in a science factory! Some people might look at the GE Research Lab and see exactly that. GE made no effort to hide its cozy relationship with the military; on the contrary, it boasted of it. But what did this mean for scientists like Bernie? Were they really kept scientists, ethically deficient worker ants mindlessly contributing to a proliferating war machine? Kurt knew his brother was at heart a pacifist; their parents had raised them that way, and the war had only deepened the conviction for them both. But as soon as cloud seeding was made public, its military uses were being discussed. There was General Kenney telling the graduates of MIT, \"The nation that first learns to plot the paths of air masses accurately and learns to control the time and place of precipitation will dominate the globe.\" That made Bernard uncomfortable. But because of his discovery, he was now answering to the generals. If a scientist like Bernard wanted to stop his work from being used for violent ends, what might he have to do?\n\nKurt's new story was different from anything else he had written. There was no grieving widow or office romance, none of the crowd-pleasing claptrap he had been churning out, hoping to please the slicks. Nor was there mention of World War II. Instead, right there at his desk in the Schenectady Works, from his vantage point in GE's science factory, he began to imagine an antiwar scientist named Professor Barnhouse.\n\nProfessor Barnhouse discovers something shocking: he has the ability to control things previously thought to be uncontrollable. But his dream of using his power for humanity's benefit soon crumbles as he realizes that the military men only see its value as a superweapon.\n\nHe called the story \"Wishing Will Make It So: A Comprehensive Report on the Barnhouse Effect.\" On one of the first full drafts, he crossed out \"Barnhouse.\" Was it too close to his brother's nickname, Barney? He made the professor Brenhaltz instead. Lots of scientists had German names. Before long, he restored it to Barnhouse.\n\nThe story is narrated by Barnhouse's student because the professor himself has disappeared. Barnhouse's student has been tasked with explaining the history of the \"Barnhouse effect.\" It began, he explains, when Barnhouse, an artillery private in the Army, rolled sevens in his first barracks dice game\u2014ten times in a row. Like Langmuir with his New Mexico storm, Barnhouse went off and excitedly calculated the odds of that happening by chance: they were one in sixty million. He tried rolling dice again and realized he could produce the effect: he had telekinetic powers. He began consciously cultivating this power, \"dynamopsychism,\" until eventually he could destroy entire buildings from miles away.\n\nBarnhouse keeps his power secret at first, annoying the student-narrator with what seem like irrelevant questions. His favorites are \"Think we should have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?\" and \"Think every new piece of scientific information is a good thing for humanity?\" He reveals his power to his student-narrator when he decides to declare it publicly, in a letter to the secretary of state.\n\n\"I have discovered a new force which costs nothing to use,\" he writes, \"and which is probably more important than atomic energy.\"\n\nIt was exactly the same claim Langmuir was making about weather modification. And like Langmuir, Professor Barnhouse quickly finds himself taken up by the military. A Senator Warren Foust\u2014sounding a lot like General Kenney on the topic of weather control\u2014declares, \"He who rules the Barnhouse Effect rules the world!\" The military starts a dynamopsychism program, naming it \"Project Wishing Well.\" It secludes the professor and his student in a safe house under the protection of guards on loan from the Atomic Energy Commission and plans a secret test of the Barnhouse effect called \"Operation Brainstorm.\" It succeeds brilliantly. Barnhouse, sitting on a couch, uses his dynamopsychic powers to destroy ten V-2 rockets fired in New Mexico, bring down fifty radio-controlled bombers over the Aleutians, and completely disarm 120 target ships headed for the Caroline Islands. The generals are so elated by the operation's success they don't notice when Barnhouse slips away. It's left to the student to read aloud the manifesto the professor has left behind.\n\nThe manifesto opens with the kind of pun Vonnegut could never resist. \"Gentlemen,\" the professor writes, \"As the first superweapon with a conscience, I am removing myself from your national defense stockpile. Setting a new precedent in the behavior of ordnance, I have humane reasons for going off.\"\n\nThe manifesto goes on for another page and a half. The tone is Norbert Wiener's, but the politics are even more overt. In fact, the manifesto could have come directly from a United World Federalists position paper. Barnhouse points out the fallacy of trying to forge peace by building weapons and declares that the world cannot afford a nuclear war. He chastises the generals for failing to put their faith in government\u2014in particular, the downtrodden United Nations. He explains that henceforth he will be making sure UN recommendations are carried out. And he demands that there be no more vetoes\u2014just as the Scientists' Movement had insisted a few years earlier. The story ends with the professor noting that if the world leaders don't like it, they can lump it; he's in control now.\n\nEven as it addressed the vexing ethical quandaries raised by science, \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect\" was an optimistic story. The professor is a good person, an idealist with the power to enforce his principles. He sets an example for scientists much as Norbert Wiener did: he refuses to cooperate with the war machine. If enough scientists like Barnhouse would just step forward, the madness of an arms race could be averted.\n\nProfessor Barnhouse was the first in a long line of fictional scientists Kurt Vonnegut would write into being. He was also the most unambiguously noble, born at one of the last moments when Kurt thought that politics might still turn around, that the world might come to its senses and find its way to a new, enlightened era of prosperity and peace.\n\n* * *\n\nIrving was delighted with the man the Weather Bureau had sent to destroy Project Cirrus. He loved that William Lewis seemed determined to find every flaw in their data, every weak spot in their equations. Skepticism was how science progressed. He was convinced that he and Bernie and Vince would win Lewis and the Weather Bureau over in the end.\n\nLewis spent a long time formulating his position. In June 1949, he handed the Project Cirrus team a memo about the New Mexico storm they had reported on in January. He outlined his objections to the Project Cirrus interpretation of events in five single-spaced pages with three hand-drawn charts. The main problem was simple: How could the team know for sure that they had actually caused the rain they observed? Here was the heart of the matter, the scientific flaw that was really an epistemological problem. \"It is not possible,\" Lewis wrote,\n\nin any particular instance, to decide with any degree of certainty whether the rainfall observed in an area presumably affected by seeding, was in fact due to the seeding, or would have occurred anyway. You may surmise that the rain resulted from the seeding while I surmise that the seeding had very little to do with it, but neither of us knows. There is no evidence for a positive decision either way.\n\nIn order to produce proof that cloud seeding worked, Lewis said, \"it will be necessary to design the experiments in a way that will permit the use of statistical evidence in the verification of the results.\"\n\nStatistics! It was a brilliant idea. Given the particular set of conditions, what are the odds of rain? Even Irving Langmuir hadn't thought of that. But he was absolutely thrilled. Statistical analysis was tremendously popular now that high-speed calculating machines could be used to sort data. Scientific American had even performed an analysis of the news coverage of the House Un-American Activities Committee investigation of the physicist Edward Condon by reducing assertions about Condon in New York City's nine daily newspapers to holes on punch cards and running the cards through an IBM sorting machine. It had proved, objectively, that the liberal newspapers favored Condon and the conservative newspapers maligned him.\n\nNumbers didn't lie. They couldn't be accused of bias, and they were oblivious to the prejudices of their observers. No one could refuse to believe something the numbers revealed. Irving embraced Lewis's idea at once. It might be impossible to prove what would have happened in the past. But one could prove the statistical likelihood of what did happen. And if what happened was statistically unlikely, over and over, the evidence would add up until the conclusion was irrefutable. Numbers would come to the rescue of his research. Now he just had to do one thing: teach himself statistics.\n\n* * *\n\nHere was a change: Kurt's boss was delighted with him. The microchemistry story he had written up in December was picked up by Life. The magazine even sent a Life photographer to Schenectady to shoot photographs of employees holding tiny lab instruments in their hands. It was Kurt's biggest score yet for the News Bureau. His triumph even merited a mention in the Schenectady Works News.\n\nBut privately, Kurt was far more interested in his own writing. He had finished \"Barnhouse,\" and he felt good about it. It revived him from the letdown of the \"Mnemonics\" rejection. With the new story in hand, he figured he had enough material to seek representation. Aiming high, he sent seven stories off to Russell & Volkening Inc. One of New York's most respected literary agencies, Russell & Volkening represented top-notch writers like Eudora Welty, Henry Miller, and Saul Bellow, and it had a reputation for liking offbeat fiction. But Diarmuid Russell wrote back disappointingly soon, declining to take Kurt on. The stories were brisk, he said, but he didn't think editors would like them. Still, he suggested Kurt send the Barnhouse story to Collier's and the Post.\n\nKurt wasn't one to turn down free advice. So in March, as \"his\" microchemistry story (absent his name) came out in Life, he mailed off \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect\" to The Saturday Evening Post. It was rejected almost at once.\n\nStill, he had faith in \"Barnhouse.\" Not only was it a good yarn; it was in keeping with the tenor of the times. That month, three thousand delegates were gathering at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York for a peace conference. Organizers included Albert Einstein, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, and Norman Mailer, who made a sensational speech about capitalism being the ultimate cause of wars. Norman Cousins of the United World Federalists spoke as well. The State Department declared the conference to be communist propaganda, HUAC insisted it was all part of a subversive Red \"peace offensive,\" and thousands of protesters from veterans groups, religious organizations, and Eastern European immigrant groups picketed outside the Waldorf, singing patriotic songs, reciting prayers, and shouting anti-Russian and anticommunist slogans. But people were talking\u2014shouting even\u2014about peace and internationalism. His story was not just sharp; it was relevant.\n\nKurt sent \"Barnhouse\" to Collier's in April. It came back with a form rejection. But at the bottom, in an almost unreadable scrawl, was a short note: \"This is a little sententious for us. You're not the Kurt Vonnegut who worked on The Cornell Sun in 1942, are you?\" He didn't recognize the name, and he wasn't sure he wanted to own up to being his feckless undergraduate former self, so he filed the rejection away and sent \"Barnhouse\" off to Story.\n\nIt was languishing there when Jane told him she was pregnant again.\n\nTwo kids! It was a thunderbolt. If it was hard to quit a corporate job with one kid, it would be even harder with two. The noose was tightening around his neck. He had to get his writing career off the ground, or he'd be like one of the countless corporate drones who longed to write but who couldn't bring themselves to leave the security of the paycheck, the life insurance, the paid vacation, the employee discount on appliances. After twenty-five years, GE employees got thanked with a reception and a commemorative pin. The Quarter Century Club, they called it. Every year the quarter centurions had a clambake. Clams, cigars, cocktails\u2014the best of everything to honor the GE lifers. He was headed for his own commemorative clambake if he didn't get out soon.\n\nDesperation made him do what he had scrupulously avoided until now: he told one of his work colleagues about his writing. George Burns was a photographer who sometimes worked with Kurt on News Bureau stories. He had been on staff at GE once, but now he was freelance. He and his brother Jimmy had a photography studio on Schenectady's State Street. George was a fun guy, an adventurer. When GE built its new radio tower, George scaled it to get a photograph from the top. Like Kurt, he was a veteran; he'd served as an enlisted man in the Pacific. George shot the famous flag raising at Iwo Jima for Yank magazine; his was not the version that became famous, but he was easygoing enough not to care. He was standing by when Prime Minister Tojo tried to kill himself, and he was one of the first photographers to document the results of the atomic bomb. After flying over Nagasaki in a B-25, he wrote that the city looked as if giants had stomped through it, grinding every building into the ground.\n\nGeorge had never read any of Kurt's fiction, but he could relate to creative aspirations. He immediately recommended that Kurt contact a war buddy of his from Yank, a straight-up guy who had written an impressive story on the firebombing of Tokyo. The guy was an editor at Collier's now, George said; he might be able to help. His name was Knox Burger.\n\nThe name rang a bell. Kurt went home and pulled the Collier's rejection letter for \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect\" from his file. Suddenly the scribbled letters took shape: Knox Burger.\n\nKnox had been a friend of Kurt's in college, the editor of a campus humor magazine called The Cornell Widow. The Sun and the Widow were rivals, frequently taking potshots at each other in print, but Knox and Kurt had liked each other. Once, Knox had even taken Kurt's suggestion about toning down some apparently anti-Semitic caricatures of Sun editors that his own magazine had produced.\n\nKurt sat down and wrote to Knox right away. It was already June, and Jane was due in December. His letter was alternately full of self-deprecation and braggadocio. \"Sorry you didn't care for my story,\" he wrote. \"I got a typewritten letter back on it from the Post. Story has now had it for a month. You're right. It was a dog.\" But he had other things in the works, including a completed novella and another that would be done soon. He closed by saying he would be in New York for two days of the following week. Would Knox like to have lunch? Knox replied by telegram three days later, telling Kurt to call him at his office when he arrived in town. It seemed, to Kurt, as if his breakthrough might finally be at hand.\n\n* * *\n\nOn a cool July morning in Socorro, New Mexico, Bernie turned an impish yet calculating gaze to the sky. He'd done enough lab work, enough backyard experiments. Now he was determined to make a decisive demonstration of what his silver iodide generator could accomplish. He would see if he could do anything about those puffy, cumulus clouds dotting the blue.\n\nIn its second interim report, the Weather Bureau's Cloud Physics Project had not only dismissed the idea that dry ice might produce rain of economic importance but also claimed that no significant rainfall resulted from the seeding of cumulus clouds with \"persistent nuclei.\" Bernie had published a short rejoinder in May. The bureau team, he noted, had described experiments using nuclei of lead oxide and potassium iodide. His lab tests showed that silver iodide vaporized for one second was ten thousand times more effective than other chemicals in producing nuclei for the formation of ice crystals. If the bureau scientists were using other compounds, it wasn't surprising they had gotten poor results.\n\nBernie was ready to prove his case. He had perfected the method, and now, with his little homemade smoke generator, he would make an effective demonstration\u2014something that William Lewis, who had come to Socorro with them, would have to acknowledge. The problem was that Vincent and Irving had arrived in Socorro a week early to plan the summer's research, and they hadn't included any experiments with silver iodide in the program.\n\nSo, on July 21, as the others prepared for the day's dry ice seeding flights, Bernie lugged his generator to a spot out in the middle of the dry desert scrub. He fired it up at around 6:00 a.m., right after the sun came up. He took notes on the wind, the temperature, and the location of clouds in the distant sky. Then he went to breakfast. When he came back, the wind had picked up, and the burner was still humming along.\n\nNew Mexico was a stratiform world: first brown and yellow desert, then a layer of mountains on the horizon, and then the clouds\u2014low cumulus, billowing up like a second mountain range, and above them the white smear of stratus. There was so much sky here, a blank blue page on which the sun's work was written every day, then erased by night's cool dark. Every morning it started all over. The air began to warm around breakfast. By mid-afternoon it was so hot the men would strip to the waist.\n\nAt around 8:15, Bernie saw cumulus clouds forming near the Sandia Mountains, the range of peaks east of Albuquerque, and also over the Manzanos, farther south. The clouds looked like the region's typical orographic cumulus: small puffs of white formed by heat funneled up the side of the mountains. Most orographic clouds just cling to their hills like hats, growing a little but not precipitating. But as Bernie ran his generator and watched the sky, the clouds began to build. By 9:30, the cloud over the Manzanos looked heavy with ice. An hour later, it was developing into the classic anvil shape of a brewing storm.\n\nPeriodically, Bernie released a balloon to show him how the winds were blowing so he could gauge where his silver iodide smoke was headed. The balloons drifted right to the Manzanos and from there to the Sandias. That meant the winds were carrying his silver iodide smoke to exactly the places where the clouds were whooping it up.\n\nAt lunch, he told Langmuir he'd been running his silver iodide generator and that he thought it might be affecting the clouds. Langmuir, focused on the afternoon's dry ice seeding flight, had no response. He barely seemed to register Bernard's remark.\n\nBernie went back to his burner around noon. He changed its hydrogen tank and kept it running. And then he heard thunder. He looked up and saw flashes of lightning. The air beneath the Manzano clouds was dark with virga: wisps of rain that fall and evaporate before reaching the ground. It was working! Before long, he could see a line of cumulus clouds building up to the northwest. The entire area where his silver iodide was going was a mass of roiling storm clouds. He was so excited he kept forgetting to use military time in his notes. He turned his burner off at 1:30. He didn't want to interfere with the team's dry ice seeding from the air, which was scheduled to start over the Sandias at around 3:00.\n\nSchaefer, aboard the B-17 that afternoon, was surprised to find that the cumulus clouds they planned to seed were already a seething mass of thunderheads when they arrived, pouring down rain as they boiled their way northeast. Even more surprising would be the data from Albuquerque's nearby radar station showing a radar echo of precipitation appearing in the silver iodide\u2013seeded cloud at around 10:00 a.m.\u2014exactly when Bernie's calculations said the silver iodide should be reaching it. The precipitation area began by covering about one square mile at 20,500 feet\u2014atypically low for New Mexico. It then expanded with mind-boggling speed, increasing to seven square miles in four minutes and rising to 34,000 feet in another two. It was one of the most dramatic storms they had ever\u2014possibly\u2014made.\n\nThat evening, Bernie told Langmuir again that he had been running his generator that morning. All at once, the information seemed to break through Langmuir's interior monologue. The scientist stared at Bernie.\n\n\"You were running the generator today?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yes,\" Bernie said.\n\nWith that, Langmuir's attention was finally caught. He wanted to know everything. How often had the generator been running? Had he been running it before? Had the October dry ice experiments possibly been affected by silver iodide from the ground? All of their data needed to be reassessed in the light of this new fact: silver iodide worked. It had been working all along. More silver iodide experiments needed to be done. The summer's program had to be rewritten. That night, Irving stayed up late, dictating eight thousand words of notes. \"Taking all in all,\" he concluded, \"I feel that the evidence is now practically overwhelming. The evidence for the production of rain, and even thunderstorms, by silver iodide seeding is now about as certain as the opening up of clouds by stratus cloud seeding.\" In his diary, he was more succinct: \"Vonnegut made a thunderstorm.\"\n\nThe next day, Langmuir flew to Los Alamos, elated. He'd started doing the calculations on Bernie's thunderstorm, and they looked tremendous. The silver iodide seeding, he figured, had brought millions of gallons of water down on New Mexico.\n\nOften when he flew, Irving offered to take the controls. The FAA had ruined flying for him: when the regulations decreed that logbooks had to be a particular color, he'd sold his plane in disgust. No one was going to tell Irving Langmuir what color his logbook should be. But he still liked to practice when he had a chance. Today, however, he was more interested in looking out the window. Eagerly, he scanned the New Mexico desert unfurling beneath them. Near Santo Domingo, he saw what he was looking for: a swollen, roiling river entering the Rio Grande.\n\n\"What river is that?\" he shouted to the pilot, pointing it out.\n\nThe pilot peered out.\n\n\"Galisteo Creek,\" he yelled back. He said he was surprised to see so much water in it: its streambed was usually dry. Langmuir noted this with satisfaction. He would get stream flow data. He'd get rain gauge data. The numbers would bear out what he was seeing beneath the plane: Vonnegut's thunderstorm still filling the desert's dry wash. Here, finally, was something on the scale they'd been imagining all along.\n\nWhen he arrived at Los Alamos, Irving excitedly described Vonnegut's thunderstorm to the Manhattan Project physicist Edward Teller. Teller had little patience for Langmuir's effusions: he was once again deeply embroiled in debates over his thermonuclear bomb, or \"Super.\" He'd wanted to build the Super since the start of the Manhattan Project, and the objections of the peace-minded Scientists' Movement had not changed his mind. Teller was born in Hungary, and the implosion of Europe had cast a pall on his spirit, as it had for many expatriates. He had little patience for talk of UN control or international disarmament. To him, the only option was to stay a step ahead of the Reds by developing the Super at once.\n\nJ. Robert Oppenheimer disagreed, as did David Lilienthal, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, and many of the scientists who had rallied around the cause of peacetime arms control. Many in the public, too, still held hopes for peace and world government. But since 1946, a different consensus had been growing in Washington, one that foresaw the world not uniting but dividing into two armed camps. Events in Berlin only solidified this conviction. The journalist Walter Lippmann had just given the situation a name in his new book: The Cold War. That was helpful to Teller. He felt certain that the political climate was going to swing his way in the end. Even Oppenheimer, he was convinced, would support the Super if the problems with the physics were solved.\n\nAs Langmuir enthused about his storm's destructiveness, Teller grumpily wondered if the GE chemist saw rainmaking as \"competition\" for the atomic bomb. It was a surprisingly insightful thought: Langmuir did see weather control as trumping atomic fission. As he liked to point out, a storm system like a hurricane contained hundreds of times as much energy as an atomic bomb, even a hydrogen bomb. Controlling that force would be an achievement as great as\u2014if not greater than\u2014harnessing the atom.\n\nAnd it excited people. For all his absentmindedness, his ability to lose himself so deeply in his thoughts that he seemed barely aware of other people, Langmuir liked to communicate. He was a scientific missionary, surprisingly adept at explaining complex scientific ideas to laymen. He liked elucidating things for children, for lab visitors, for anyone who would listen. His proselytizing for science never stopped. When he held toddlers, he bounced them on his knees, first with both knees in sync, then with his knees alternating. \"In phase,\" he would chant, \"out of phase!\" Kurt Vonnegut once overheard him saying that anyone who couldn't explain his work to a fourteen-year-old had to be a charlatan.\n\nHis zeal for science had led Langmuir to invent many things in his career\u2014the gas-filled incandescent lamp, the mercury-condensation vacuum pump, the atomic-hydrogen welding torch, the thoriated tungsten filament. But not one of those achievements had ever captured the public imagination\u2014until now. Even winning the Nobel Prize paled in comparison with taking charge of the climate. Langmuir believed it would be his legacy to humanity.\n\nAnd if it topped the atomic bomb in its peacetime value, it only stood to reason it would be valuable in war as well.\n\n* * *\n\nIt was awkward at first, the lunch between Knox Burger and Kurt Vonnegut\u2014a meeting of two men who had known each other in another life, on another planet: Planet Cornell. Planet pre\u2013World War II.\n\nKnox Burger was a man's man with a sharp tongue. Some people found him brusque. He had a craggy face and balding pate and an appreciation for good booze and pretty girls. He spent so much time fly-fishing in cold creeks he said his feet never got warm. After work, he could frequently be found at the Algonquin, holding forth for a crowd of publishing types. You could locate him by his roaring laugh.\n\nThe two men liked each other. Like Kurt, Knox had enlisted, and in the Army he had become a staff correspondent at Yank, the magazine by and for enlisted men. He had flown with a B-29 bomber squadron, then gone to Yank's Saipan bureau. After the Japanese surrender, he moved to Tokyo to cover the occupation, writing smartly reported, man-on-the-street stories about Americans in Japan, delving into the cultural meanings of things like tea and geishas. But he also wrote a hard-hitting account of the firebombing of Tokyo. At the time, his estimated death toll of 100,000 struck many as extreme, but later studies validated it.\n\nSince the war, Burger had gone to grad school, gotten married, and written stories and articles. He had come to Collier's in 1947 and became its fiction editor the following year.\n\nCollier's was a general-interest magazine, not unlike The Saturday Evening Post. It had around 2.5 million readers who enjoyed its mix of fiction, nonfiction, cartoons, and photo essays. Its spunky history of muckraking appealed to Kurt. Postwar, though, there was less of that. The Collier's creed, published monthly on the editorial page, was \"to keep always before its readers a high, sane and cheerful ideal of American citizenship.\"\n\nKnox gave Kurt a tour of the magazine's editorial offices, treating him like a serious writer, not like a guy with little more to his literary credit than a stack of rejection slips. At lunch, Kurt told Knox about his novella and his desire to write slick short fiction. Knox suggested Kurt try his hand at short-shorts\u2014stories under about two thousand words. Collier's published one short-short every week, usually with three regular-length stories and two installments of serialized novellas.\n\nKurt wasn't about to waste time. He bought that week's Collier's and read it on the train home. There were a couple of adventure stories, a romance, an adventure-romance, and a lighthearted short-short by James Kirch called \"Morning After,\" in which a man mollifies his angry wife after a party by insulting all the other women there. The story Kurt liked best was a sentimental yarn by Robert McLeod about a neglected little girl whose father is attending college on the GI Bill. The girl believes\u2014with misplaced optimism\u2014that her inattentive parents are planning a surprise birthday party for her and invites everyone in Vets Village. The narrator, also a vet, swaps cynical commentary with his wife about the whole sad spectacle, but in the end each plans a birthday surprise for the little girl.\n\nIn concept, the stories weren't far off from what Kurt had been writing, but their execution was better. Back at home, Kurt started working on a short-short right away. Two days later, he sent Knox his novella \"Basic Training,\" complimenting the Robert McLeod story in his letter. The very next day, he finished the short-short \"Bonanza\" and sent that too, as well as \"Mnemonics,\" the office story about sadistic fantasies, which The New Yorker had rejected. Then, four days later, even though he had yet to hear back on the three things he'd already submitted, he sent another brand-new short-short, \"The Case of the Phantom Roadhouse.\"\n\nTwo days later, \"Phantom Roadhouse\" came back, with a note saying it didn't come together correctly at the end. Then Knox's assistant returned \"Bonanza,\" calling it \"flat and inconsequential.\" The next day, Knox returned \"Mnemonics,\" declaring Kurt's pen name, Mark Harvey, the most pompous he had ever come across. In spite of the mockery, it wasn't all bad news. He thought \"Mnemonics\" had potential, and he might be able to use it if Kurt did some more work\u2014and then he went on to give three paragraphs of detailed instructions for fixing it. The mnemonics course needed more description. Perhaps Kurt could have Alfred try boosting his memory by imagining a pleasant scene, then switch to something violent. That would help readers in the hinterlands understand that Alfred was actually enjoying his sadistic reveries. Then the last fantasy needed more work. He should link it to the office. The wife should provoke not just hostility but something pleasant. Unless he wrote in a secretary and made the pleasant thoughts about her.\n\nIt was a barrage of criticism. But Knox was encouraging him to rewrite, and Kurt wasn't about to waste a chance like that. He went through Knox's letter and typed out his suggestions in a numbered list. Then he went down the list, revising. Four days later, he sent the story back.\n\n\"I seem to be sending MNEMONICS back for further revision,\" Knox replied two days later. He liked Kurt's changes, but more were now needed\u2014a full single-spaced page of them. The hero was not likable. His boss and his wife should be more annoying, to justify their savaging in Alfred's daydreams. And perhaps there could be a grace note at the end.\n\nKnox's letter was detailed and patient, explaining his changes and why he wanted them. He had a good sense of story structure, of how the reader should be carried along. But he was a magazine editor who needed to acquire and edit six stories a week. He didn't have time to teach Kurt Vonnegut to write. So at the end, he mentioned that he had given Kurt's name to Kenneth Littauer, of the literary agency Littauer & Wilkinson. \"I told him I thought you might turn out to be a skillful and prolific writer,\" he said.\n\nKurt knew he was at a crossroads. Again he typed out the suggestions in the form of a list and made his way down it, checking each item off as he made the corresponding change. Then he sat down to type a cover letter to Knox. He chose his words more carefully than usual. First he thanked him for being extraordinarily patient with him. Then he crossed that out with a row of x's. He wrote that he felt like a pilot who had been talked down from a foggy sky by air traffic control. But he crossed that out too. He finally settled for thanking Knox for giving him reasonable instructions that were nearly as long as the story itself. He hoped he had managed to satisfy them. And he thanked Knox for mentioning him to Kenneth Littauer. He would definitely like an agent.\n\nAfter all that, Collier's rejected \"Mnemonics.\"\n\nThe head honchos, Knox reported, thought \"the net result lacks conviction. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.\" He also rejected \"Basic Training.\" Kurt had sent another short-short in the meantime called \"Robot Cop,\" pointing out in his cover letter that GE really was developing robots, so it wasn't far-fetched. Knox returned it almost immediately.\n\nKurt refused to get discouraged. Two days later, he sent Knox \"City.\" Knox apologized for throwing up so much smoke without making a fire\u2014and rejected that too.\n\nKurt, meanwhile, had gotten in touch with Kenneth Littauer, and Littauer agreed to take him on as a client. \"City,\" Kurt told Knox with some satisfaction, should be the last piece of his to come direct. After this, Knox would be hearing from his agent.\n\nBut first, Kurt started hearing from his agent.\n\nKenneth Littauer was old-school, a sweet talker when it came to wooing clients or charming editors. But when he rolled up his sleeves and got down to work, he didn't pull his punches. In August, Kurt sent him a story called \"Enterprise,\" along with \"Mnemonics\" and \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect.\" \"Barnhouse,\" Kurt pointed out, had received encouraging rejections from both the Post and Collier's. He figured it had the best chance of being bought, if only because it expressed an enthusiasm for world government that was presently in the air.\n\nHe was referring to enthusiasm for the United Nations, which had finally brokered an armistice between Egypt and Israel. Collier's itself had recently run a feature article by the New York Times reporter A. M. Rosenthal defending the UN. And although an unpleasant civil war was brewing in Korea, hope for peace through world government had not yet died. State legislatures across the nation were passing pro-world-government resolutions; in September, the Schenectady County board of supervisors would vote unanimously to do the same.\n\nKenneth Littauer didn't give a damn if the entire world voted to abolish nation-states and sing peace anthems under the UN olive branch. Stories had to be good on their own terms, and Kurt's weren't. Littauer didn't much like \"Mnemonics.\" \"Enterprise\" was revolting. As for \"Barnhouse,\" it was better, but not good enough. Maybe it could be fixed. After all, it started out fine. But it failed to resolve itself like a short story and instead, with its wordy manifesto, flamed out in an onslaught of political speechifying. No editor would stand for such a violation of the basic rules of storytelling\u2014not even if he agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment behind it.\n\nThe difference between a writer who makes it and one who doesn't is the ability to take criticism. Not just to take it, but to learn from it. Kurt could have taken umbrage at his new agent's dismissive tone toward his most promising work. But he didn't. He wrote back thanking Kenneth for letting him know how the story really ended. He agreed that \"Enterprise\" was revolting. A dog, in fact. He softened the blow by partly blaming Jane. The two of them had looked at some issues of Redbook and concluded that was what the women's magazines wanted. He promised not to try anything like that again.\n\nAnd then he went to work on Professor Barnhouse.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie was finally making progress. The Project Cirrus team had come back from New Mexico more excited than ever. The program of research they were planning gave a new prominence to seeding experiments with silver iodide.\n\nIn August, the Albany Times-Union ran a multipage spread in its Pictorial Review section about the coming era of weather control. GE's work, the article said, had brought the world to the brink of a new age in which rainfall and snowfall would be precisely determined in advance, great storms would be countered by \"anticyclones,\" damaging hailstorms would be bombed out of the sky, artificial hills would draw rain to arid deserts, and cold climates would be warmed up by deliberately melting the polar ice caps and diverting the Gulf Stream. A futuristic drawing superimposed on the Manhattan skyline showed how entire cities would reside under climate-controlling \"roofs\" in which scientists equipped with telescopes, rockets, and astronomical observatories would dole out the sunlight, manage humidity, and carefully calibrate the rain.\n\n\"Only the descendants of the men and women who believed that airplanes would never fly, that atomic fission was impossible and that men would die if they ever traveled at 60 miles an hour, doubt that one day man will achieve considerable control over local weather, to the extent of being able to decide where, when, and how much it shall rain or snow,\" the paper declared. This imminent state of affairs meant that international weather disputes were likely, unless an overriding authority, a \"Meteorological United Nations,\" took charge.\n\nThe article was illustrated with photographs from the GE News Bureau: Vincent holding a cloud meter, Bernie igniting fireworks from his silver iodide burner, Irving discussing photographs of snowflakes with a lab visitor. And, of course, there was a photograph of military officers gazing into Vincent's freezer as if it were a crystal ball.\n\n\"'Command of the air,' in the weather sense, over enemy territory will become a decisive weapon,\" declared the piece, \"and it is no secret that, because of this, some nations have given the highest priority to research into weather control.\"\n\nThat month, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb.\n\nRainmakers\n\nMarion Mersereau Langmuir had always been game. Her courtship with Irving, consisting of grueling mountain hikes, frigid ski trips, and scrabbles through dirty caves, had won the scientist's affection away from her prettier, but less intrepid, sister. As Langmuir's wife, she was the ideal helpmeet, joining him on his travels or staying home with their children, Kenneth and Barbara, while he visited laboratories and attended symposia. She indulged her husband's obsessions, even hitching up her skirts to climb into a canoe and paddle around Lake George with a payload of boulders to armor shorelines he thought were eroding. She didn't fuss when, after a long time away, he absentmindedly left her a tip on the breakfast table, and she didn't even put her foot down when Irving tried to cure Kenneth of a cold by immersing him in hot baths to induce a fever. But when Irving went outside and began setting all their toilet paper on fire\u2014on a weekend when their vacation house was full of guests\u2014she might have thought he had gone too far.\n\nEver since the Project Cirrus team had returned from New Mexico, Bernie had been coming up with new methods for employing silver iodide. On July 28, he impregnated some tissue paper with silver iodide and burned it in the lab. A couple of hours later, Katharine Blodgett pointed out to him and Irving that enormous banks of cumulus were rolling into Schenectady from the northwest, west, southwest, and southeast. A delighted Langmuir stood at the window watching for half an hour. He was absolutely convinced: Bernie had called up those clouds.\n\nIrving asked Bernie to make him a small bottle of the silver iodide solution, to take along to his house on Crown Island in Lake George. There, on Saturday, he proceeded to impregnate his home's entire supply of toilet paper with the chemical, laying each sheet in the sun to dry. He used single-thickness and double-thickness paper. The silver iodide, he noted, gave the toilet paper a distinctly yellow color. Once the sheets were dry, he held them one at a time in kitchen tongs and set them alight.\n\nHe started burning toilet paper at about 12:20. Less than an hour later, a large cumulus cloud developed over French Mountain, at the south end of Lake George. From his vantage point in the middle of the lake, he watched the small thunderstorm develop, travel southwest, then reverse itself to head northeast. Rain fell on the eastern shore. By 3:20 it was all over.\n\nEagerly, he burned another ten sheets of toilet paper. Once again, fifty-five minutes later, he saw a cloud forming over French Mountain. It started raining, and this time there was more thunder. Irving went out onto the lake in his motorboat, Penguin. The storm was unlike any he'd ever seen in the thirty years he'd had his house on Crown Island. The wind was blowing hard from the east, and rain was pounding the east side of the lake, but the west side was perfectly dry.\n\n\"I believe that silver iodide has done the trick,\" he wrote in his notebook. If silver iodide seeding could be done so easily, he noted, there was little hope for government regulation of weather control. After all, anyone with a little chemical know-how and a few rolls of toilet paper could call up a local deluge.\n\nIn late August, Irving sat down with Guy Suits and told him what he was thinking. Convinced by William Lewis that a statistical approach would be the only way to prove his results, he had ordered himself a statistics textbook and gone to work proving that Bernie's New Mexico thunderstorm had produced the heavy rains that followed. Combining their data with all the rainfall and stream gauge figures he could get his hands on, he had come up with a startling conclusion: Bernie had not only triggered a rainstorm back in July; he had produced all the rain that fell on the entire state for twenty-four hours after his generator ran. Irving proposed doing massive experiments with silver iodide, increasing the amounts until they got definite weather modification results over huge areas\u2014say forty thousand square miles. They had found the key to large-scale weather control.\n\nSuits was alarmed. Langmuir's claims were sweeping, and he was proposing that GE scientists do exactly what Suits and the GE lawyers had ordered them not to do: attempt to effect big changes in the weather. The lab director went to Bernie and Vincent separately and asked them if they agreed with Irving's conclusions. Had their experiments really caused such huge effects?\n\nBernie had been there when his generator called up the storm. He had seen it happen. But he was, at bottom, a scientist, and while the results were good, they were not yet definitive. So, like Vince, he gave a guarded reply. Nothing had been scientifically proved, he told Suits. The experiments simply suggested that they should keep exploring cloud seeding with silver iodide.\n\nBut Irving, now armed with a basic knowledge of statistics, was irrepressible. He divided the entire state of New Mexico into octants radiating outward from Albuquerque and began collecting the Weather Bureau rainfall data for all of them. He needed to establish the statistical proof that their cloud seeding had modified the weather. Once he had done that, he could go on to tell the world the new idea that was brewing in his head: he was becoming more and more convinced that the weather was going to be easier to control than to predict. That's because it was a perfect example of a divergent phenomenon.\n\nFor decades, Langmuir had been working out a theory of two types of phenomena in the world: convergent and divergent. He defined convergent phenomena as those \"in which the behavior of the system can be determined from the average behavior of its component parts\"\u2014in other words, phenomena in which the normal laws of cause and effect apply. If you do X, you can be pretty sure the result will be Y. Convergent phenomena are things like the laws of classical physics and the orbits of the planets. Divergent phenomena are \"those in which a single discontinuous event (which may depend upon a single quantum change) becomes magnified in its effect so that the behavior of the whole aggregate does depend upon something that started from a small beginning.\" In other words, the Xs can be so minute that the Ys become impossible to predict. Divergent phenomena are things like history, economics, and weather.\n\nJohn von Neumann used the words \"stable\" and \"unstable\" to talk about something similar. Stable systems were deterministic and resisted disturbance by small things. They were like a game of checkers: once a being\u2014or a machine\u2014with enough calculating power learned all their laws, that player could not lose. Unstable phenomena were upset by small disturbances, making them hard to predict. But sufficient calculating power would allow these processes to be controlled. Once scientists determined where exactly the instability began, they could intervene, introducing the disturbances that produced the desired outcome instead of the undesired one. The weather, Johnnie liked to say, contained both stable and unstable systems: ultimately, the stable systems would be predicted, and the unstable ones would be controlled. It was simply a matter of knowing when and where to chalk the X.\n\nUnlike von Neumann, Langmuir saw all weather as fundamentally unstable. It was always too big and unwieldy a system to be captured by equations. Divergent phenomena flew in the face of the clockwork universe. No matter how much information you had, you could never accurately predict their behavior.\n\nNorbert Wiener had been telling von Neumann something similar. Wiener thought that Johnnie misunderstood weather: he failed to take into account that his model would never have complete information about the atmosphere. The atmosphere was always in flux, always flowing and blending; a touch in one part could affect the next and then the next until a cascade of changes set up movements on the other side of the earth. How, even with the fastest computers, could you ever account for all of it? How could you even see all of it? Even with a network of meteorological sensors blanketing the earth, the accuracy of your measurements would never be perfect. Your data were thus always on some level approximate, which meant your forecasts, too, were approximations. And the instabilities in those approximations multiplied rapidly. There would never be an absolute solution, as there could be with a zero-sum game, only a series of statistical likelihoods.\n\nAll three men understood something that would take physicists another couple of decades to develop into a theory: the idea that tiny and ultimately unpredictable events could alter the course of huge systems and that this made the behavior of such systems difficult to predict. But Langmuir\u2014like von Neumann\u2014still hoped that control was within his grasp. In fact, he believed he had found the place to chalk his X on the atmosphere; he just needed to prove to others that it was there.\n\nWhat he needed was a signal, something to break through the noise and show that his experiment was having an effect. The idea he came up with was brilliantly simple: have Bernie's generator pump out silver iodide on a regular basis\u2014say on three specific days each week\u2014and see if that introduced a periodicity into the weather. A regularity that matched his seedings in the vast, unpredictable atmosphere would be evidence of the human hand as unmistakable as signing the GE monogram in the sky.\n\nSuits had a different idea. He called the Project Cirrus representatives from the Signal Corps and the Navy into his office and reemphasized the GE position: company employees must never engage directly or indirectly in seeding experiments that might lead to large-scale weather modification. They were advisers only. All action taken in Project Cirrus was taken by the government alone.\n\nThen he dictated a letter to Irving, Bernie, and Vince that laid out his position in no uncertain terms. Any extensive seeding experiments, he reminded them, \"should be carried out entirely by the Government and its employees.\" GE's role\u2014as it had been from the beginning\u2014was only \"to appraise [sic] them of the facts and on the basis of these facts to let them make their own decisions in this field.\" He appended a copy of the letter he had sent the team in early 1947 stating that they were merely advisers. And he gave them an ultimatum. If, he said, \"the program develops in such a direction as to subject the Company to serious hazards from a liability standpoint, it may very well become impossible for us to continue with this work.\" In other words, toe the line or GE would kill Project Cirrus.\n\nThen, to leave no doubt that he was serious, he declared that the company would not approve for publication any papers or reports that made it sound as if GE employees were engaging in widespread weather modification. Their job from now on was to keep quiet about what they knew.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt came in the front door after work, and there it was, propped up on the piano. An envelope\u2014a check envelope\u2014addressed to him from Collier's. Jane had put it on the upright so he'd see it right away.\n\nIt had finally happened.\n\nExcept for his marriage to Jane, Kurt had never had a more productive working relationship than the one with Kenneth Littauer. The agent had gone to work on Kurt's stories as if they were race cars and he were a pit mechanic at the Indy 500. They started with \"Barnhouse.\" Kurt revised the story as Littauer directed, and Littauer sent it back to Knox Burger. Knox had lots of changes and thought it was too long. Nor did he like Kurt's latest pseudonym: David Harris.\n\n\"Why doesn't he use his real name on the story?\" he wrote to Kenneth. \"Afraid GE will fire him for a Red?\"\n\nIt wasn't an idle concern. Truman's announcement of the Soviet nuclear test in September had jolted Americans out of a comfortable feeling of supremacy, and GE, like the nation, was swinging rightward. The shock was not mitigated by the fact that the scientists had been predicting this development for years. Irving Langmuir had even foreseen exactly how much time it would take.\n\n\"Ever since atomic energy was first released by man,\" the president declared, \"the eventual development of this new force by other nations was to be expected.\"\n\nOnce people had a technology, it seemed impossible not to use it. There was no Professor Barnhouse in the real world; the suicidal course of history could not be changed. Now the nation was winding itself up with paranoia over Soviet aggression and communist infiltration. GE printed two fretful essays as a special supplement in the September issue of Monogram: \"Should We Fear a Welfare State?\" (the answer was yes) and \"Free Men Forge Their Own Chains!\" The word from the corporate higher-ups was clear: in the face of this new and frightening world, America must get tougher, not nicer. The hope of peace through internationalism was fading, as was the notion that winners should give losers a helping hand.\n\nWith the specter of nuclear war once again haunting the public sphere, Kurt had gone back to work on \"Barnhouse.\" In October, he fired a revised version off to his agent. The manifesto was gone: all that remained was the punning opening paragraph. And instead of fizzling out in a political tantrum, the story ended with what happened next: Barnhouse destroys the world's arms stockpiles from his hiding place and sends the student-narrator a letter tipping him off to the secret of the Barnhouse effect so he can carry on the work when Barnhouse is gone. On page 1, Kurt crossed out \"David Harris.\" He wrote \"Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\" at the top.\n\nKurt knew in his heart it was good. Jane did too. But, he had told Littauer, he would await confirmation of its worth in a more interesting form: money.\n\nNow in late October, at long last, it had arrived: a check for $750 (minus Littauer's well-earned 10 percent). Nothing, not even gin, is as good as a check for soothing a writer's anguished soul\u2014especially a check that adds up to two months' labor at your mind-numbing corporate job. Of course they threw a party, spending a good part of the money on food and booze. But as Jane giddily told a neighbor, they'd just eat cereal until the next story sold.\n\n\"I think I'm on my way,\" Kurt wrote in a triumphant letter to his father. It would only take four more such sales to have the equivalent of a year's pay at GE. And then, he declared, he would \"quit this goddamn nightmare job, and never take another one so long as I live, so help me God.\"\n\nA God in whom he did not believe. Still, his father shellacked the whole boast to a piece of Masonite with a quotation from The Merchant of Venice: \"An oath, an oath, I have an oath in Heaven: \/ Shall I lay perjury on my soul?\"\n\nKurt was happier than he had been since he was first accepted at Chicago. It had all been worth it: the writing on nights and weekends, the rejections, the revisions that went on and on. He hunkered down to write the four more stories that would add up to a year's salary and issue him a ticket to a better life\u2014a life that would finally be plotted by him.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie was listening to a talk in a room at the enormous Hotel Jefferson in St. Louis. Harry Wexler was showing slides and describing a startling atmospheric event that he actually did believe was man-made: the Donora smog.\n\nIt happened on October 27, 1948. A thick fog had settled on Donora, an industrial town on the Monongahela River outside Pittsburgh. Persistent fogs are often due to temperature inversions, where cold air settles near the ground and a layer of warmer air lies above, instead of the more common reverse. Without the usual mixing mechanism\u2014warm air rising, cold air falling down\u2014the atmosphere becomes stable and stagnant. What made that disastrous in Donora was the presence of two belching factories: the American Steel and Wire plant and the Donora Zinc Works. The effluent pouring out of their stacks was bad on a normal day, peeling paint from buildings and depositing a layer of grime on local homes. But on this day, and the ones following, the smokestacks' pollution had nowhere to go, and Donora began to fill with acrid smog. Before long, the town had to keep the streetlights on all day because the smog was so thick residents could barely find their way around.\n\nOn October 30, people began to die. Thousands more poured into the local hospitals, complaining that they couldn't breathe. The fire department went from house to house, giving oxygen to those in distress. They had a hard time finding their way. People tried to evacuate, but thick smog and heavy traffic made getting away nearly impossible. Twenty people died in fourteen hours, in a town where thirty usually died in a year.\n\nThe nightmare ended when a cold front arrived and rain and wind cleared the air. But the story had grabbed the nation's attention. Air pollution was something people were just beginning to talk about seriously. The Donora smog showed it could be deadly.\n\nBernie was compelled for another reason. This was the first time the AMS meeting had included an all-day session on pollution. His paper came after Harry Wexler's, and he talked about using the condensation nuclei counter he had developed for Project Cirrus to measure smog. For Bernie, this was an exciting new development. The work he was doing for Project Cirrus could be used for even more beneficial purposes than rainmaking, such as investigating air pollution.\n\nHe wasn't declining to work on weapons. But he was finding other applications for his research.\n\nThe media continued to see Project Cirrus as a weapons program. A month earlier, Harper's had run a long article about rainmaking, emphasizing its military significance. Had Project Cirrus been around in World War II, it declared, it might have been able to clear the cold fog shrouding the western front in 1944, preventing the Battle of the Bulge.\n\n* * *\n\nSomething had sent Kurt back to his war material. Only this time, he was trying to make it funny.\n\nEvery spare moment was spent at his desk, filling ashtrays and pounding keys. He knew what Collier's wanted now; he just had to crank it out. Page after page rolled off his typewriter, the kinds of pages he thought would sell. The problem was that they weren't selling. Knox Burger had encouraged him, but now he wasn't satisfied with anything Kurt wrote.\n\nOnce you got an agent, it was supposed to be easy. Once you cracked the formula and sold your first story, it was supposed to be easy. Once you made friends with an editor, it was supposed to be really easy. It didn't take Kurt long to realize the central truth of being a writer: it's never easy.\n\nKnox had suggested he submit short-shorts, and Kurt liked that idea, because he could write one in a single sitting. But Knox could reject them as fast as Kurt could turn them out. So Kurt revised \"City\" again and sent it to Kenneth. Kenneth thought it was a decided improvement over the two earlier versions, though he still didn't love the story. \"I don't guarantee it,\" the agent wrote to Knox, \"but neither do I despair.\"\n\n\"Not quite good enough,\" Knox fired back.\n\nIt was Kenneth collecting the rejections now, usually with a line or two of explanation: \"slight,\" \"a trifle stilted and precious,\" \"would be better if he did not attempt to pander to popular tastes,\" \"over-obvious and didactic.\" He softened the blows in writing back to Kurt.\n\nIn December, as the birth of his second child approached, Kurt had gone back to a story he'd drafted a few times, \"Das Ganz Arm Dolmetscher.\" Starting with the title\u2014a purposeful butchering of the German for \"the very poor interpreter\"\u2014it was a strange little tale, a comic piece about an infantryman on the western front who gets appointed chief interpreter for his battalion even though he can't speak German. It was a return to Kurt's war material but with a lighter, more ironic tone than he had managed in the past. There was even a hilarious playlet in the middle in which the narrator imagines seducing the Belgian burgomaster's daughter with the only lines of German he knows\u2014the first stanza of Heinrich Heine's \"Die Lorelei\" and some commands from the Army phrase book:\n\nDOLMETSCHER (to BURGOMASTER'S DAUGHTER): I don't know what will become of me, I am so sad. (Embraces her.)\n\nBURGOMASTER'S DAUGHTER (with yielding shyness): The air is cool, and it's getting dark, and the Rhine is flowing quietly.\n\n(DOLMETSCHER seizes BURGOMASTER'S DAUGHTER, carries her bodily into his room.)\n\nDOLMETSCHER (softly): Surrender.\n\nBURGOMASTER (brandishing Luger): Ach! Hands up!\n\nDOLMETSCHER and BURGOMASTER'S DAUGHTER: Don't shoot!\n\nKurt thought it was the funniest thing he had ever written. In fact he'd spent too many evenings when he should have been writing a new story giggling over the pages of this one.\n\nUnfortunately, Knox Burger didn't agree. He called the playlet hackneyed and suggested Kurt get rid of it. He also didn't like the opening, and he insisted that Kurt get the thing down to five pages. Kurt sat on his pride and managed to redraft the story and send it to the typist before December 29, when Edith was born and the Vonneguts became a family of four.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie was at New York's Hotel Astor giving a paper on another nifty gadget he'd designed: a vortex thermometer to measure true air temperatures from an airplane. Irving Langmuir was there to give a paper too, and Bernie was probably the only person present who knew the stupendous bombshell that was going to be dropped in it.\n\nNineteen fifty was shaping up to be an annus mirabilis. Early in the New Year, the Schenectady weather, as if mimicking the increasing chilliness of world affairs, had turned viciously cold. An ice storm grounded the Project Cirrus planes. The Schenectady Railway Company's B29 bus hit a patch of ice on Alplaus Avenue, slid for half a mile, and crashed through the guardrail of the bridge near Bernie's house. It was only prevented from tumbling into the creek ravine below by one of Bernie's trees. For years, Bow had been urging him to cut the tree down, and now it had probably saved the lives of the four people aboard. Newspapers published the dramatic photograph of the bus, its front wheels hanging off the bridge, its flat nose pressed into the tree trunk.\n\nEven that was not as surprising as the January 7 announcement of Irving's retirement. Irving had always scorned the very idea. But his purpose in \"retiring\" was not to cease work. It was to redouble his efforts on weather control. He would keep his office at GE and continue to work as a consultant for the company. But his energies would be dedicated to Project Cirrus.\n\nLangmuir was still convinced that he was doing the most important work of his career, and at sixty-eight he might not have many years left in which to do it. His two older brothers had already died; his younger brother, Dean, collapsed and died of a heart attack just four days before Irving's retirement luncheon. He himself had had an operation for colon cancer before the war and had undergone his second cataract operation in December. His recovery time had been longer the second time around. He was slowing down, and he wanted to conserve his energy for what mattered. In announcing his retirement, he had told reporters that he fully expected to be diverting large snowstorms and rainstorms from population centers within three years. It was just the sort of thing GE wouldn't have allowed him to say.\n\nAnd now, at the annual AMS meeting, Irving was going to deliver what he considered the most important paper of his career. He was going to describe Bernie's New Mexico thunderstorm for the assembled meteorologists, and in it he would announce that Bernie's silver iodide\u2013induced storm had produced 320 billion gallons of rain on one day\u2014more than enough to fill all of New York City's reservoirs. This was bound to be of great interest in a city that was running out of water.\n\nIn 1950, New York City had nearly 7.9 million people. While the city's expansion was not as explosive as it had been in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the population was still growing steadily, increasing water demand. Individual water usage was up too. But the water supply infrastructure was out of date: the last new reservoir had gone into service in 1926. It was the second of two in the Catskill Mountains, a hundred miles north of the city. Construction on a planned four more in the Catskills watershed had been halted, first by interstate wrangling with New Jersey and Pennsylvania and then by the war. By 1947, three of those reservoirs were under way. The city was racing to get them built when the drought hit.\n\nIt started with a dry winter in 1949, followed by a dry summer and fall. By early 1950, New York had been in a state of water crisis for nearly a year. Car washes, sprinklers, and swimming pools were banned. Residents were urged to put barrels and rubber rafts on their rooftops to collect rainwater for dishwashing and toilets. Wearing \"Save Water\" armbands, volunteer \"conservation commanders\" went door-to-door ferreting out leaky plumbing. The city instituted \"Dry Fridays\" and \"Thirsty Thursdays,\" where people were meant to avoid bathing and even drinking water. The Central Park Zoo rationed its hippo's water, and Tiffany used gin for the pool in its window display. The mayor had stopped shaving. But none of it seemed to be working. The New York Times had instituted a regular feature called \"The Water Situation\" that tallied rainfall and reservoir levels and noted how many days were left before water pressure failed. When Bernie and Irving arrived in New York, the Times had given the city sixty-six days before its taps went dry.\n\nIrving began his talk with a survey of natural precipitation but quickly moved on to describing the artificial seeding process. Cloud seeding, he pointed out, could produce too many ice nuclei, actually preventing rain. In some cases, a single pellet of dry ice might do a better job than too much of it. Heavy rain, he declared, can often be brought down \"by using a single pellet of dry ice shot into the side of a cloud\" from a flare gun. He discussed where to aim the pellet, the altitude at which the clouds were best seeded, and the rate at which dry ice should be dispersed into the tops of clouds. These specifics, he explained, were why the U.S. Weather Bureau had thus far failed to produce \"rainfall of economic importance\" in its Cloud Physics Project. Cloud seeding was an art, he implied, and the Weather Bureau seeders were essentially hacks.\n\nHe then gave an outline of probability theory before launching into a description of their work in New Mexico. He gave detailed reports of two days during which the team had operated Vonnegut's silver iodide generator. On both days, the Weather Bureau had predicted no rain, but on both, heavy rain and thunderstorms were observed.\n\nUsing river flow and rain gauge data, Langmuir calculated the similarity of rainfall distribution on the two heavily seeded days. They had a correlation coefficient of +0.78. The chance of getting such a high correlation randomly, he declared, was one in ten million.\n\n\"We must conclude,\" he declared, \"that nearly all of the rainfall that occurred on October 14, 1948[,] and July 21, 1949[,] was the result of seeding... Silver iodide seeding produced practically all of the rain in the state of New Mexico on these two days.\" Furthermore, after the July experiment, a band of heavy rainfall progressed from New Mexico across southern Colorado and Kansas, bringing three to five inches of rain to those states. All that precipitation, too, might have been caused by Bernie Vonnegut's generator.\n\nThe experiment, Langmuir said, proved that the entire United States could double its rainfall for a couple of hundred dollars. Thirty milligrams of silver iodide released into a cumulus cloud six miles in diameter would liberate as much heat\u2014the latent heat of condensation\u2014as the explosion of an atomic bomb. The time was ripe, he concluded, for turning to the study of hurricanes. Silver iodide generators at sea, he was convinced, could modify hurricanes and even prevent them from reaching land.\n\nThere was a buzz in the room when Irving finished. He had thrown down a gauntlet for the Weather Bureau\u2014at the very session chaired by Chief Reichelderfer. He had even tossed back in the chief's face the \"exaggeration\" the chief so detested about steering hurricanes. Reichelderfer remained professional, cordially thanking Irving for his \"very, very interesting paper\" and noting there were only three or four minutes for discussion. A flurry of comments ensued, starting with the objections of the Weather Bureau's observer William Lewis, who thought that the conditions in New Mexico might have led to rain anyway.\n\nBut the reporters in the room were uninterested in counterarguments. When the session was over, they mobbed Irving. Was he saying that New York City could make rain to relieve its drought?\n\nIt very well might, Langmuir replied. There were no guarantees, but when the cost of an attempt was so low, why not try?\n\nThe next day, the newspapers were filled with the story. The city's water commissioner, citing Weather Bureau skepticism, had dismissed cloud seeding just as quickly as he had dismissed a group of Indian chiefs who offered to come to town and perform a rain dance. Now Irving Langmuir was saying that rainmaking might relieve the city's water woes. Langmuir was, The New York Times editorialized, \"no rain-making crank, but a Nobel Prize winner who ought to be consulted in the present extremity.\"\n\nNot long afterward, the Project Cirrus team received a phone call from the New York City water commissioner, Stephen Carney. Might he and Edward Clark, the chief engineer for the water department, visit Schenectady? A meeting was arranged for the following week.\n\nLangmuir triumphantly took William Lewis out to lunch.\n\n\"Do you still believe that no seeding experiment has increased rainfall by even as much as 10 percent?\" he asked. Lewis, showing significant pluck, replied that he did.\n\n\"Did any single point that I brought out in my January 25th paper appear to you to have any significance?\" Irving pressed.\n\n\"I don't know of any,\" responded Lewis, refusing to be cowed by the eminent scientist.\n\n\"So you think my paper was mostly bunk?\"\n\n\"I personally wouldn't use that word,\" Lewis said, \"but it does describe my opinion reasonably well.\"\n\nIrving laughed. He loved nothing better than a fight, and he couldn't help but admire the guy for standing up to him.\n\n\"Why don't you undertake something constructive?\" he said, and gave Lewis an assignment looking for seven-day periodicities in any weather trait in the northwest states.\n\nHe had his reasons for this. In November, Workman's team in Socorro had started running Bernie's silver iodide generator every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Langmuir was hoping to introduce a regular pattern\u2014a periodicity\u2014into the weather to prove that he was making rain. But in January, something strange happened. Bizarrely heavy rains were reported in the Ohio and Wabash River basin. It was a long way from the generator, but it made some sense. The air over New Mexico didn't carry much moisture. The silver iodide, encountering little water vapor to nucleate there, might just be floating east with the prevailing winds. As it entered the Mississippi River basin, it would collide with moisture-laden winds sweeping up from the Gulf of Mexico. The winds would carry the chemical north to the Ohio River basin, where it would finally cause rain.\n\nThe members of the Project Cirrus steering committee, concerned that they might be causing damaging floods, met in late January and decided to reduce the number of days on which they seeded to two per week. As soon as they did, the rainfall in the Ohio River basin let up. It was all looking more than coincidental.\n\nThe steering committee was eager to tell the military. At the end of January, President Truman had announced that he had directed the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission\u2014the organization originally meant to help deter a worldwide arms race\u2014to build more atomic bombs. He specifically included the Super, the hydrogen bomb Teller and others had been advocating. But Project Cirrus might be providing them with a superweapon that was even better.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt Vonnegut's first published story, \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect,\" hit the newsstands on February 11, 1950, in Collier's. The Schenectady Gazette ran an article announcing his triumph. Typically for the credential-loving company town, the paper announced that he was \"a graduate of the University of Chicago.\"\n\nHe was trying to repeat his success, but it was hard. \"Mnemonics,\" \"City,\" and \"Das Ganz Arm Dolmetscher\" were being turned down all over town. Knox Burger was rejecting everything they sent him. He was, Kurt grumbled, turning to Yaddo again, going back to buying work from the well-known writers who went to fancy writers' colonies and won prizes and hung out drinking cocktails in New York. Kurt was cranking out reams of prose to no avail.\n\nTwo weeks after \"Barnhouse\" was published, the News Bureau got a call from a librarian at the Works Library in Building 2. She had looked up from her desk, and there, looking right back at her through the window, was a deer. Somehow it had gotten into the Works, and now it was trapped inside the walls of the industrial city. The librarian had called security to come get it out, but she thought the News Bureau would want to know about it.\n\nA photographer was dispatched at once. The deer, a young doe, was backed into a corner, her head ducked and her spindly legs splayed. Two members of the GE patrol approached, and as the photographer snapped away, they grabbed the doe around the middle. She was so small that they easily lifted her up on her hind legs to truss her front ones, then wrestled her to the ground and trussed her back legs too. They heaved her into the backseat of a GE patrol vehicle, and a GE security officer got in with her, wrapping a stocky arm around the doe's neck as if they were on a date.\n\nThe General Office News ran a page of photographs of the whole drama, with droll captions giving the deer's point of view: \"What a way to treat a Republican!\" and \"All I wanted to do was sneak out of work at 4:30.\" The News Bureau issued a press release slyly commenting that the deer had forgotten to wear her ID badge. GE was always hassling the employees about leaving their badges at home.\n\nIt was all supposed to be cute and funny, but Kurt knew how the deer felt. Trapped. Cornered. Baffled by this strange, ugly place and the bizarre rituals of the creatures who inhabited it. He knew what it felt like to want out.\n\nFive years later, \"Deer in the Works\" would be the first story Kurt sold to Esquire. In it, a newspaper writer takes a job in publicity at a big corporation because he's worried about supporting his growing family. On his first day, a deer gets into the Works, and the new guy is assigned to get the story. As the writer wanders through the labyrinthine plant encountering terrifying assembly lines, alcohol-soaked sales meetings, and labs with mysterious names, he realizes he has made a terrible decision in leaving his small-town newspaper for the security of being a company man. He cannot thrive in this place. He cannot even breathe the soot-filled air. Finally, he wanders hopelessly into a ball field and the deer appears, pursued by Works policemen with pistols drawn. The writer does the only thing he can: he opens the gate and lets the deer escape. And then he follows her out. The story ends simply, \"He didn't look back.\"\n\nThat's what Kurt was living for now, his own escape. Four more salable stories were all he needed. The irony was, it was GE that was handing him the material he needed to break the company's bonds.\n\nOne day not long after the deer affair, he was researching a News Bureau story when he learned about the stratosphere. It was a great word. There were other great words to describe the strange zones between the atmosphere and space. He wrote them down on the back of an envelope: \"stratosphere,\" \"troposphere.\" In particular, he was drawn to the notion of the ionosphere, a layer of ionized air one hundred to four hundred miles above the earth's surface, the boundary between the earth's atmosphere and the empty vacuum of space.\n\nWhat might be up there? Weather, of course\u2014that he heard about all the time. And for a few years after the war, scientists had puzzled over strange, erratic blips that showed up on radar screens, dots that flitted about with apparent disregard for the laws of physical motion. First noticed by a scientist at Bell Labs, the blips captured the imagination of reporters, who called them \"ghosts\" or \"angels.\" Then, in early 1949, newspapers announced that the mystery was solved: they were insects.\n\nBut what if there really were ghosts or angels up there, drifting around in those atmospheric zones?\n\nKurt made his main character a scientist with a Germanic last name. Dr. Groszinger is the kind of man who loves science for its own sake, who finds comfort in the \"dependability of the physical world.\" He is working on a top secret experiment funded by the military, but he isn't really focused on that. \"The threat of war was an incident,\" Kurt wrote, \"the military men about him an irritating condition of work\u2014the experiment was the heart of the matter.\"\n\nDr. Groszinger's first name is Bernard.\n\nBernard Groszinger is supervising Project Cyclops, an experiment to send a controlled spaceship into orbit above the earth. There is a man on board whose job is to report the weather conditions over enemy territory and the accuracy of guided atomic missiles should war break out. As the story opens, the spaceship has been launched, and Bernard is chain-smoking while he awaits the first weather report from its passenger, Major Rice. He is relieved when contact is made. But soon it becomes apparent that all is not well. Major Rice is hearing voices in space\u2014voices that seem to be coming from the dead. And the dead have plenty to say.\n\nBernard Groszinger is convinced that the man in orbit is insane. But when the general in charge of Project Cyclops has the messages from the dead investigated, they seem to check out. Dr. Groszinger then thinks it must be an elaborate hoax\u2014until the major reports that a woman speaking with a German accent has asked for Dr. Groszinger. When the major quotes his mother's favorite lines from Goethe, Bernard realizes the guy is not making it up.\n\nThe general doesn't give a damn about the voices\u2014as long as they are kept secret, so as not to disclose that his nation has a spaceship in orbit. But for Groszinger, the voices create a moral quandary. Doesn't the public have a right to know that the dead can be contacted? Wearily, he thinks perhaps no one would even be surprised. \"Science had given humanity forces enough to destroy the earth, and politics had given humanity a fair assurance that the forces would be used,\" he thinks. \"There could be no cause for awe to top that one. But proof of a spirit world might at least equal it. Maybe that was the shock the world needed, maybe word from the spirits could change the suicidal course of history.\"\n\nWhen amateur radio operators stumble onto the secret frequency and overhear the major's transmissions, the general is forced to jam the frequency and bring the spaceship down, killing the orbiting major. Dr. Groszinger is sworn to silence about the whole affair.\n\nThe story concludes with Dr. Groszinger denying everything to a crush of reporters. He tells them that the unidentified object seen crashing into the Atlantic was most likely a meteor. When a reporter asks what's out beyond the stratosphere, he says it's just dead space. He gives it a name: the thanasphere.\n\n\"Has a nice scientific ring to it, don't you think?\" he asks. The reporters press him to tell them when the nation will have a rocket in space.\n\n\"You people read too many comic books,\" he tells them.\n\n\"Thanasphere\" was a good story: tight, sharp, and just thoughtful enough for the slicks. In a light way, it addressed the things Kurt saw going wrong with the nation: militarism, technocracy, secrecy. The quest for bigger and better weapons was shunting aside the things that made human beings human. The story's general turns a blind eye to the desperate voices of the dead\u2014and the entire existence of the spirit world\u2014in order to maintain secrecy and efficiency. It's a dark vision of military values. But it didn't find much to admire in scientific values either. After all, it's the scientist, Bernard Groszinger, who makes the whole operation possible. Like his namesake, he has his moral qualms. But in the end, he does what the general wants.\n\n* * *\n\nIn mid-February, New York water commissioner Stephen Carney and engineer Edward Clark visited Schenectady. They went first to Langmuir's home, where Irving gave them an overview of Project Cirrus. Then, because his own driveway was blocked by seventeen inches of snow that had fallen the night before, Irving rode with them to the Knolls. There, Carney and Clark were treated to the usual song and dance: Vince seeded the freezer with dry ice, and Bernie deployed his popgun with a puckish smile. As always, the News Bureau team was there to get photographs, and though Carney had a long, mournful face and Clark wore a skeptical frown, at the end of the day, the two men met with a large group of assembled reporters at the Hotel Van Curler and made a startling announcement. Cloud seeding, Carney said, was worth a try. He was going to request that the city's mayor hire a consulting meteorologist to put a program in place. Langmuir added that the city should be sure to find \"a competent meteorologist who has nothing to sell and who will study and plan the project with a conservative approach.\"\n\nThis was a meaningful comment. Bernie, Vince, and Irving were beginning to realize they had created a cottage industry. Dozens of private \"rainmakers\" were hawking cloud-seeding programs all over the nation. One of them, Irving Krick, had already been trying to sell his services to New York City. The GE men knew Krick. Lately, they had begun to see him as a problem.\n\nIrving Krick was a confident cowboy of a weatherman from California. He had been on Eisenhower's meteorology team, where his old-fashioned forecast had come close to causing D-Day to fail. But after the war, he had spun the story to cast himself as the hero. A charismatic self-promoter with a wavy pompadour and a Laurence Olivier mustache, Krick had a weather consulting company specializing in long-range forecasts that the Weather Bureau considered hokum. Now he had taken up the cause of cloud seeding with gusto. A year earlier, he had visited GE and shared data with the Project Cirrus team. But since then, the GE scientists watched with growing alarm as Krick bounced all over the country selling rainmaking programs that they considered scientifically sloppy. Worse still, Krick was hinting that he had some kind of affiliation with GE. News Bureau manager Roger Hammond told the Cirrus team that Krick was \"using GE and the names Langmuir, Schaefer and Vonnegut to his commercial advantage.\" And lately, Krick had started telling reporters that he had a \"new way\" to make rain for New York: seeding with silver iodide.\n\nThe next time Krick visited GE, he found his reception significantly chillier than it had been a year earlier. The scientists suggested that he confine himself to dry ice seeding, leaving the silver iodide to the experts. Then Langmuir took him aside and told him, in no uncertain terms, to stop taking credit for Bernie's work. It was something Bernie would never have done himself. He was never particularly concerned about getting credit, even when he deserved it; for him, the science was its own reward.\n\nNot long after Clark and Carney returned to New York\u2014their trip was delayed by the weather\u2014New York City's mayor, William O'Dwyer, announced that he had hired a scientist to begin formulating a plan: Wallace Howell. A longtime colleague and friend of the Project Cirrus team, Howell was a consulting meteorologist at Harvard's Blue Hill Observatory. Vince had suggested him, and the Project Cirrus team was pleased he was hired: Howell was a real meteorologist, not a charlatan. And he would consult with them regularly.\n\nProject Cirrus was riding high. Their work was finally going to prove its worth to the world! The Industrial Bank of Commerce ran an ad with a picture of Irving, Bernie, and Vincent standing by their freezer under the words \"Salute to the Future.\" There was a quotation from Guy Suits declaring that the weather work \"may prove in the future to be as important to human welfare as the advent of atomic energy.\"\n\n\"Here,\" declared the ad, \"is another example of industry at work for humanity. It represents progress for all mankind, and its beneficial effects on our civilization are truly immeasurable.\"\n\nThe week New York City hired Howell, Vincent made one of his frequent appearances on the WGY radio program Science Forum. His topic was the \"sunny side of rainmaking.\" Outside, a hard rain was washing the winter snow into a slushy brew as Vincent speculated for listeners at home about the coming day when blizzards and thunderstorms would be averted, aircraft icing forestalled, forest fires prevented, and fog simply swept away. It was all nearly within their grasp.\n\n* * *\n\nDr. John Herbert Hollomon invited Kurt and George Burns into his study. Herb was one of GE's most promising young men, a wunderkind who had come to GE Labs to head up the new physical metallurgy division in 1946. Bernie had worked with Hollomon before moving to Project Cirrus. Herb was a friend of Bernie's and, like many of Bernie's friends, had also become a friend of Kurt's.\n\nAlso, he liked model railroading.\n\nGeorge Burns set up his camera to get a shot of Herb with a model train. They were there to do a profile, and this was just the sort of humanizing detail GE loved to give out about its scientists. Kurt had just written a press release about a speech urging scientists and engineers to engage in activities unrelated to their work. Now here was Herb Hollomon, hoisting a tiny locomotive, the perfect example of a man with a wholesome hobby. An exemplary hobby. Unless of course the man who loved model trains was to get so obsessed with them that his family life suffered... like, for instance, Earl \"Hotbox\" Harrison, a model-train maniac oblivious to his wife's distress, in the story \"With His Hand on the Throttle.\"\n\nKurt worked on short story ideas constantly. General Electric contained a rich vein of characters, settings, and concepts he could mine. It was a microcosm, a corporate culture that reflected many aspects of the national culture Kurt found disturbing. The same month he did the News Bureau story on Herb Hollomon, he wrote a GE press release about a robot tool dolly.\n\n\"A one-armed robot on wheels, which can close doors, turn valves, take apart and reassemble complex machinery, and perform virtually every task the human hand can perform,\" he wrote, \"has been developed by General Electric engineers for work in radioactive areas, it was revealed here today.\"\n\nKurt could easily summon the gee-whiz attitude GE liked to use for unveiling inventions, but his own feelings about the things he saw were complex. Was every scientific advance necessarily good for humanity? Professor Barnhouse's question would hang over everything Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote. The tool dolly, for instance, made radioactive contamination into a neat problem, something that could be solved with enough know-how and engineering spunk. Nothing like a whiz-bang gadget to take the sting out of a nuclear holocaust!\n\nSomewhere in there, Kurt was taken to see another nifty invention: the GE automated milling machine. A cathedral of steel with motors strung from electrical cords, it was designed to cut the rotors for jet engines and gas turbines. GE had just received a patent on the machine's tracer control system. Thanks to that control system, every rotor could now be cut to exact, identical specifications, every contour decreed not by the skill of the machinist but by the dictates of the little clicking computer attached to the blade. The machinists who worked milling machines were some of the top-paid laborers at GE. Or at least they had been. At the behest of GE, they had lent their movements to the tape-driven control system, and now the clicking box and its robot cutter would replace them.\n\nKurt couldn't blame the inventors. It wasn't necessarily vicious or antisocial to make such a machine. But it was definitely going to be a bad thing for a lot of people who had been proud of their skills. No one at GE seemed to be thinking about that.\n\nAnd automation of mechanical tasks was only the beginning. GE was now getting into building high-speed calculating machines. The company was the first in the world to own a differential analyzer, an analog computer of the type first designed by Vannevar Bush. A shockingly noisy contraption made up of thousands of gears, it occupied an entire floor of the old athletic building. Langmuir and Katharine Blodgett had used it during the war to calculate the liquid water content of clouds and particle size distribution inside them. Now GE had built a new device, the Ordinal Memory Inspecting Binary Automatic Calculator: OMIBAC for short. With its thirty-three hundred electron tubes and circuits, OMIBAC was five thousand times faster than a human computer at doing math. It could solve a problem in days that would take months or even years for a mere person. This was obviously a good thing. Or was it? Increasingly, some people were beginning to wonder if such devices might ultimately diminish human beings. Even the Monogram article about OMIBAC was accompanied by a cartoon of a man cowering in a box, with the caption \"Are machines smarter than ME?\"\n\nKurt had read Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics, which came out in 1948. Practically everyone in Schenectady would have. The Saturday Review of Literature said it was \"impossible for anyone seriously interested in our civilization to ignore this book.\" It was so widely admired that Wiener was persuaded to write a \"popular\" version without the mathematics; it was published in 1950 under the title The Human Use of Human Beings. Together, the books provided the nation with an introduction to an entirely new way of thinking. Wiener defined cybernetics as \"the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine.\" Machines, Wiener pointed out, are very much like human beings, or even human cultures: They operate by sending and receiving messages in an attempt to control their environment. Such feedback allows them to learn.\n\nWiener's idea\u2014that the brain is a kind of computer and the computer a kind of brain\u2014has become so much a part of our thinking now that it's hard to imagine how revolutionary it was at the time. And Wiener was also already thinking about the human implications of this breakthrough. Alone among computing pioneers, he was asking what the human downside to the computing revolution might be. At present, a computer's output was numbers. But eventually it would produce other things: information, pictures, songs. Cybernetics explained that the computer was a kind of mechanical slave destined to usurp not only physical labor but mental labor too. The first industrial revolution had proved that human handwork could be done by machines; the second would prove that human thinking could too.\n\nThere was a short story in that. Kurt named his story\u2014and his computer\u2014\"EPICAC.\" The narrator is a mathematician who works the night shift programming EPICAC. The military men who control EPICAC, and the scientist who designed it, Dr. Ormand von Kleigstadt\u2014another Germanic name\u2014want the computer to \"plot the course of a rocket from anywhere on earth to the second button from the bottom on Joe Stalin's overcoat.\" As it turns out, EPICAC can do much more.\n\nThe narrator is a programmer in love with his colleague, a \"crackerjack mathematician\" named Pat, but she repeatedly declines his marriage proposals because they aren't poetic enough. One night, sitting at his keyboard, \"trying to think of something poetic, not coming up with anything that didn't belong in The Journal of the American Physical Society,\" the narrator types his troubles into EPICAC: \"My girl doesn't love me.\"\n\n\"What's love? What's girl?\" asks EPICAC. After the narrator defines the terms and then defines poetry, the computer writes him a poem to give to Pat. She loves it, so the narrator gets EPICAC to produce another one. Slowly, passing off EPICAC's creations as his own, the narrator wins Pat's affection. He programs EPICAC to produce the perfect marriage proposal. Of course, the computer thinks it's proposing for itself. The narrator tells it that women can't love machines; they can only love human beings.\n\nPat accepts the narrator's proposal on the condition that the narrator write her a poem every year for their anniversary. That night, EPICAC kills itself by overloading its own circuits. The narrator finds its suicide note: \"I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war... But fate has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve.\" EPICAC has left the narrator a wedding gift: five hundred more poems to give his wife.\n\n\"De mortuis nil nisi bonum,\" the story concludes. \"Say nothing but good of the dead.\"\n\nKurt finished \"EPICAC\" quickly and sent it to Kenneth, who liked it enough to send it on to Knox Burger. Knox returned it with notes, commenting that the title sounded like something you took when constipated. But in response to Kurt's complaint that he wasn't managing to sell anything, he offered a glimmer of hope. His stories, Knox wrote, were much more readable than most science fiction. It was perhaps the first time Kurt heard his work called that.\n\nOn April 4, Knox had good news. Collier's was buying \"Thanasphere.\" Elated, Kurt sat down to work on a story about a scientist who invents a new way of making ice that turns out to be horribly dangerous. He started out calling it \"The Crystal.\" But before long, it had the title \"Ice-9.\"\n\n* * *\n\nThe first flight of New York's rainmakers was delayed by rain. Kept on the ground at Floyd Bennett Field until the squall passed, the police department's Grumman Goose\u2014a comical amphibious plane that looks like a cartoon whale balancing a surfboard on its back\u2014arrived in the Catskills too late. Any clouds that could have been seeded had already moved on.\n\nThe city's newspaper writers were crestfallen. The entire metropolis had been eagerly awaiting its first municipal rain. The New York Times Magazine had run a detailed article explaining the different types of cloud seeding and when they would be deployed. Bernie had provided drawings for it.\n\nUpstate residents, meanwhile, awaited the event with more trepidation than glee. Before the first rainmaking attempt even happened, lawsuits were threatened. Albany's mayor, Erastus Corning, tried unsuccessfully to get the state Water Power and Control Commission to stop New York City from \"intercepting\" rain meant for Albany's watershed. Then a group of property owners and civic associations in the Catskills had issued a court summons in Ulster County to block the rainmakers. The city's lawyers advised the mayor to ignore it.\n\nOn April 13, Wallace Howell and a police pilot took off from La Guardia Airport in the Grumman Goose. They flew north, up the Hudson, and circled the Catskills watershed area, scouting out likely clouds. Howell sprinkled a hundred pounds of dry ice into clouds near the Ashokan Reservoir. The plane returned to Floyd Bennett Field at 6:42 p.m.\n\nSome observers on the ground insisted that there was no snow until the plane flew back and forth overhead, at which point it began snowing for the next hour and a half. Others said there was snow off and on all afternoon, but it increased in intensity after the plane passed over. The state police at Phoenicia insisted that there were light squalls all day, with no observable change in the afternoon.\n\nThe next morning, New Yorkers awoke to an unseasonable snowstorm. Slush coated the sidewalks, snow blanketed Easter lilies in the city parks, and city workers had to dig shovels out of spring storage. The snow was oddly patchy, sometimes falling on one block but not the next one over. City hall's wires overflowed with complaints from irate drivers shocked at the icy conditions on bridges and roads. City dwellers called it \"Howell's snow.\"\n\nEven as he fired up two generators mounted on station wagons to cruise the watershed and blow silver iodide into the clouds, Howell insisted there was no way to tell if the snow had resulted from seeding.\n\n\"It would be completely impossible for anybody to say whether or not we increased the yield of today's snow flurries over the watershed area,\" he told reporters. \"On any individual flight, how can anybody tell?\" After at least ten flights, he might have a better idea. But the media were not put off so easily. The New York Times ran a photograph of Howell standing near a snowbank at city hall under the title \"Is It His or Nature's?\"\n\nAll throughout the spring, Howell seeded clouds with silver iodide from the air and from ground generators mounted on trucks. And all that spring, rain fell on the watershed. The local newspapers breathlessly reported on each increase as the city's water supply inched upward. News reports took on a martial tone: the city was mounting \"double-barreled attacks\" on the clouds, \"bombarding\" them from the ground and conducting \"aerial assaults.\" On April 20, torrential rains in the Catskills caused the Schoharie Reservoir to spill over, ending seeding operations for a few days. With the reservoirs up and New Yorkers still drastically reducing usage on Thirsty Thursdays and Dry Fridays, Commissioner Carney said that the bans on sprinklers and swimming pools might be lifted if the trend continued through summer.\n\nThe first court case landed in the state supreme court in May. Ben Slutsky, owner of the Nevele Country Club, demanded an injunction against the city's rainmaking because it could damage his business. Why would people take vacations in the Catskills, he asked, if they figured it was going to rain the whole time? The supreme court, unmoved, found for the defendant, declaring the plaintiff had \"no vested property rights in the clouds or the moisture therein.\" Furthermore, the court must weigh Slutsky's \"remote possibility of inconvenience\" against the city's need to maintain \"an adequate supply of pure and wholesome water\" for ten million people. The city's interest won out. The court did not even question the assumption that cloud seeding worked.\n\nOn May 1, a sixteen-hour seeding operation was followed by three solid hours of rain, adding nearly two billion gallons to the reservoirs. Howell remained reserved, refusing to take credit. It might be his. It might be nature's. But rain was falling. Because of Bernie's invention, New York City was saved.\n\n* * *\n\nDr. George Hoenikker held a vial containing a milky white shard. His invention: Ice-9. His wife didn't understand it. His kids didn't understand it. No one saw its significance, no one but him. But he was about to become famous. Maybe he'd win the Nobel Prize. But one thing was for sure: he wasn't going to work at General Forge and Foundry anymore. He wasn't going to help them build the Blue Fairy Rocket. He had fled to Cape Cod and was thinking of taking up woodworking.\n\nBut then things went wrong. He got mixed up with a blowsy married woman. He got in a car accident. The story careened off in crazy directions. It had no arc.\n\nSo Kurt killed Dr. George Hoenikker. He threw the whole \"Ice-9\" story away and started over. He made several outlines. But they all started in the same place: with a scientist whose conviction that his work carries no social responsibility allows him to invent Ice-9.\n\nIce-9 was Irving Langmuir's idea. Someone had told Kurt about it at a cocktail party. GE parties often featured funny stories about Irving. There was the time his secretary was out sick and Irving dealt with the temp for a whole day without noticing the substitution. There was the time he went to pick up Marion and got so lost in thought that when he neared his wife and she waved, he simply waved back and drove past. There was the time he went out with his daughter, Barbara, got caught up in a conversation, and came home without the little girl. But this story was different. It didn't concern Langmuir's absentmindedness. It concerned his idea for a novel.\n\nYears earlier, the partygoer told Kurt, H. G. Wells had been invited to tour the Schenectady Works. Wells was quite famous at the time, so he was given GE's most famous scientist as a guide: Langmuir. Irving took the esteemed writer around the plant, but he was a little unsure of how to talk to a novelist. Because H. G. Wells wrote fiction, Irving thought he would try to entertain him by offering up an idea for a novel. Why not write a book, he suggested, about a scientist who invents a form of ice that's stable at room temperature? The ice somehow gets into the wrong hands and contaminates the water supply. All of the earth's water freezes instantly, and life on the planet is doomed.\n\nH. G. Wells had not been interested in Irving's idea, but Kurt was. How strange that his brother's older colleague should invent such a perfect parable for the dangers of what he himself did\u2014inventing things with no regard for the human consequences! And the stable ice\u2014he had come to think of it as Ice-9\u2014was an intriguing concept, particularly given what Bernie had told Kurt about different types of ice crystals. At another GE party, Kurt had tried the concept out on a GE crystallographer. The scientist seemed intrigued. He went over to a chair, sat down, and stared blankly into space. After half an hour, he came back to Kurt.\n\n\"No,\" he had said. \"It's not possible.\"\n\nScientifically impossible, maybe, but it was a damn good story idea. Kurt kept thinking about it. Wells didn't want it and Irving had no use for it, so he figured, finders, keepers. And now, after a number of false starts with \"Ice-9,\" he thought he had finally found the right way to tell it. He would set up the ethical conflict by using two characters\u2014two men, a scientist and a sociologist\u2014with different attitudes about the moral duties of scientists.\n\nHe turned Dr. George Hoenikker into Dr. Arnold Macon. Macon has invented Ice-9 while living in an island banana republic where he is pet scientist for the island's repressive dictator, General Monzano. Monzano\u2014whose name recalls the Manzano Mountains where Bernie had his big breakthrough\u2014is faced with a civil uprising. As rebel forces threaten the dictator's stronghold, Dr. Macon is visited by a sociologist friend, Franklin Dale. Macon can't resist telling Dale about Ice-9.\n\nDale immediately recognizes the potential for disaster. He and Macon quarrel about the scientist's ethical obligations. Macon insists he has none: he just does research and leaves the uses of his discoveries to the engineers. Dale insists he shouldn't work on inventions that have the power to do great harm. He is proved correct when General Monzano gets his hands on the Ice-9 and holds the world hostage, threatening total annihilation of life on earth if the rebels don't back down.\n\nThe rest of the novella plays out in rousing confrontations and chase scenes as Macon tries, first, to convince the world that his invention is real and capable of doing great harm and, second, to retrieve the Ice-9 from Monzano.\n\nIn the final scene, Macon finds General Monzano apparently dead, and the Ice-9 dangling over the sea on a chain attached to the hands of a clock. At the stroke of twelve, it will drop into the water and destroy the world. Macon hesitates, and suddenly he sees that he has been the real villain all along. Secretly, he loved his invention's destructive power. As he holds the Ice-9 and contemplates ending the world himself, Monzano\u2014alive after all!\u2014shoves him into the sea. Macon pulls the general with him, but the Ice-9 catches on a tree branch, suspended above the high-tide line. The world is saved\u2014for now\u2014through sheer dumb luck.\n\nKurt figured the novella was perfect for magazine serialization. The only thing that worried him was that, like much of his work, it lacked female characters. Still, he thought it was the best thing he'd ever written.\n\nThe month he was finishing the draft of \"Ice-9,\" GE's president, Charlie Wilson, addressed the ethical obligations of scientists in Schenectady's annual Steinmetz Memorial Lecture. There was no use criticizing scientists, Wilson declared, simply because the truths they happen upon can be used for evil ends. \"There is nothing moral or religious or hostile or inspirational in science unless man puts it there,\" Wilson declared, sounding a lot like Dr. Macon.\n\nKurt thought otherwise. It wasn't necessarily evil to invent Ice-9 or a machine that replaced a human being, like OMIBAC, EPICAC, or the \"contour-following system\" that made skilled workers obsolete. But it was unethical to do these things without thinking about their implications for humanity. Increasingly, that's what his stories were saying.\n\nHe sent \"Ice-9\" to the typist with renewed hopes of making it to his goal of selling five stories. Kenneth had sold \"Das Ganz Arm Dolmetscher\" to The Atlantic: that made three. He was only getting $125 for it, but getting published in The Atlantic was a coup for his reputation as a writer. Before long, he might be able to quit, and when he did, it was becoming increasingly clear to him what he would do. He would write a novel about science and progress and ethical quagmires\u2014a novel, in short, about GE.\n\n* * *\n\nBy late May, New York City newspapers were announcing water gains on every \"front.\" By mid-June, the tone was a little less gleeful. The reservoirs were near full, but constant rain was ruining the vacation season upstate. Resort owners grumbled about lost tourist income; farmers in neighboring Orange and Sullivan Counties complained that their vegetable crops were being washed out; sports fans were outraged when Giants and Dodgers games were canceled. Ironically, even the annual picnic of the Department of Water Supply, Gas, and Electricity was rained out.\n\nOn June 15, with reservoir levels surging, prohibitions on watering lawns and filling swimming pools were lifted. In July, residents were allowed to wash their cars. In August, as he prepared a report on his first six months as the city's consulting meteorologist, Wallace Howell finally said what the press wanted him to say.\n\n\"I have made rain,\" he told city reporters.\n\nGE was trying to get its rainmaker to stop saying the same thing.\n\nIrving had submitted his American Meteorological Society paper\u2014the one that had sparked New York City's experiment\u2014to an editor at Science. The GE lawyers, fearing that the paper could be used as evidence in a civil suit against the company, had the News Bureau head, George Griffin, call up Science and withdraw it. No one informed Langmuir.\n\nWhen Irving found out, he was furious. GE was demanding he go along with the official position that GE scientists never caused rain. But his future work and reputation depended on convincing people that he had made rain. In the face of his anger, the GE lawyers backed down. Langmuir might be controversial, but he was still their most famous scientist, their only Nobel laureate. The paper appeared in Science in July. By then, Irving, Bernie, and Vince were all back in New Mexico, flying regular seeding runs to see if they could introduce definitive changes in the weather\u2014not just in that state, but across the entire nation.\n\nOut of the Blue\n\nPrime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, generous of smile, rotund of body, arrived at GE sporting his traditional fez. He was trailed by his brocaded, bejeweled wife and flanked by nine handlers, two from the Department of State. The News Bureau had diligently organized the photo ops. At the Works, the prime minister was photographed smiling while a manager explained the engine assembly line. Then he was taken to the turbine department. Gamely, he stood by as a worker drove gleaming rivets into an enormous flywheel. Flashbulbs detonated like lightning.\n\nThe prime minister had left Pakistan to learn what was to be learned in the most powerful nation on earth for the good of his spanking-new country. His state visit, hastily arranged after Stalin invited him to the Soviet Union, was designed to cement young Pakistan's alignment with Western democracy and free enterprise.\n\nThe Ali Khans received a full state tour of Washington, including visits to see President Truman, the Naval Academy, Mount Vernon, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Then they went to New York, where the prime minister received an honorary degree from Columbia University president Dwight D. Eisenhower. After that, they were hustled around the country\u2014Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, New Orleans\u2014inspecting everything from hospitals and factories to crop dusters and prize cattle. In Kansas City, they visited the home of an average American family. The average American husband and wife stood nervously in their Sunday best while Liaquat Ali Khan sat stiffly in their average American living room with their average American son on his lap.\n\nWhen he and his wife arrived in Schenectady on May 24, 1950, Prime Minister Ali Khan had exactly 510 days to live. He would be assassinated on October 16, 1951, by an Afghani Pashtun ultranationalist. Conspiracy theories alleging U.S. or Soviet involvement would never be proved or disproved. But no one knew this on May 24. All anyone knew that day in Schenectady was that a brand-new nation's head of state must be dazzled by the wonders of American industry.\n\nKurt didn't write the press release for the prime minister's visit, but he couldn't have missed the fuss. GE loved nothing more than treating visiting dignitaries to a tour of the company's showcase factory. But what was it like for someone like Liaquat Ali Khan to see the Schenectady Works? Did any of the guests treated to this spectacle of technological prowess and entrepreneurial efficiency ever question the value of all those toasters and refrigerators and washing machines and jet engines and tanks? Did anyone ever dare ask what it was all for?\n\nAt home, Kurt put a fresh piece of paper in his typewriter and banged out the words \"Outline for a Science Fiction Novel.\"\n\nHe figured that's what he'd been writing: science fiction. Not crazy exotic tales of alien races and outer space and time travel; that wasn't what he meant. He had never read the genre magazines full of monsters and Martians, intergalactic wars and improbable future worlds. He meant fiction about science and the probable future that science was spawning in the here and now. Because he'd been living at the leading edge of that future for a couple of years, and he had some issues with what he saw.\n\nProgress: the one true church. The smartest people understood that it had a downside, people like Norbert Wiener, but no one was listening to them. Take, for instance, David Lilienthal's recent speech. Lilienthal had recently retired from the Atomic Energy Commission, and a group of scientists had quickly arranged for him to come to Schenectady and speak. They thought he would address the morally urgent issues behind atomic energy, now that he could say what he really thought. Instead, Lilienthal blathered on about nuclear medicine and nuclear power and how the main uses of the atom would be for peace. He dismissed the \"cult of horror\" of certain scientists and compared the discovery of fission to the discovery of fire.\n\nAs if fire had never harmed a fly.\n\nDuring the question-and-answer period, someone in the audience asked how many atomic bombs it would take to destroy Schenectady.\n\n\"I haven't given it a thought,\" Lilienthal said.\n\nKurt was giving it a thought. His novel would be about progress and the dark side of it no one wanted to discuss.\n\nIt was Kenneth Littauer who had suggested writing a novel. An editor friend at Doubleday thought Kurt should expand \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect\" to novel length. It was not impossible, Kenneth said, that the publisher would offer Kurt an advance of $2,500 if he could provide a detailed proposal. Half a year's salary!\n\nSo now Kurt was writing an outline. He had an idea about the novel he wanted to write, and it wasn't a longer version of \"Barnhouse.\" He wanted to write a novel about GE. It would be science fiction in the way that most of his stories were science fiction. Science fiction like Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or George Orwell's 1984, which had been so acclaimed the previous year. Kurt's novel would cover many of the same issues\u2014freedom, totalitarianism, warmongering\u2014that those well-respected novels did. But the totalitarian world of his novel would be based not on socialist England but on Schenectady. He wasn't going to imagine some fantastic future world with babies in bottles or spy screens in every home; he was going to play out the implications of what was already happening right here, in the heart of the free market, in the capital of industrial know-how. He was going to bite the hand that fed him.\n\nHe'd never written a novel outline before. In his pr\u00e9cis for Kenneth Littauer, he reverted to his anthropology-student habits. He started off by claiming broad cultural relevance: machines were taking over human labor, he declared, and this was a more significant cultural development than atomic energy. As proof, he inserted a long quotation from Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics:\n\nThe first industrial revolution... was the devaluation of the human arm by the competition of machinery... The modern industrial revolution is similarly bound to devalue the human brain at least in its simpler and more routine decisions. Of course, just as the skilled carpenter, the skilled mechanic, the skilled dressmaker have in some degree survived the first industrial revolution, so the skilled scientist and the skilled administrator may survive the second. However, taking the second revolution as accomplished, the average human being of mediocre attainments or less has nothing to sell that it is worth anyone's money to buy.\n\nThat was exactly the world in which his novel would take place: a world sharply divided into an elite class of people intelligent enough to remain necessary and a vast, unhappy underclass whose usefulness has been usurped by machines. It was sort of like the physical split that had already occurred at GE, where the scientists and the managers moved to the Knolls and the laborers stayed behind at the Works, watching as machines took over their purpose. The central character would be an engineer, intelligent enough to be part of the elite but not really comfortable in it. He would be discontented with the whole situation without really understanding why. Eventually, there would have to be a rupture of some sort.\n\nThe novel outline hinted at a deeper animus behind Kurt's resolve to quit GE. The job was making him crazy. And he was making Jane crazy. But it wasn't just boring company politics and the soul-sapping task of public relations that were wearing him down. For him, GE was a brave new world, and he didn't like it.\n\nIt wasn't just machines or technology. It was the use of those things to divide the world into winners and losers. When Kurt was young, the Depression made losers of most of the nation, so the shame of losing had faded. But after the war, the nation staged an orgy of victory: VE Day, VJ Day. Suddenly Americans were ahead, and it felt good. It felt right. Even the arms race was exciting\u2014a game the nation could win. The old socialist ideal of equalizing things was out of favor. In fact, people were starting to be afraid of being labeled socialists\u2014or worse, communists\u2014for advocating things that used to be uncontroversial, like trade unionism. People like Joseph McCarthy, the first-term senator from Wisconsin who claimed to have a list of 205 known communists working in the State Department, were whipping up a frenzy of Red-baiting. A Senate subcommittee was now investigating a number of individuals who were suspiciously friendly toward losers.\n\nIt was as if some people forgot the most basic truths of being human: we are frail, imperfect, vulnerable creatures always in need of other humans for support. Technology was evil if it was used to make some people fabulously comfortable and toss others out with the trash. It was evil if it made that cruelty seem rational. It was evil if it removed individuals from their humanity, if it suppressed the fundamental insight that we're all in this together.\n\nKurt knew that he could shape these themes into an important novel. He gave his two-page outline to Kenneth and went back to writing short stories. The possibility of $2,500 was just that\u2014a possibility. You couldn't buy Junket or wieners with it. Besides, a popular writer could make $2,500 on two stories. Writing a novel was something you did to gain literary credibility. Kurt wanted that\u2014fervently\u2014but he also wanted to quit his job and make a living by writing. Short stories were the quicker route to prosperity.\n\nOr would be, if someone would only buy them. As summer arrived, Kurt continued to crank out stories, and Knox continued to reject them. \"Keep on trying\" wasn't working. Kurt groused to friends that Knox acted as if he were lining up prizewinners for the O. Henry Awards, not picking entertainment for a slick magazine. He couldn't believe Collier's rejected \"EPICAC.\" Even Kenneth liked that one; he submitted it to The New Yorker. \"It's about love in the technological age. I thought you might think it funny,\" he wrote to the editors there. They didn't.\n\nBy now, all of Kurt's free time was consumed sitting at his desk. He started and restarted, wrote and rewrote, as the waves of life broke over him. Mark had his third birthday party; kids brought donations for the Schenectady Cerebral Palsy Fund in place of gifts. Jane waitressed at the Schenectady Symphony's Junior League pops concert. Bernie's son Peter won a prize for his flower arrangement at the Alplaus Methodist Church flower show, and Bow was pregnant again. PTA meetings, volunteer nights, dinner parties, school picnics: all of it eddied and churned around the beachhead Kurt built at the end of the hall upstairs. Ashtrays filled, wastebaskets overflowed, and the typewriter clacked away like the engine of a ship headed for a distant shore.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie peered out the window of the B-17. His cloud\u2014a clump of billowing cumulus over the mountains west of Socorro, New Mexico\u2014was rearing up from the cloud bank like a gray sea monster. It was his cloud because he had seeded it with silver iodide half an hour earlier. Now it was growing ominously heavy and turning the same dark gray as wet concrete. But no rain was falling from it. As he watched, the cloud thrust farther upward, taking on the anvil shape of a thunderhead. Still no rain.\n\nIt was over-seeded, he figured. They had long suspected that over-seeding could cause clouds to grow while creating droplets too small to fall, and here was further proof, a cloud pregnant but unable to give birth. Fifty grams of silver iodide had been too much. Tell that to the private operators who were going haywire all over the state, seeding clouds with a hundred grams or more of silver iodide, on the mistaken theory that more was always better.\n\nNew Mexico was parched by drought. Before Project Cirrus arrived, the state's Economic Development Commission had held a meeting on the topic of rainmaking. Scientists, Weather Bureau meteorologists, and private rainmakers were invited to brainstorm. Irving went out to New Mexico early to attend. Although Bernie had been expressing concern about the burgeoning of rainmaking for profit, Irving had not quite realized how many people had decided to get into the business of weather control. At the meeting, one commercial cloud seeder after another spoke, making it clear that the whole state was blanketed in rainmakers, dispensing dry ice from airplanes, burning silver iodide on the ground, shooting silver iodide from guns: all of it paid for by farmers desperate to save wilting crops and dwindling herds. The amounts of material the cloud seeders were using were ridiculous, and no one was keeping track. Irving finally saw Bernie's point: Project Cirrus's entire program was being jeopardized by careless amateurs.\n\nIrving had stood up at the conference and made an impassioned speech urging the establishment of a central repository for data about the cloud-seeding operations across the state. He didn't like regulation, but he suggested a voluntary agreement among rainmakers to submit detailed reports of any activities to the New Mexico School of Mines. Jack Workman's group there would assemble and collate all the data and make them available to researchers. He spoke with conviction, and his usual charisma worked its magic. Everyone at the meeting agreed to the plan. But afterward, when one of the conference's private rainmakers started a new operation and the Economic Development Commission wrote asking for its report, the reply was a flat refusal from the group's lawyer stating that all data were \"the property of the client.\"\n\nNevertheless, the Project Cirrus team had come back to New Mexico for more test flights; the pilots stayed at the base, while the scientists packed into Poverty Row, the School of Mines' war-era bunkhouse, with its paper-thin walls and spartan living quarters. Vince and Irving brought their wives, but the trip was too much for the pregnant Bow. Bernie brought his nephew Albert Lieber, whose family lived in Scottsdale, Arizona. A high school senior headed for Caltech, Albert was delighted to spend his summer tagging along after Irving, recording data, and hanging on the great scientist's every word.\n\nBernie's plane banked sharply and flew back around the seeded cumulus cloud to get more photographs before turning back toward Socorro and the radar site. At Socorro, they headed northwest, toward another slowly forming cumulus system. This one they seeded with dry ice, two pounds per mile. Almost as soon as they had dropped it, radar echoes began to show precipitation. The clouds ballooned upward, their action captured in time-lapse photographs.\n\nWithin an hour, rain was pounding New Mexico. The Rio Salado and the area's dry arroyos quickly became engorged with rushing water. A truck and a car that were in the dip where Route 85 crossed the normally dry riverbed were swept downstream, halting all traffic on the road. Vince later estimated that the rivers had carried a thousand cubic feet of water per second to the Rio Grande. The floodwaters raged all that afternoon and continued through the next day as well.\n\nThe team was delighted. The photographs were excellent, and with the radar echoes they offered powerful evidence that their seeding was capable of dramatic effects. It had been even more powerful to observe it in real time from the air. Bernie felt in his heart that they had made that storm: He saw it. He was there. Unfortunately, William Lewis of the Weather Bureau was not. He had chosen to sleep in that morning and had missed the whole operation.\n\nThat night, they read in the news that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution committing itself to military action in Korea. Two weeks earlier, seventy-five thousand soldiers from Korea's communist North had crossed the 38th parallel and invaded the democratic South. In response to this clear breach of the peace, the UN Security Council had recommended that member nations begin making their military forces available to the American unified commander. For the first time, the young UN was taking up its role as planetary peacekeeper.\n\nIt was a UN military action, but it still meant that America was once again at war. Men would be drafted, ships and aircraft would be sent to the front, and military personnel on noncombat assignments would be called into active duty.\n\nIn other words, Project Cirrus was going to lose its planes and its pilots.\n\nAt least Bernie's work could carry on. Workman's team in New Mexico would continue dispensing silver iodide on their regular schedule, and the GE team would continue to analyze the data, searching for proof that Bernie's generators were changing the nation's weather patterns.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt looked out over the oily harbor in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and felt glum. He loved being near the ocean, even if, as a Great Lakes person, it made him feel as if he were swimming in chicken soup. He and Jane had been excited to bring Mark and little Edie to New England for their August vacation. They hadn't counted on the world going to hell.\n\nThe newspapers were full of it. War again. The first UN observer\u2014Colonel Unni Nayar of India\u2014had just been killed by a land mine, along with the two British journalists riding in his jeep. The UN had ejected a pacifist protester who tried to hand out leaflets advocating mediation instead of war. President Truman was rattling his saber. It all felt so familiar.\n\nBut it was new too, a civil war that felt like the opening skirmish in a global battle of ideologies. Some of the American GIs who came back wounded were insisting they had seen Russians driving the tanks that attacked them. America's UN delegate, Warren Austin, called the North Koreans a \"Russian zombie.\" The armed camps were summoning their ranks; the Cold War was turning hot.\n\nLooking out over the ocean, Kurt couldn't help but picture it: seven thousand miles across that expanse of dark water, it was all happening again. Young men\u2014as young as he had been\u2014were being sent into another maelstrom. They thought they were soldiers, but they were pawns really, pawns in a nasty game of brinksmanship between the world's two superpowers. The Korean War had nothing to do with them, little even to do with the Korean peninsula, and everything to do with the growing enmity between communism and capitalism, between what were called East and West but were really the Soviet Union and the United States.\n\nRight there in Gloucester, he started a new story: \"King's Knight to Queen Five.\" In the story, later retitled \"White King,\" the soldiers are literally pawns. Twelve soldiers, their commander, Colonel Kelly, and Kelly's family\u2014on their way to a military attach\u00e9 post in India\u2014have been blown off course by a sudden storm over China and crash-landed in territory held by a communist guerrilla chief, Pi Ying. In the presence of a Russian \"observer,\" Major Barzov, Pi Ying offers to let them all go\u2014but only if Colonel Kelly will play chess for their lives, using his troops and his family as chessmen. Whenever he loses a piece, that person will be shot. If Colonel Kelly refuses to play, they will all be killed.\n\nThe Americans take their places, and the game commences. As pieces are lost and soldiers dragged off to their deaths, Colonel Kelly realizes that Pi Ying has a sadistic fascination with what the American will do. Major Barzov seems cold and distant, Pi Ying's mistress is blank-faced, but the communist guerrilla chief is watching the game with the avid fascination of a young boy watching a colony of ants being drowned by a flood.\n\nKurt drew chessboards and sketched out the game, because the story would hinge on an actual move. Colonel Kelly realizes that he can beat Pi Ying by luring him into a trap where his sadism will blind him to the ramifications of his move. He has to make a sacrifice that will trick Pi Ying into a checkmate. As he contemplates his options, he realizes that only one sacrifice will suffice: he must lose one of his sons.\n\nThe cold resolve deserted Kelly for an instant, and he saw the utter pathos of his position\u2014a dilemma as old as mankind, as new as the struggle between East and West. When human beings are attacked, x, multiplied by hundreds or thousands, must die\u2014sent to death by those who love them most. Kelly's profession was the choosing of x.\n\nFour soldiers have already been killed when Kelly moves his son into a vulnerable position. He pretends to realize the sacrifice too late and begs to take the move back. Pi Ying refuses. As the boy is about to be hauled off and shot, Pi Ying's mistress intervenes, murdering Pi Ying and killing herself. Major Barzov continues the game, but he quickly realizes the cleverness of Kelly's move. He allows the survivors safe passage out of the region and doesn't insist on killing the boy. The story ends with banter between Barzov and Kelly about a possible rematch\u2014at the time and place of the Soviet Union's choosing.\n\nIt was a dark story, bleaker than much of what Kurt had been writing. He made a sketch of himself on the back of one of his drafts, a lanky figure hunched feverishly over his typewriter. He drew quickly, the lines electric with urgency. All his hopes for world government, for peace and disarmament, were being dashed by the action in Korea. The world powers were once again playing games with the lives of men. And he was becoming more and more convinced that the root of it was the ability to see human beings not as individuals but as pawns. The danger of the technocratic worldview was that it made human conflicts, human drama, even war, into a kind of game.\n\nWhile they were in Gloucester, he made a painting of the face of a clown and put it up for sale in a local gallery. It didn't sell, so they brought it home with them. Kurt's clown had a bulbous red nose and straw-like blond hair and a big white greasepaint smile, but his blue almond-shaped eyes\u2014eyes much like his own\u2014were unmistakably sad.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie looked out over the audience of high school teachers in Connecticut. Often at events like this one, a meeting of the New England Association of Chemistry Teachers, he gave a general overview of rainmaking and its results to date. But tonight he was doing something different. He was talking about the ethical implications of science.\n\n\"Many farmers, ranchers and civic-minded people in many parts of the country are now engaged in cloud seeding,\" he declared. He was careful to point out that the amateurs were not bad people. But they \"can unwittingly cause large scale, and perhaps adverse, modifications of weather many miles from the scene of their operations.\" Not only that, but their efforts could be polluting the data of serious scientists trying to conduct rigorous experiments.\n\nThe media were still enamored of cloud seeding. An issue of Time magazine had just hit newsstands naming Langmuir the man of the week, his likeness on the cover holding an umbrella that doubled as a test tube. The writer noted Irving's intense curiosity: \"He has been known to sit for half an hour beside a rock surrounded by rising water just to see what a dozen ants will do when their refuge is submerged.\" But though the article featured a long list of cloud-seeding projects under way across the nation, it gave no indication that this deluge of rainmaking might be problematic. That, it seemed, was going to be Bernie's job.\n\nLike Professor Barnhouse, like Dr. Macon in \"Ice-9,\" Bernie was beginning to fear that his invention was getting out of hand. But, also like his fictional counterparts, he couldn't prevent people from using it recklessly until he had proved it was real.\n\n\"Legislators in the future may well face many problems connected with cloud seeding,\" he told the chemistry teachers. \"Laws may be necessary to prohibit and police seeding operations which are contrary to the best interests of the public. Licensing of seeding operations and permits for seeding may be desirable.\"\n\nIt was a risky thing to be suggesting at a time when the future of Project Cirrus was hardly guaranteed. The number of flights had plummeted as Project Cirrus pilots were reassigned to Korea. GE's president Charlie Wilson had recently resigned his post to head up the Office of Defense Mobilization, and his successor, Ralph Cordiner, was a meticulous and humorless leader with an eye glued to the bottom line\u2014a trait that earned him the nickname Razor Ralph. Razor Ralph was unlikely to have much enthusiasm for a project that did nothing for profits, especially as it exposed the company to all kinds of risks.\n\nFor an example of those risks, one only had to look to the Catskills, where residents of New York City's watershed were still trying to get the city to stop cloud seeding. At a meeting of the local Farm Bureau Federation, hay farmers and apple growers bitterly complained about damage to crops, and the general secretary for New York demanded government regulation. The Boards of Supervisors in Orange and Sullivan Counties had passed resolutions demanding the city cease all rainmaking. The Palisades Amusement Park had even offered to pay the consulting meteorologist Wallace Howell twice his city salary if he would quit. \"Why Don't You Let Us Alone, Rainman,\" griped a headline in The Kingston Daily Freeman, summarizing the general feeling. But even though the reservoirs were replenished, Howell and the New York City Board of Estimate carried on. Their data would be more valuable if they seeded for four consecutive seasons.\n\nThe New York Times's editorial board commended Bernie's endorsement of regulation, noting that his position differed from Langmuir's. Irving too was frustrated with the amateurs who might be polluting his data, but he believed regulation was impracticable, suggesting only a voluntary agreement among rainmakers. That was in keeping with the times, where \"planning\" and \"regulation\" were increasingly unpopular words. Bernie was swimming against the tide of unbridled capitalism. It was not a role he had ever expected to assume. But someone had to make sure that scientists paid attention to the damage they and their inventions might unwittingly do.\n\n* * *\n\n\"Ice-9,\" Kurt's story about a scientist whose invention nearly destroyed the world, was languishing. After Argosy rejected it, hard on the heels of The Saturday Evening Post, Kurt glumly told Kenneth they should probably hawk it to Astounding Stories for $300. That was highway robbery for something he thought was the best thing he'd ever written, but it was better than having the whole novella end up in the garbage can.\n\nBut he was hard at work on a new story, a political allegory, which was perhaps not the smartest choice. Already an editor at Collier's had complained that his chess story, \"White King,\" savored of knee-jerk anticommunism. Kurt objected to Knox.\n\n\"I am a registered Democrat, pro\u2013Fair and New Deal, distressed by the new anti-subversive laws, hate McCarthy, enflamed by Communist smears on liberals\u2014etc., etc.,\" he wrote. \"But, dammit, Knox, I don't like Communist Russia any more than I did Nazi Germany. There are some 3,000 Americans dead in Korea, killed in a chess game with Russia looking on.\" People who considered his depiction of Pi Ying sadistic, he declared, were perhaps \"too insensitive to a casualty list as long as King Kong's arm.\" He signed the letter \"George Sokolsky\"\u2014the name of a newspaper columnist known for loving free markets and hating Reds.\n\nNow, unrepentant, Kurt was writing another anticommunist story, using petrified ants to tell a morality tale about totalitarianism. He made it even more direct by setting it in the Soviet Union. The problem was, he couldn't figure out how it ended.\n\nKurt had been looking at William Morton Wheeler's book Ants: Their Structure, Development, and Behavior. According to Wheeler, ant societies had progressed through stages of social behavior analogous to those of human cultures. Modern ants lived in mindless, often militaristic societies in which the hereditary hierarchies of caste and function were evident as physical traits: soldier ants were big, with pincers for fighting; worker ants were small, with enlarged mandibles for carrying things. There was no individualism, no escaping one's physical destiny. What, Kurt wondered, if human beings were headed in the same direction?\n\nLike \"Ice-9,\" the new story centered on a conflict between two men, one doctrinaire, the other doubtful. But in this story, the men are brothers, Josef and Peter. Both are myrmecologists\u2014scientists who study ants\u2014but they have different approaches to their discipline. The elder brother, \"Josef the rock, the dependable, the ideologically impeccable,\" plays along with the Communist Party, while the younger brother, Peter, chafes under party orthodoxy. Peter has a blot on his reputation, a paper he wrote about slave-raiding ants that was declared ideologically incorrect, requiring him to issue an apology. Now Josef, who ghostwrote the retraction for him, is trying to help him steer clear of trouble as they investigate some newly discovered fossil ants.\n\nThe story is set in the Erzgebirge, or Ore Mountains, the rolling mountain range dividing eastern Germany from Czechoslovakia. The occupying Russians, while searching for uranium there, have discovered a cache of fossilized ants. When the brothers see them, they are amazed. The pre-Mesozoic ants are large and pincerless and have smaller mandibles than modern ants. And petrified along with them is evidence of a prehistoric ant culture: houses, art, musical instruments, and books.\n\n\"Josef,\" Peter says, \"do you realize that we have made the most sensational discovery in history? Ants once had a culture as rich and brilliant as ours. Music! Painting! Literature! Think of it!\"\n\nGoing through the layers of rock, the brothers see how the \"magnificent ant civilization\" evolved into \"the dismal, instinctive ant way of life of the present.\" Artistic, intellectual, individualized ants have disappeared, leaving only warlike, cultureless drones. The brothers slowly realize they will never be allowed to publish their find: the parallels with their own totalitarian culture are far too obvious.\n\nThe political allegory was heavy-handed. But what gave Kurt even more trouble was the relationship between the two brothers. The story is told from Peter's perspective. But Kurt struggled with the character of the older brother, Josef. In early versions, he made Josef a Communist Party dupe. He wrote a scene in which Josef and Peter go out in a thunderstorm and argue about Peter's desire to speak the truth. Josef tells Peter that he mustn't speak \"some kinds of truth\" and urges him to \"overlook certain things.\" Peter suddenly sees his brother for the sorry character he is: a \"frail figure in a whirlpool, clinging desperately to a raft of compromises.\"\n\nThe scene needed to be fixed. It didn't convey Peter's respect for his older brother. Kurt rewrote it several times, once even having the brothers get into a physical fight, but he couldn't get it right, so he took it out. He was also struggling with the ending. In one version, Josef falsifies their scientific report while Peter escapes to the West. In another, the brothers end up in Siberia, near a huge atomic bomb factory that blows up. Yet another concludes with the brothers rewriting their findings to adhere to the party line but still getting banished to Siberia, where they bitterly reflect on the similarity between men and ants.\n\nHe drafted more than ten versions of the story. His struggles to figure out Peter's fate mirrored his struggle to determine his own. He was trapped at GE just as Peter was trapped by the Communist Party. Would he continue living a lie or take the risk of escaping?\n\nBut he was also wrestling with his view of his brother. Bernard was the rock, the dependable scientist. But he wasn't like Josef, a frail man clinging to a false ideology out of fear and conformity. Living in Schenectady, being part of Bernard's work, Kurt could see that Bernie was no kept scientist, toeing the science factory's company line. He too was trying to stay true to his ideals in a culture that didn't share them. The simplistic characterization of the older brother as a thoughtless organization man wasn't working anymore.\n\nOn a blank page, while working on his ant story Kurt typed up a to-do list. One thing on it was his income tax. Another was to get back to writing his novel. For the first time he gave it a title: Player Piano.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie's phone rang at the lab. It was Bow, with a shopping list of things to pick up on the way home. Bernie grabbed the nearest thing at hand, a letter from a Park Avenue matron thanking him for giving a talk about cloud seeding to her women's club, and scribbled as Bow dictated: books, pen, cigarettes, matches, newspaper...\n\nBow was at home, recovering from the birth of their twin boys a few weeks earlier. She'd suffered headaches and gloominess after Peter's birth five years earlier, so Bernie was trying to help out as much as he could. But it was hard to tear himself away from the lab. Project Cirrus was getting closer to proving that their periodic seedings had caused widespread changes in the weather.\n\nThe day after the twins were born, GE formally dedicated the Knolls by hosting the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. Irving gave a lecture about their periodicity experiments in New Mexico. He saw it as a chance to change the minds of the meteorology professors who had written a report for the Department of Defense branding his claims of widespread weather modifications \"extraordinarily extravagant.\" When the report was declassified, something like a brawl had ensued at the AMS. Harry Wexler wanted to publish the report in the Bulletin. Vincent, who had been elected to the AMS council, insisted that Langmuir be given a chance to respond. Chief Reichelderfer pointed out that Langmuir never gave anyone else a chance to respond to his GE reports. \"It seems to me it is time we began to play up the authentic meteorological opinion in this matter of rainmaking,\" he wrote to the council heads, \"in view of the complete abandon with which the proponents of artificial rainmaking on a large scale have expressed themselves in public over the past two or three years.\"\n\nFor the National Academy, Langmuir had marshaled their statistics and their best photographic evidence. He had Weather Bureau charts showing rainfall at stations throughout the Midwest enlarged to enormous size so the seven-day pattern was stunningly obvious, even from the back of the room. Chief Reichelderfer was unable to attend, but he dispatched two Weather Bureau meteorologists to Schenectady soon afterward. Bernie was back at work by then, and Langmuir enlisted him to assist in lecturing the Weather Bureau men, laying out their charts and data over the course of two days.\n\nIrving was growing frustrated with the meteorological community's refusal to grant scientific credibility to his life's most important work. He was particularly annoyed by the Weather Bureau's claim that no one could say cloud seeding worked until they understood the mechanism precisely. After all, meteorologists might never know all there was to know about the atmosphere. But they could still change it. It was like the germ theory of disease, he reasoned. For decades, doctors knew that washing their hands led to lower mortality among patients. The fact that they didn't know why was not sufficient reason for refusing to lather up.\n\nBernie, meanwhile, was determined to track down the truth about what the commercial rainmakers were doing. He began writing to chemical supply companies like Braun, Dow, Merck, and Pfizer to ask whether their sales of silver iodide had gone up. \"It is hoped that it will be possible on the basis of the information received to estimate the rate at which silver iodide has been and is being introduced into our atmosphere,\" he wrote. \"If this quantity is sufficiently large, an attempt will be made to evaluate the effects which may be produced by this seeding.\" Many companies reported no increase in sales, but a few had seen large jumps. Elmer & Amend, a division of Fisher Scientific, reported that its 1950 sales had gone from three pounds to twenty-seven. Eight pounds of that was sold to New York City for use in the watershed.\n\n* * *\n\nIn late November 1950, a winter storm hit the Eastern Seaboard. It started in North Carolina and eventually swept across twenty-two states. All-time record low temperatures were set across the Southeast, historic snowfalls pounded the Appalachians and the Midwest, hurricane-force winds hit New York, and tidal flooding surged northward up the coast of New England. The Big Ten championship game between Ohio State and Michigan was played in a near whiteout, earning it the nickname the Blizzard Bowl. A million people lost power, and 353 people lost their lives.\n\nThe Catskills were hit especially hard. But New York's rainmaker Wallace Howell wanted a full year of data. So, as heavy winds and hard rain lashed the region, a city water department crew ran a silver iodide generator attached to a trailer in Fahnestock State Park, near Cold Spring, a location chosen so that the prevailing winds would carry the silver iodide over the watershed. At the same time, a city airplane seeded clouds closer to the reservoirs.\n\nThe storm intensified that night. The northern part of Ulster County got a downpour of eight inches, and ten of the region's twenty-four rain gauges recorded more rain than in the famous hurricane of 1938. A month's worth of water was added to the city coffers in three days.\n\nThe damages were epic. Dozens of bridges and highways were washed out. Farms and villages were flooded. Parts of the New York Central's Delaware and Ulster branch railroad bed were washed away, leaving tracks hanging from hillsides like strings of Christmas lights. Three small dams burst in the village of Pine Hill, draining the town's recreational lake. In Arkville, a seventy-two-ton fuel tank broke loose and barreled a quarter mile down State Route 28, and a covered bridge was swept a thousand feet downstream. Many local residents declared it the worst flood they had ever seen. The Weather Bureau would later call the storm one of the most destructive ever recorded on the Eastern Seaboard. And its meteorologists had failed to predict any of it.\n\nIt was a freak storm, the Weather Bureau said. No one could have predicted it. Irving Langmuir didn't necessarily disagree. He doubted anyone could have predicted it. But he had a sneaking suspicion that Bernie's cloud seeding had caused it.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie and Bow didn't have far to go to get to 18 Hill Street; a short walk around the corner, and they were at Kurt and Jane's front door. Tonight the house was brightly lit and buzzing with voices. It was a couple of days after Christmas, the night of the Junior League holiday ball. Kurt and Jane were throwing a dinner party before the dance. Bernie and Bow were joined by the Fishers, the Hollomons, the McCartys, the Yarboroughs, and the Metcalfs\u2014all GE employees and their wives.\n\nThere was a lot to celebrate. After Langmuir's recent paper presenting his evidence for widespread periodicities in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the meteorologists were taking a more conciliatory tone: Harry Wexler had even gone to Socorro earlier that month to let Vince and Jack Workman present the Project Cirrus case. They disagreed on whether cloud seeding was sufficiently proved but had all gained more respect for the other side's position. It seemed as if it were only a matter of time before the meteorological world at large realized the significance of the Cirrus work.\n\nBut if Bernie had reason for optimism, Kurt was in an even better mood\u2014jubilant, in fact. The story logjam had finally broken when Knox Burger bought \"EPICAC.\" Knox had never liked the story much, and he sarcastically blamed the purchase on the higher-ups. He told Kurt his rewrite was shoddy, asking him to take into account the fact that thinking machines had become common knowledge: there was one at Harvard and maybe even one at MIT. He also suggested Kurt try to make the scientist in the story sound a little less puerile.\n\nBut the rough handling was a sign that Kurt was finally a real magazine writer. In November, Knox had bought \"White King,\" upping Kurt's fee from $900 to $1,250. Kurt wrote \"SOLD\" in big letters with a red crayon on the story's GE News Bureau folder. It was a turning point, the turning point, at long last. He had sold \"Thanasphere,\" \"Das Ganz Arm Dolmetscher,\" \"EPICAC,\" and now \"White King\" in the year since selling \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect.\" Five stories total: the number sufficient to quit his job. And he had a bunch more in the pipeline, along with his idea for a novel.\n\nSo this party was a farewell of sorts. In mid-December, Kurt had given notice at GE. He was quitting as of the start of the New Year. New year, new life. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was no longer a PR flunky. He was finally going to be what he'd always wanted to be: a writer. And he knew what he was going to write about too: science in the House of Magic.\n\nCold Fronts\n\nKurt doodled on the back of his manuscript. Then he got out the Scotch tape. He cut parts out and taped in replacements. Once again, he was reworking \"Ice-9.\" He had given himself ten days.\n\nNow that he was a real writer, he had to be serious about producing work quickly and efficiently. This was no longer something he did in his free time; it was his job. So he had typed up a schedule for himself, planning out every writing day for two months. He allowed three days to revise a story, ten or so to write a new one. Ten days for the \"Ice-9\" revision, and then there was his novel, Player Piano. He allotted three weeks for chapter 1 and a couple of days for chapter 2, but there he stalled. He didn't really know how long a novel took to write.\n\nHe'd finished a draft of the first story on his schedule, \"Between Timid and Timbuktu,\" but he didn't like it. It focused on a recently widowed painter, David, who misses his dead wife so much that he becomes obsessed with finding a way to be with her again. Maybe, David speculates, there are creatures in the universe who can hop back and forth in time to visit previous parts of their lives. Then a local man has an accident, and his heart stops. He is quickly revived by the town doctor and upon waking reports that he saw his whole life pass before him. Inspired, David hatches a secret plot to kill himself and have the doctor revive him so he can go back in time and see his wife again. But the doctor gets another call and fails to show up at the appointed hour. David, having given himself a fatal injection, dies.\n\nIt was Kurt's first attempt to do something with the idea of time travel. Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics included a chapter called \"Newtonian and Bergsonian Time,\" in which he contrasted the time of physics, which is reversible, with the time of biology, which travels in a straight line. The time of biology, or Bergsonian time, moves relentlessly in one direction\u2014birth, growth, decline, and death succeeding one another in an inexorable forward march. But in Newtonian time, the time of physics, everything has already happened: nothing new can be created, and nothing can ever really die. An interesting thought experiment, Wiener noted, would be to imagine an intelligent being whose time ran in the opposite direction of our own.\n\n\"Between Timid and Timbuktu\" was a somewhat clumsy first attempt at a topic that would play a big role in Kurt's work. Variations on Newtonian time would recur frequently in his fiction as plot devices, always echoing the simple human longing of that early story: the desire to cheat death and hold on to the past. Most famously, he would invent the alien Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five, who live in Newtonian time, where everything has always existed and will always continue to exist. They thus do not stand in awe of death, as we do, merely saying, when someone dies, \"So it goes.\"\n\nAt some point, critics would label Kurt's use of time travel a device for demonstrating the \"absurdity\" of the world. To do so disregards the fact that Bergsonian time is also always operating in the novels. Human beings live out their lives and die; they mourn their lost loves and dead friends. The existence of the inhuman time of quantum physics only highlights the poignancy of time as we experience it, advancing ever onward to our graves. Who wouldn't want to escape from one world to another, to follow the allure of science into a world where we never die?\n\nBut unlike later iterations, \"Between Timid and Timbuktu\" is sentimental, even maudlin at the end, as the dying David gazes wistfully at a painting of his wife. Kurt gave it three days and set it aside. It was a dog. Eventually, he would give up on it and swipe its title for a chapter head in his second novel, The Sirens of Titan. There, too, time would be a theme, with the chain of events set in motion when a character\u2014Winston Niles Rumfoord\u2014slips into a time warp.\n\nAfter setting \"Timid\" aside, Kurt had worked some more on the ant story, which was also refusing to behave. Now he was back to \"Ice-9.\"\n\nFrom his typewriter, he could look out the window. He had a real office now: he had rented a bedroom from a woman whose daughter was off at college. It was right on the main street of Alplaus, and from his desk in the coed's room he could watch the buses heading off to GE with their cargoes of company men. Poor bastards. Even as he struggled with his stories, he knew he was well out of that.\n\nBut if he had escaped, his mind hadn't: the stories he wanted to write were GE stories. He didn't call it GE. He called it General Forge and Foundry, or General Household Appliance Company, or Federal Apparatus Corporation. But the company discernible behind all of them was the one he knew so well: the scientists, the PR hacks, the visitors on Works tours, the imperious managers, and the girl pool where typists Dictaphoned the days away, awaiting rescue by diamond ring. His stories were a portrait of the GE Works itself: the numbered buildings, the departments with absurd names (\"Wire and Cable,\" \"Nucleonics\"), the offices and gates and fences and smokestacks belching their acrid benediction over the Electric City. But most of all he wrote about company attitudes: the worship of the company man; the mindless team spirit; the faith in progress, technology, and science; the enthusiasm for anything that reeked of the future\u2014the machine-made, computer-coded, semi-conducted, radioactive future.\n\nThat was certainly what he was writing about in \"Ice-9\" too. He believed in the story, but it had been rejected now by more magazines than he cared to tally. He thought maybe he knew what was wrong. It was the lack of a woman. No one wanted to read a story without a little romantic frisson.\n\nSo he changed the sociologist Professor Dale into a gorgeous redhead named Marion, a former lover of the mad scientist Dr. Macon. Once again, Macon invents Ice-9 and brags that it could destroy the planet's water. When Marion doesn't understand, Macon, sounding just like Irving Langmuir, explains that crystallization happens by chain reaction. It's like a single match starting a forest fire.\n\nAfter that, things unfold much as they did in the earlier version, with Macon insisting that he has no moral duties as a researcher and Marion insisting that he does. Once again, the evil dictator Monzano gets his hands on the Ice-9, and Macon has to try to get it back. But Kurt had to rewrite the conclusion: Professor Dale is murdered in the earlier version, and Marion couldn't be dead if there was going to be a romantic ending. Instead, Monzano jumps into a cave pool with the Ice-9, but Dr. Macon manages to get to it and melt it before the tide rises and floods the cave. The world is saved, and, of course, boy gets girl.\n\nChanging Dale to Marion helped, but it didn't fix the fundamental problem with \"Ice-9.\" Kurt couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong in the time he had allotted, so he set it aside too and moved on. By late January, he'd completed and sent to Kenneth Littauer a serviceable story called \"Bockman's Euphoria,\" about a scientist who invents a new kind of radio wave that has a drug-like euphoric effect on anyone who hears it. People put their lives on hold just to lie around listening to it. That was a defter and less personal take on the same topic: a nifty invention that gets put to use before anyone figures out the kind of damage it can do.\n\n* * *\n\nIn Kentucky they called it the Great Appalachian Storm of 1950. In Ohio they called it the Thanksgiving Storm. Many places called it the Storm of the Century, and in Pittsburgh it was simply known as the Big Snow. But in the Catskills, where it did so much damage, they were calling it the Rainmakers' Flood. And they were furious.\n\nThe first 13 claims against New York City were filed on February 16, 1951. Within a week, there were 30 more. Eventually, more than 130 upstate clients would file legal claims against New York City for the destructive November rainstorm that they believed Wallace Howell had made. Many were individuals whose homes were damaged, but businesses filed claims too: the Pine Hill Country Club, G. W. Merritt Lumber Company, the Funcrest Hotel, Levy's Liquor Store. The town of Shandaken demanded $167,500 to repair forty-eight roads and bridges. The township of Middletown asked for $60,000 and the village of Margaretville, $23,645.91. The avalanche of claims totaled more than $1 million.\n\nThat month, a detailed meteorological account of the whole storm appeared in the journal Weatherwise. Irving read it with approval and shared it with his team. There were many anomalies that he thought supported his hypothesis that cloud seeding had caused the storm. For starters, it traveled northwest, the exact opposite of the usual weather pattern. The cold front that precipitated it had appeared out of nowhere and deepened with dizzying speed. That was why it had taken the Weather Bureau\u2014and everyone\u2014by surprise. But as Irving saw it, the 1950 storm had been caused not by Wallace Howell but by Project Cirrus and its fellow rainmakers out West.\n\nIn meteorology, large, circulating low-pressure systems are known as cyclones. Cyclones can be single storms or continent-wide circulation patterns that shape the weather across huge areas. Irving had begun a statistical analysis of the year's weather anomalies nationwide with the Weather Bureau's long-range forecasting expert, and to his eyes, the signal of the periodicities was coming through loud and clear. But weather oddities were cropping up all over the place. He believed this was because cloud seeding was affecting cyclonic development. If that was the case, silver iodide in the West might be changing the whole nation's climate.\n\nBernie was less certain than Langmuir that they had caused every large-scale abnormality in the North American weather. But he did agree that silver iodide seeding could create dramatic effects. His own paper about the cloud-seeding experiment of July 21, 1949, declared that his generator had dispensed enough particles that day to bring down 320 billion gallons of rain. He stopped short of saying that meant he had caused the resulting storm.\n\nBut Irving was unabashed about making such claims. He was even asserting, in talks about the seeding of Hurricane King, that their efforts had likely caused the storm's divergence from its course. Since that experiment, he had been conducting an intensive study of hurricane paths. In the entire recorded history of Atlantic hurricanes, only one other storm had made a hairpin turn like the one made by Hurricane King. And the other hurricane had only done so after it had slowed down and nearly stalled. Hurricane King was near its maximum velocity when they seeded it. The storm made its turn shortly thereafter. What were the odds that the two events were unrelated? Langmuir had an answer: 1 in 170.\n\nHe was growing impatient with the objections. When a young meteorologist at an MIT symposium objected to Langmuir's conclusions about Hurricane King, Irving dismissed him with a few undiplomatic words, saying he was so stupid he didn't deserve an explanation. Bernie would never have been so rough on the young man. But he understood Irving's frustration. They were collecting data as fast as they could, and everything they learned pointed in the same direction. If the Weather Bureau and the mainstream meteorology community had a better explanation, the GE group was willing to hear it. But it was almost as if the meteorologists refused to listen. The AMS Bulletin had just published a paper summarizing the research to date and stating that there was no proof that cloud seeding could produce large-scale effects. Most meteorologists seemed inclined to leave it at that: with no irrefutable proof, there was no need to investigate further. Which left the GE team alone in trying to figure out if the strange storms and droughts that seemed to be appearing all over the country had anything to do with the gold rush of rainmaking that was happening in every state west of the Mississippi.\n\n* * *\n\nHarry Wexler spent Valentine's Day in Princeton, plotting the next phase in his campaign against Project Cirrus. The previous April, with John von Neumann's computer still under construction, the Meteorology Project team had gone to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to try out their forecasting equations on the ENIAC. The Army computer was a beast, with eighteen thousand vacuum tubes and six thousand switches. It was so big you literally worked inside it, sticking electrical wires into the plugboards that stored its programs. The team that trekked down to Maryland had worked with ENIAC around the clock for five weeks, managing to produce six retroactive forecasts\u2014predictions of weather that had already happened. They weren't perfect. Forecast accuracy was erratic. Actual computer time to produce a twenty-four-hour forecast was twenty-four hours. Nonetheless, the results looked enough like the real weather that the programmers returned to the Institute for Advanced Study triumphant. Weather prediction by equation was going to work.\n\nNow, at the Valentine's Day meeting, the Princeton meteorologists wanted to discuss something different: Irving Langmuir's alleged seven-day periodicity. Harry had brought a Weather Bureau statistician to Princeton to explain that the seven-day pattern Langmuir thought Project Cirrus had created was not the only such periodicity that had ever happened. In the last fifty years, there had been two other prolonged periods\u2014four to five months\u2014in which the weather showed a remarkable seven-day regularity. Neither was as striking as the one that had occurred in 1949\u201350, however, while Bernie's silver iodide generator was running on a seven-day schedule. But did that mean Project Cirrus was necessarily the cause? Von Neumann, his meteorologists, and a couple of Princeton University statisticians all agreed that the answer to that was still unclear. They thought Langmuir's experiment should continue for a few more years.\n\nThis had to be disappointing to Harry Wexler. For him, the ultrarational institute project was a counterbalance to Langmuir's baseless conviction. It was a way of proving that the atmosphere behaved according to scientific precepts too powerful to be overcome by the puny interventions of one human\u2014especially one who didn't even understand them. He who would master nature must learn her laws and then obey them! But it was easy for Harry to forget that John von Neumann was just as interested as Irving Langmuir was in weather control.\n\nHarry wanted more than ever to prove the fraudulence of Project Cirrus and its claims. So he had a new idea. The Meteorology Project's next round of tests was going to try out new equations developed to predict the weather in an unstable atmosphere, one with cold fronts and warm fronts battling it out. It's these unstable systems that give rise to cyclones. No numerical model to date had successfully predicted their genesis.\n\nOnce the equations were ready, the team had to choose a past occurrence of cyclogenesis on which to try them out. And Harry Wexler knew just which historic storm they should try to forecast: the Thanksgiving Storm of 1950, the so-called Rainmakers' Flood. If their equations could travel back through time and accurately predict that past event, that would definitely prove that the storm had been produced by nature and not by the hand of man.\n\n* * *\n\nIt was the future, Knox Burger told Kurt over cocktails. Nineteen sixty-one to be exact.\n\nThe last ten years had been tough. The Russians invaded Yugoslavia in 1952, launching World War III. The Soviets had A-bombed cities in Europe and America. The UN had retaliated by A-bombing Moscow. A suicide mission by American paratroopers in the Urals destroyed the Russian stockpile of atomic weapons in 1953, at which point the Soviet Union began coming apart at the seams. Dissidents rose up in the satellite states, then in Russia itself. By 1955, many key generals had defected to the UN. As the U.S.S.R. slid into chaos, the UN sent in occupying troops. Six years later, Collier's was reporting on the collapse of communism and the rebuilding of the world.\n\nThat was the premise of a special issue he and the other Collier's editors were planning. Kurt and Jane listened eagerly as Knox described it. It was spring, a beautiful mild week, and they were in New York City, staying at the fabled Algonquin Hotel. They had friends to meet and a party to attend, and Jane was finally getting to meet Kurt's adored (when he was buying) and reviled (when he was not) editor. The three of them met for cocktails. Kurt had to be gratified that Jane was there for this: the editor pitching him, trying to get him on board for an important special issue. Jane had to be gratified that her convictions about Kurt's success were turning out to be true.\n\nThings were going well. Kurt had stories in Collier's in January and February. He had rewritten \"Mnemonics,\" his story about the company man with the great memory, and finally he got it right. The breakthrough came when he got rid of Alfred's wife and introduced his secretary as a secret love interest. Then he changed all of the mental pictures Alfred Moorhead uses to boost his memory from images of violence and war to images of Hollywood starlets holding, wearing, or straddling mnemonic devices. When, for instance, he has to remember to check that Davenport Spot-Welding and Davenport Wire and Cable have not been confused in his invoices, he imagines Lana Turner in a leopard-print sheath and Jane Russell in a telegram-sarong lying on opposing davenports. At the end, Kurt added a parade of beauties that Alfred thinks up when he has to remember a really long to-do list: when he has checked off the list and one image remains, he grabs her lustily, thinking she's in his head.\n\n\"Now, baby,\" he says to her, \"what's on your mind?\" The woman turns out to be his secretary, who murmurs, \"Well, praise be, you finally remembered me.\"\n\nWith the elimination of all its sadism\u2014the part Knox said left a bad taste in one's mouth\u2014the story changed from an outburst of rage at cubicle conformity to a slightly silly office sexcapade. But what the hell? For the equivalent of a third of a year's salary at GE, Collier's could have all the libidinous diversions its editors wanted. He also sent Kenneth a slight but effective romance called \"Little Drops of Water.\" It was the sort of thing the agent\u2014and the market\u2014liked: a story about a commitment-averse bachelor who loves his predictable single life, and the clever girl who gets him to propose by slowly making herself an indispensable\u2014if annoying\u2014part of his daily routine. It had a spirited, light tone and a happy\u2014but not sappy\u2014ending.\n\nThen he wrote \"Happy Birthday, 1951\" from the part of him that brooded about war, that couldn't help but feel glum every time he read news of Korea or the Cold War or America trouncing the godless communists. Set in an almost mythic world of endless war, it described how an old man who has raised an abandoned baby through seven years of fighting comes to realize that the child he nurtured knows nothing of peacetime life. It was fast-paced and efficient and had a peach of an ending, a sharp, startling exchange on the boy's birthday that summed up, in a few words, the point: if we build a militaristic world, war is all that kids will know or care to know. Kenneth would say it was gloomy, but that was okay. One of these days, he was going to be able to write exactly what he wanted to write.\n\nIn fact now, over drinks with Knox, he was being invited to join a project that was just the sort of thing he wanted to do: a special issue of Collier's dedicated to demonstrating the madness and futility of war. It was going to make a big splash, Knox said, with top-notch writers already on board: Edward R. Murrow, Arthur Koestler, Robert Sherwood, maybe even John Steinbeck or William Faulkner. And Knox wanted to place Kurt among them.\n\nThe Collier's editors hadn't decided what to call it yet, and the whole thing was shrouded in secrecy. In office memos and conversations with potential writers, they referred to it by code name: Operation Eggnog.\n\nOn the spot, Kurt pitched Knox on an idea for a story about a cabinetmaker in occupied Czechoslovakia. He is making a booby-trapped desk for the Russian commandant in charge of his town, but when the Americans take over, the cabinetmaker continues making the same deadly desk for the new captain: Russian, American\u2014it doesn't matter to him. One occupier is as bad as another. Knox thought it sounded promising.\n\nKurt Vonnegut Jr., as Knox had predicted to Kenneth Littauer, was turning out to be quite a skillful craftsman of salable short stories. Knox had finally bought \"Mnemonics\" and \"Bockman's Euphoria,\" now titled \"The Euphio Question,\" and another story, \"The Foster Portfolio,\" was already in his hands. Knox had even offered to talk to book editors about Kurt's novel. His career was finally taking off.\n\nWhen Kurt and Jane arrived back in Alplaus, they realized the next step was clear. They were free to go wherever they wanted, to find a community better suited to the artistic life they craved. Why should they stay on in GE's orbit, shuffling around to Junior League balls and corporate clambakes? They could cut themselves loose from Schenectady altogether and drift in an ocean of possibility.\n\nThey put their house up for sale.\n\nFired up by the trip and the prospect of moving, Kurt was awash in inspiration. He wrote to Knox about another idea he had for Operation Eggnog. He could write a short-short about Dresden. Not just about Dresden, but about the morality\u2014or lack of morality\u2014in saturation bombing of civilians. Knox wrote back to say that it sounded a little risky: \"Mr. A would shy away from the notion.\" This was a light way of pointing out that Edward Anthony, the publisher of Collier's, was more conservative than Kurt realized. Collier's was not, as Kurt seemed to think, putting together another \"Hiroshima.\" The high, sane, and cheerful ideal of American citizenship was still where it set its sights, even when it came to nuclear war.\n\nJust focus on the carpenter story, Knox advised. Maybe Kurt could slip something about saturation bombing in there.\n\nJust over a week later, Kurt sent a completed draft, titled \"The Commandant's Desk,\" to Knox. He also told Knox the good news: he and Jane were leaving Schenectady. They were going to move to somewhere on the Atlantic coast. They hadn't decided where yet, but they both wanted to be near the ocean. As a trial run, they were going to rent a house in Provincetown, Massachusetts, for the whole summer. Kurt invited Knox to come visit them there.\n\nHe was on a roll. Putting his house on the market gave him such a kick he sat down and cranked out a marketable story in just one day. Called \"Build Thee More Stately Mansions,\" it was about a woman who lives in squalor but obsessively clips ideas from home decor magazines and redecorates her house in her head. When she is hospitalized, her husband redecorates to surprise her, following her clippings exactly. But upon returning, she doesn't even notice what he's done. To her, the house looks just the way she's always seen it.\n\nKenneth liked the story and sent it off to Knox right away. Before long, Kurt wrote to Knox again, this time with news that his house had sold, at a profit. Knox congratulated him, then urged him to get down to editing \"The Commandant's Desk.\" The characters were not complex enough\u2014the Czech too noble, the American major too villainous. In other words, the story was too simplistic, too blunt an antiwar instrument. The purpose of Operation Eggnog was not simply to warn the world about the dangers of nuclear war. Collier's intended to convey that nuclear war should be avoided, but if one occurred, the United States was going to win.\n\nKnox didn't explicitly say what Kurt should have known: times were changing. The nation was at war again. It was possible the United States would use nuclear weapons in Korea. It was getting increasingly important to come down hard on communism and to squelch any doubt about American virtue, even when it came to the use of superweapons. The Atomic Energy Commission was ramping up its research programs, the United States was constructing an atomic proving ground in Nevada, and the military had just begun a new round of atomic tests in the Pacific that many speculated were going to demonstrate the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb. The time for asking whether America should have dropped the atomic bomb was over. The time for talking up America's atomic supremacy had begun.\n\n* * *\n\n\"You say here that 'We are of the opinion that the Weather Bureau should continue to be responsible for leadership in this field,'\" Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico queried the witness. Willard McDonald, assistant chief of the Weather Bureau, sat on the witness stand looking cranky. His prepared statement had been interrupted.\n\n\"How much has been done in the knowledge of rainmaking by the Weather Bureau?\" Anderson prodded. \"I am just trying to find out whether you have leadership or whether the private rainmakers in General Electric have leadership.\"\n\n\"They have leadership in advertising,\" McDonald shot back.\n\nThat was surprising. Bernie was sitting right there in the room, with Vincent and Guy Suits, listening to McDonald take potshots at Project Cirrus\u2014but advertising? Even for the Weather Bureau, that was a low blow. But McDonald was agitated. Senator Anderson, committee chairman, was treating him as a hostile witness.\n\nThe Senate hearings pertained to three bills introduced in Congress. The main questions behind all three were the same. Should the federal government conduct research in weather modification? Should it regulate the weather modification work of private enterprises? And if the government did get involved, which agency should be in charge\u2014the Department of the Interior? Agriculture? Or Commerce\u2014meaning the Weather Bureau?\n\nNew Mexico was suffering a debilitating drought, and Senator Anderson was very much in favor of anything that would forward the cause of weather modification and help him get his constituents more rain. Or at least redirect some research dollars so he could tell his constituents he was getting them more rain. Anderson's sidekick was Senator Francis Case of South Dakota. That state's western half was also parched, so Senator Case, too, was a fan of cloud seeding. He had even taken it upon himself to fill a cottage cheese container with dry ice, hire a pilot, and fly around the state seeding clouds from the airplane window with a teacup. Whenever he saw rain, he had his pilot land at the nearest ranch, where he explained that he was responsible.\n\nNeither senator was going to let Assistant Chief McDonald get away with scoffing at the work of GE. Senator Anderson demanded to know if the Weather Bureau had come up with the idea of using silver iodide to make rain. McDonald had to admit it had not.\n\n\"Who has leadership, that is what I am trying to find out,\" Anderson insisted. \"Who does have leadership in the field?\"\n\n\"Are we talking about leadership in advertising or leadership in science?\" the assistant chief stubbornly replied.\n\nThis was turning out to be far more interesting than Bernie could have expected when he and the others arrived in room 224 of the Senate Building. But they weren't surprised by Senator Anderson's tone. The politician had been briefed. In November, he had visited Schenectady, where he had gone over the proposed bills with Guy Suits and spent an hour with Irving, Vince, and Bernie discussing their work in New Mexico. Like so many others who encountered the charismatic Langmuir, Anderson had come away a believer. Now he was openly scoffing at the idea of putting the Weather Bureau in charge of weather control experiments.\n\n\"It would be like turning over the development of the atomic bomb to some group that says 'We will try it but we know it cannot be built,'\" he declared.\n\n\"Mr. Chairman, you certainly are putting words in our mouths,\" protested McDonald.\n\nSenator Anderson then turned to his fellow committee member Senator Case to ask whether he had received any Weather Bureau assistance for his own \"rainmaking\" program\u2014his tempests dispensed from a teacup\u2014in South Dakota. Needless to say, Senator Case had not.\n\n\"Did the Weather Bureau evaluate those results?\" demanded Anderson of the assistant chief.\n\n\"I presume not,\" replied a dour McDonald. Did they really expect the bureau to take seriously some barnstorming senator heaving dry ice from a Cessna? \"I do not know whether that particular experiment came to our attention or not.\"\n\nAnderson began talking about the amount of silver iodide being sprayed into the air, accusing the bureau of being uninterested in finding out whether the activity was having any effect on the nation's climate. McDonald objected to the presumption that silver iodide was doing anything. This allowed Anderson to accuse the bureau of obstructionism.\n\n\"I do not claim that spraying silver iodide into the air produces rainfall,\" the senator said at one point, \"but I say if you spray it on Friday and it rains on Saturday, and you spray it on Friday and it rains on Saturday and you do that for 20 straight weeks, I begin to say to myself there might be some connection. The Weather Bureau says you can't prove it and therefore there is not any.\"\n\n\"Senator,\" McDonald shot back, \"I think that line of connection is just as reasonable as to say because the washerwomen hang out their clothes generally on Monday and it rains on Wednesday, that there is a connection between those two things.\"\n\n\"If that were true, you could,\" interjected another senator.\n\n\"That is exactly why I question the advisability of turning over any money to the Weather Bureau,\" declared Anderson triumphantly. \"You see where the trouble is.\"\n\nMcDonald tried to object that he was not suggesting there was absolutely no connection between the silver iodide and rainfall.\n\n\"You just got through saying that it was like hanging out the wash on Monday and it raining on Wednesday,\" Anderson shot back.\n\n\"As far as connection is concerned, it might be as remote as that,\" McDonald replied.\n\n\"Then, that is an absolute statement on your part, that the silver iodide has nothing to do with the rainfall.\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" replied the beleaguered assistant chief, \"that must not be considered so.\"\n\nMcDonald tried to return the discussion to the bureau's efforts to get at the truth of the matter, but once he had invited the washerwomen into the room, they wouldn't leave.\n\n\"I was just wondering,\" put in Senator Case, \"if the women in a certain community all hung their wash on Monday for 20 consecutive weeks and if then on 20 consecutive Wednesdays it did rain, would the Weather Bureau feel that there was no relationship between the two?\"\n\n\"You know where we would stand seriously on a question like that?\" McDonald said, stoically forging ahead as laughter rippled through the chamber. \"We would want to try that for more than 20 weeks, because we know in weather\u2014it is not as funny as it may sound\u2014we know that in weather strange repetitions, strange sequences are so common, and there are repetitions back in history of unaffected weather, weather prior to any of these things being introduced, and we will find weather patterns which are exactly like these patterns which occur after these things are begun. I think we are justified in a degree of conservative agnosticism, if you please. It is not skepticism. It is agnosticism. We do not know.\"\n\n\"The question is,\" put in Senator Guy Cordon from Oregon, another state where rainmakers were feverishly attacking the clouds on behalf of farmers, \"are you interested in finding out?\"\n\nMcDonald talked about statistics and evidence, insisting that there still wasn't enough proof to presume that cloud seeding worked.\n\n\"We would not want to draw a hasty conclusion at all,\" he declared. \"It is not our way of doing business.\"\n\n\"I am sure of that,\" responded Anderson. After pushing McDonald to admit how little money the bureau had spent researching the topic, the senator dismissed the Weather Bureau representative. McDonald had become so upset at one point he had pounded the table with his fist. That was simply not done at Senate hearings. It was a PR disaster for the Weather Bureau.\n\nThe General Electric scientists now took their seats at the witness table, and the committee's tone immediately changed from combative to fawning. Senator Anderson seemed eager to get certain facts into the record right off. He asked Guy Suits to verify that Bernie had originated the silver iodide method of cloud seeding.\n\n\"Does he have in his statement how many products he had to check before he got down to finding one?\" the senator asked. Suits said he didn't think Bernie did.\n\n\"How many did you check, Dr. Vonnegut?\" Anderson queried.\n\nBernie demurred. \"I personally have checked very few products,\" he said. \"Schaefer has checked a great number and so have other investigators.\" But the senator was not having any of Bernie's modesty.\n\n\"Did you not go through about 1,300 before you came down to one?\" he insisted.\n\n\"What I did was to look in the handbook for a compound having a particular property and there were 1,900 listed,\" Bernie replied. \"I just looked through the list until I found one that looked right. I did not try the 1,900. I just looked at them.\"\n\n\"That is pretty good evidence,\" declared the senator, determined to get Bernie's achievement into the record, \"that you did not waste time.\"\n\nGuy Suits read his statement first. He compared weather modification to the atomic bomb in its importance to the nation. He showed photographs, calling them \"irrefutable\" visual evidence of cloud-seeding results. He listed Langmuir's credentials and declared that Irving was having \"the time of his life\" in the scientific dispute over rainmaking. If he lost this argument, it would be a first. \"I place my bets on Langmuir,\" Suits declared. Avoiding the subject of regulation, he expressed support for Senate Bill 222, the only bill under consideration that would limit the legal liability of government contractors doing weather modification research.\n\nAfter Suits, Vince read his prepared statement. He went a little further than Suits had in declaring the desirability of establishing a federal commission to launch a research program in rainmaking. He pointed out the importance of knowing what kinds of weather modification activities were taking place and suggested that it would be better to license rainmakers than to try to control the field.\n\nWhen he was finished, Senator George Smathers of Florida waded into dangerous territory.\n\n\"Mr. Chairman, have not experiments been conducted in attempting to dissipate hurricanes?\" he asked. \"It seems to me I recall down off Puerto Rico, about a year or so ago, the Air Forces from Orlando, in conjunction with scientists, attempted to break up a hurricane heading toward Florida, and, I might add, without success.\"\n\n\"First of all,\" Vince quickly said, \"I would like to correct a misconception here. I was on that flight, and the main reason we made the flight was to see what a hurricane was made up of on top. With their supercooled clouds, how many supercooled clouds were there; could those clouds be changed? We did not try to break up the hurricane.\"\n\nThe senators bantered among themselves about the vaguely remembered hurricane and whether it was headed toward Florida or away from it. No one seemed to recall Hurricane King's dramatic change of direction, and Vince did not remind them of it. He told them that the team had waited until the hurricane was far out to sea and had then conducted a localized seeding. Asked what the results were, he stuck to the company script and said he didn't know. Guy Suits interjected to point out that no one would conduct hurricane research without the liability provisions proposed in Bill 222.\n\n\"Dr. Suits,\" asked Senator Anderson, \"was it not true that the hurricane, if it subsequently turned back toward the United States and it had destroyed property, it might have been a very expensive procedure for General Electric?\"\n\nGuy Suits did not point out that the hurricane had done just that.\n\n\"That is right,\" he said.\n\nDoubling down on the rewriting of history, Vincent jumped in again.\n\n\"It so happens that we did not conduct the experiments,\" he said, \"but nevertheless I concur in the need for much further studies of this very important problem.\"\n\nVince then ceded the hot seat to Bernie.\n\nBernie had written his statement carefully. He was going further than either Guy Suits or Vince had gone. He got right to the point. Cloud-seeding techniques, he declared, were going to make it possible to extend considerable control over the weather for the nation's good. But in order to make sure this power was used for good and not evil, regulation was necessary.\n\n\"Despite a strong personal dislike of restrictions and regulations,\" he declared, \"I am convinced that in order to achieve these benefits, cloud seeding must be placed under strict Federal regulation. The problems of weather control are so large and of such nationwide importance that only Federal legislation can ensure that this powerful new tool will result in the greatest good for the largest number of people.\"\n\nIt was a tricky thing, asking for federal regulation. It made you look like someone who wanted a planned economy. That was the sort of thing that got you branded a Red. He needed to make it clear that he had good reasons.\n\n\"In the absence of this legislation, I believe that the development of the benefits to be derived from cloud seeding may be greatly retarded or prevented and that possibly much harm can result from storms, droughts, or floods produced by uncontrolled seeding.\"\n\nHe proposed that the federal government provide funds for research and that the research not be classified but be freely shared with other scientists. That was even more dangerous territory, speaking out, if subtly, against military control of the science. Part of what got Edward Condon and other scientists investigated by HUAC was outspoken support for civilian control of atomic energy and for the creation of a national science foundation to move research out of the military sphere and back into civilian hands. Condon had won the battle with HUAC, but at great personal cost. Others were not so lucky.\n\nBernie stepped into this minefield with care. He was a supporter of regulation, in fact, but he couched his claim in a \"strong personal dislike,\" making himself sound more conservative than he actually was. He made a point of exempting dry ice seeding from federal control, though he gently recommended licensing it. He patiently explained to the puzzled senators that the effects of dry ice were localized, while the effects of silver iodide could persist for hundreds or even thousands of miles.\n\n\"The potentialities, both for good and bad, which attend silver iodide seeding are so large that the development and use of this technique must be placed in the hands of the Federal Government,\" he said.\n\nA senator asked him about clouds. Whom did they belong to\u2014the state, the nation, the people? To Bernie it must have seemed like a dumb question: clouds weren't things that could be construed as property. But he couldn't insult the senator. Nor could he say that clouds belonged to the nation or the people without sounding as if he were advocating nationalization.\n\n\"I think I am a poor one to ask a question like that,\" Bernie demurred, \"because my training is primarily scientific and I would not venture a legal opinion.\"\n\nSenator Lester Hunt, who had asked the question, was from Wyoming, whose legislature had just declared sovereignty over its atmosphere.\n\n\"Last year, South Dakota had some very profitable experiments in rain making,\" Senator Hunt noted. \"We think they stole some of our water, maybe.\"\n\n\"I might say that the prevailing winds, though, are generally from the northwest,\" put in Senator Case of South Dakota, implying that if his state stole anyone's water, it was Iowa's.\n\nThis was just the sort of problem that was going to become common if the government didn't regulate rainmaking. But wisely, Bernie stayed out of the rain-rustling dispute. Completing his statement, he pointed out the difficulty of regulating cloud-seeding operations, suggesting that perhaps the best method would be simply \"to make it clear to the public that operations of this sort are contrary to their own best interests and to the country as a whole.\"\n\nBernie must have been relieved when he headed back to Schenectady that day. He had managed to tread lightly on the delicate issues of civilian control and federal regulation while conveying his concern for how his invention might be used if it fell into the wrong hands.\n\nThe hearings went on for two more days, continuing to be less a debate about the need for regulation than a forum on the efficacy of cloud seeding. The senators brought in a slew of rainmakers and treated them with great courtesy. Irving Krick was given a whole day for his testimony, during which he expounded on his own successes. Wallace Howell told the subcommittee his rainmaking had probably increased rainfall in New York's watershed by 14 percent. Weather modification skeptics, on the other hand, were grilled aggressively. The young professor Irving had insulted at the MIT symposium, Charles Hosler, tried to argue that cloud-seeding results should be proved and verified in the lab before any outdoor experiments were made.\n\n\"How did you feel about the atomic bomb?\" he was asked. Things got even worse when he suggested that seeding was \"more or less like praying. It seems to be, at this point, a matter of faith.\" When the senators pointed out that many esteemed scientists believed they had seen it happen, Hosler made a grave error.\n\n\"I saw a man pull a rabbit out of a hat once, and he did it by saying two funny words, and I cannot prove otherwise,\" he snapped. \"Therefore, I think we should have legislation to produce rabbits and send the meat to India.\"\n\nSenators do not take kindly to being mocked. Hosler was not allowed to speak again after that.\n\nAt the end of day three, Vincent returned to show time-lapse photographs of clouds being seeded, then expanding into thunderheads and pouring down rain. For many of the senators, that clinched it. Rainmaking had to be real: they were seeing it happen. Guy Suits invited them all to come to Schenectady for more demonstrations. GE would provide a plane.\n\nBut after the hearings ended, the subcommittee received a letter from a witness with a different position: the Department of Defense. Its letter commenting on all three bills was far from skeptical about the possibility of weather control. But it nevertheless came out firmly against regulating weather modification in any way. The implications were clear: the military services were planning to conquer the atmosphere. And it would be easier to do that in the absence of legal constraints.\n\n* * *\n\nIlium fuit; Troja est.\n\nIt was the motto of Troy, New York, the manufacturing town near Schenectady: \"Ilium was; Troy is.\"\n\nKurt was not concerned with what was or what is. He was writing about what might be.\n\n\"Ilium, New York, is divided into three parts,\" he wrote, invoking the famous opening line of Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul. This was going to be a serious novel.\n\n\"In the northwest are the managers and engineers and civil servants and a few professional people; in the northeast are the machines; and in the south, across the Iroquois River, is the area known locally as Homestead, where almost all of the people live.\"\n\nHe saw it as an American version of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, another portrait of a man imprisoned for treason by a state he had helped create.\n\nThe protagonist of Player Piano is the plant manager of the Ilium Works, a \"triangle of steel and masonry buildings\" where \"machines hummed and whirred and clicked, and made parts for baby carriages and bottle caps, motorcycles and refrigerators, television sets and tricycles\u2014the fruits of peace.\" The Ilium Works was once a private factory but now, like all factories, is under control of the National Manufacturing Council, administered from the central planning office, its every baby carriage and bottle cap built according to specifications and quotas set by EPICAC, the computer in charge of the entire economy\u2014and really the entire government.\n\nAldous Huxley's Brave New World was about a horrific future world where genetically identical human beings are manufactured in test tubes and brainwashed to conform to their castes in a strict social hierarchy. George Orwell's 1984 was about a horrific future world divided into party members and downtrodden proles, with submission to groupthink enforced by a sadistic surveillance state and endless war. Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano would be about a horrific future world where world peace has been achieved, hunger and privation banished, and nothing more awful has happened to people than that machines are now doing their jobs.\n\nKurt named his main character Paul Proteus. Doctor Paul Proteus. The name echoed that of the early genius of Schenectady, the man who knew where to chalk the X on a broken generator: Charles Proteus Steinmetz. Dr. Paul Proteus is a poor man's Steinmetz: he's smart, but not nearly as smart as his illustrious father, Dr. George Proteus, the \"first National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director, a position approached in importance only by the presidency of the United States.\" But Paul is well respected and affluent, part of the technological elite, so he should be happy. The war that had racked the world had been won with the help of the machines: \"Democracy owed its life to know-how.\" But the start of the novel finds him feeling vaguely at odds with the world. Kurt wrote and rewrote several openings. In the one he settled on, Paul has found a cat in the Works and is trying to adopt it\u2014ostensibly to catch mice among the machines. His desire for the cat, emblematic of his longing for life and connection in the midst of his sterile technological domain, comes to a bad end when the cat flees a machine and dies on the plant's electric fence.\n\nPaul is preparing a speech for the anniversary of the plant's takeover by the National Manufacturing Council. His ambitious wife, Anita, is hoping his speech will help forward his promotion to the position of manager of the Pittsburgh plant. But for Paul, the speech is a chance to air some of the doubts that have been creeping into his head about the world he and his fellow engineers have made. He puts a quotation into his speech: Norbert Wiener's claim that the second industrial revolution would devalue mental work.\n\nHis amorphous sense of dissatisfaction draws Paul to Homestead, the side of town where those not smart enough to obtain graduate degrees live. Unable to compete with the machines economically, people of merely average intelligence are given a choice: join the Army or work in the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps\u2014known as Reeks and Wrecks. There's little interaction between them and the elite managers. But Paul keeps finding himself returning to Homestead's shoddy saloon, with its rinky-dink player piano. There, encountering the people's longing for purpose, he nurses the nagging feeling that something about the system is just not right.\n\nPaul's pretense to normalcy begins to unravel when his old pal Ed Finnerty shows up. Paul idolizes Finnerty: his brilliant friend \"might have been an architect or physician or writer.\" Lately, Ed has been working for the National Industrial Planning Board in Washington, a prestigious job, but he has a reputation as a rebel\u2014a man insufficiently invested in the brave new technological world, not to mention too given to women, cars, and booze. And sure enough, soon after Finnerty arrives in Ilium, he announces that he's quit his job.\n\n\"Sick of it,\" he tells Paul. \"I looked around me and found out I couldn't face anything about the system any more. I walked out, and here I am.\"\n\nThese two central characters have personalities reflecting two parts of Kurt himself: Paul, the guy who's doing his best to be the company man, and Ed, the rebel who uses messiness and irreverence as a rebuke to a society he can't respect.\n\nIn setting up his protagonist's dilemma\u2014stay and work for a system he feels is somehow bad for humanity, or revolt and become a nonentity in the techno-utopian world order\u2014Kurt recorded the details of life at GE that had irked him as vaguely yet insistently as Dr. Paul Proteus is irked. Like Schenectady, Ilium is a world divided into those with Ph.D.'s and those without them. It is a world of intense awareness of social rank and fervent adherence to convention and petty social rituals, such as competitiveness between color teams at the company's \"orgy of morale building,\" an annual camp on an island called the Meadows to which the most promising young men are invited every year. The successful in this world possess, as Paul does not, as Kurt did not, \"the ability to be moved emotionally, almost like a lover, by the great omnipresent and omniscient spook, the corporate personality.\" Above all, it is a world in which machines are established as more efficient than humans and are therefore assumed superior.\n\nRecalling his feelings while looking at GE's motorized milling machine, Kurt wrote a scene where Paul fixes a group of automated lathe machines controlled by a magnetic tape loop on which \"were recorded the movements of a master machinist turning out a shaft for a fractional horsepower motor.\" Paul thinks back to when he and Finnerty were sent to make a recording of the best machinist for the tape loop, and he remembers the man's name\u2014Rudy Hertz. \"This was the essence of Rudy as far as his machine was concerned,\" Paul thinks.\n\nAs a counterpoint to GE's techno-utopianism, Kurt imported many ideas from Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics. Speculating in his book about the inevitable chess-playing computer, Wiener admitted that it would play an optimum game according to the logic of von Neumann's game theory. But, he wondered, would it \"offer interesting opposition to a player at one of the many levels at which human chess players find themselves\"? Kurt played out that scenario in a scene where a group of young executives in training challenge Paul to a game of checkers. As Ilium's undisputed checkers champion, he accepts with pleasure\u2014until he realizes that he is being pitted against a machine called Checker Charley. Angrily, Paul tries to concede.\n\n\"I can't win against the damn thing. It can't make a mistake,\" he tells Anita when she tries to intercede. He eventually agrees to play and wins, but only because Checker Charley has a loose connection and catches fire.\n\nIn Cybernetics, Wiener describes a machine that performs a human function as a kind of mechanical slave. \"Any labor that accepts the conditions of competition with slave labor,\" he declares, \"accepts the conditions of slave labor, and is essentially slave labor.\"\n\n\"What have you got against machines?\" one character asks another in Player Piano.\n\n\"They're slaves.\"\n\n\"What the heck... I mean, they aren't people. They don't suffer. They don't mind working.\"\n\n\"No, but they compete with people.\"\n\n\"But that's a pretty good thing, isn't it\u2014considering what a sloppy job most people do of anything?\"\n\n\"Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave,\" the first man replies.\n\nAs Kurt saw it, Wiener's questions should be asked more in Schenectady. So he created a fictional Schenectady\u2014Ilium\u2014and put a Wienerian protagonist in it. Paul had helped to create something wonderful\u2014a society without inefficiency or privation. But he had failed to foresee its potential for damage, because he, and his entire culture, had been careless about upholding human values. They had been too spellbound by their shiny, mechanical toys, too enthralled by their exciting new science to consider its effect on real human lives.\n\n* * *\n\nBernie had drawn a map of the United States. He was shading in vast portions of the West. Those were the areas where silver iodide was filling the air.\n\nVince had been writing to the commercial rainmakers, trying to find out how many acres they had under contract. Weather Modification Incorporated. North American Weather Consultants. Water Resources Development Corporation. The Range Development Company. Snow Incorporated. The explosion of private, for-profit rainmaking operations was startling. Around 10 percent of the nation was now under commercial cloud-seeding contracts, almost all in the arid West. Pretty soon, every cloud from the Rockies to the West Coast would be sprayed with silver iodide or shot full of dry ice.\n\nIt wasn't surprising really. Precipitation for profit was an obvious outgrowth of the Project Cirrus research. It came from the same entrepreneurial spirit that aimed to put a GE refrigerator in every kitchen, a GE lightbulb in every socket. Consumers wanted GE rain on every field, GE snow on every ski slope, and until GE was willing to provide it, others would. So the world raced headlong to embrace every new thing under the sun that might lead to material gain.\n\nProject Cirrus had been formed with the idea of benefiting humanity: ranchers could improve their rangeland, utilities could make cheaper power, farmers could divert the hailstorms that caused $15 million worth of crop damage every year. But it was clear to Bernie that there had to be some oversight. Otherwise, they were never going to know what was happening up in the skies. How could they even trust the results of their own experiments? For all they knew, out-of-control cloud seeding might mean human beings were changing the whole climate.\n\nCase in point: massive floods in the heartland. Kansas and Missouri had been hit by unprecedented rains in May, June, and July. The Kansas, Osage, Neosho, Verdigris, and Missouri Rivers all jumped their banks, causing damages of around $1 billion. Both state capitals\u2014Topeka and Jefferson City\u2014were devastated. Manhattan, Kansas, was drowning in eight feet of water. In Kansas City, levees were topped, and factories, warehouses, and stockyards were washed away. Ten thousand farms lost their topsoil. Twenty-eight people were dead.\n\nSenator James Kem of Missouri visited the GE offices in July looking for answers. Irving, typically unconcerned with the ramifications, swiftly declared that the heavy rains had probably been caused by cloud seeding. Vince and Bernie were more circumspect. They felt it was impossible to establish direct causality yet but agreed that the floods should be investigated by competent meteorologists. Senator Kem asked them to draft a statement about regulation for him to use in the next round of congressional debates over rainmaking, the ones that would be closed to the public. Meanwhile, the governor of New Mexico summoned Jack Workman to Santa Fe and told him to turn off the Project Cirrus generators or lose state funds for the School of Mines: New Mexico could not risk being liable for drowning two other states. Irving thought this was an excellent idea: if the periodicity ended when the seeding did, it would further prove his results. But the Army Signal Corps did not want to stop the experiment.\n\nAs the possibility of legislation loomed, the military was getting increasingly involved. A meeting was called of the Research and Development Board\u2014part of the new Department of Defense\u2014to discuss military applications of weather control. Guy Suits telegrammed Langmuir, who was in Hawaii at the invitation of the Pineapple Research Institute, and asked him to come home early to attend. But when Irving got to Schenectady, Suits told him that the board didn't want him there after all. Vincent went to the meeting instead. Langmuir decided he would independently prepare a report for the military on the periodicities.\n\nThis was not the life of research Bernie had envisioned. Leaving graduate school and taking a job at Hartford-Empire, he'd figured he would spend the rest of his life playing around with glass, helping to make better beer bottles or fog-free mirrors. Then, during the war, someone had shown him the atmosphere. It seemed like a neat problem, figuring out what made the natural world work the way it did. But now his life was wrapped up in hearings and controversies and contracts and behind-the-scenes intrigue, even as he spent his days trying to figure out if he had invented something that was causing major harm. His research had been intended to bring the benefits of water down from the sky, to create a kind of anti-Dresden, an anti-Hiroshima. An explosive showering of life, not death, from the clouds. Now the undersea warfare branch was negotiating with GE to have Bernie come work with it.\n\nBernie didn't want to spend the rest of his life making someone's dreams of undersea warfare come true.\n\nWhy shouldn't he just do something straightforward like make toys? He was an inventor; he always had been. His vortex whistle for measuring fluid flow and true air speed would make a good toy. He wrote to Guy Suits, asking for a release of patent on the vortex whistle just for musical instrument or toy applications. Suits wrote back denying the request. GE couldn't just go around releasing patents, he said, especially when it was part of a much larger patent application. Besides, getting involved with trying to develop and market some kind of toy would distract Bernie from what he should be doing. He should focus on the work at hand\u2014by which Suits meant, do what GE wanted him to do.\n\n* * *\n\nDon't come to Provincetown, Jane implored her mother. Please don't come visit your daughter and grandkids.\n\nCape Cod had seemed like such a good idea. They would shed the tedium of the company town in a place that was its exact opposite, with wild scenery, wilder artists, cheap, shabbily gorgeous houses, and of course the ocean: the glassy bay on one side, the pounding surf on the other, and the little spit of bohemian paradise known as Provincetown in between. And it had worked. It had been an exhilarating summer. They met Norman Mailer at the beach and had cocktails with the young writer whose war novel The Naked and the Dead had made him a literary sensation. They reveled in books and paintings and jazz and freedom from everything Schenectady stood for: convention, the Junior League, the Mohawk Golf Club, the Monogram, the omnipresent, omnivorous company.\n\nThey hosted a family reunion\u2014Bernie and Bow came with Peter and the twins, Scott and Terry. And Alice and Jim came toting the Adams gang: Jimbo, Steve, and Kurt. It was nice, as it always was when the three siblings got together\u2014lots of talk, raucous laughter, beer, cigarettes, and that warm feeling of being a tribe. Kurt was finally living the life he wanted\u2014a life chosen by him and not for him\u2014and it was going well. Stories were selling steadily. Knox bought \"More Stately Mansions\" in June and \"The Commandant's Desk\" for Operation Eggnog in July, the same month that Scribner officially optioned Player Piano, the novel that was going to make his name. They lined all the kids up outside the house and took a picture, seven boys and one baby girl, their sun-streaked hair incandescent in the Provincetown sun. They were literally aglow with possibility.\n\nWhat Kurt and Jane hadn't counted on was becoming a hotel. A house near the beach on Cape Cod, especially a charming, shake-shingled cottage on Commercial Street, steps from galleries, clubs, theaters, and beaches and blessed with four breezy bedrooms upstairs, was an irresistible enticement to scads of friends and acquaintances who suddenly just had to catch up with their old pals the Vonneguts.\n\nKurt and Jane had totted it up: they had ten days to themselves all summer. The rest of the time they played hosts, which meant getting good at a game they called \"Get 'em plastered faster.\" The idea being, of course, that the sooner your friends were blotto, the sooner your husband could get back to writing the novel his publisher (oh, that did sound nice) was breathing down his neck to finish. The problem was, by the time one made all those martinis, one had sampled a few oneself, which meant no more writing that night, and the next morning would require a sluggish approach to the breakfast table, let alone the typewriter, through a martini haze. While the guests, of course, slept off their hangovers, oblivious to the fact that they were impeding the Progress of Literature.\n\nFinally September came; their last guests were headed home, and Jane had written to everyone who threatened to come that month and told them to stay away, even her mother. She wanted to see her mother, naturally, but enough was enough! The last guests left just in time for Kurt and Jane to remember that they had less than a month to figure out where they were going to live, because their rental ended October 1.\n\nThey had expected to spend several weeks traversing the coast like vagabonds in search of a place to settle. But their wonderful summer narrowed it down for them: they wanted to stay on Cape Cod. The artistic, intellectual lifestyle, the natural beauty, the quaint villages, and the ever-present ocean\u2014all of it fit the dreams they had hatched together years earlier. Provincetown, however, was a little remote, isolated on the very tip of the Cape, sixty miles from the mainland bridge. Kurt would probably need to fly to New York pretty frequently, to meet with editors and his agent, so they decided to start their search by looking for a place near Hyannis, which had an airport. And then, amazingly, they found a house in their first week of looking.\n\nIt wasn't their dream house. Jane had always dreamed of finding a wreck of a beach house or, better yet, a run-down old barn and turning it into a home. What they found instead was a spanking-new red ranch house in the town of Osterville, with a fenced-in backyard and a studio where Kurt could write. Aesthetically, it was not their style. Jane didn't even like writing the words \"ranch house\"\u2014so dull, so cookie-cutter! But given that they had two small kids and a novel to finish posthaste, and the house\u2014a model house, no less\u2014needed no work, they decided it would suit them. Osterville seemed quaint, there was a good school in Hyannis, and best of all they could move in at the end of September. So with the same impulsiveness with which they had sold their Alplaus home, they bought the Osterville ranch house. Kurt could get down to work at last.\n\nActually, he had been getting more done than Jane's letter suggested. Kurt had managed to make all the revisions that Knox Burger requested on his Operation Eggnog story, \"The Commandant's Desk,\" toning down the story's bitter antiwar tone. At Knox's suggestion, he had even rewritten the ending to make a point about the decency and sensitivity of the American occupiers. The galleys had arrived in August.\n\nMore important, Kurt had made real progress on Player Piano. Paul's story was moving inevitably toward the point where he would make his escape; he has already bought an old farm and is attempting, in secret, to learn how to live off the land. His increasingly antisocial activities have raised suspicions at the company, but his boss, Kroner, has suggested they tell the central office that Paul is working as a company mole, because there is a revolution brewing among the masses and the company wants to crush it.\n\nPlayer Piano's shadowy underground movement is known as the Ghost Shirt Society\u2014referencing the Native American religious uprising the Ghost Dance Society that Kurt had planned to write a thesis on at Chicago. The Works managers don't know much about it, but they suspect its headquarters are in Ilium. Once Paul is known to be a discontented manager, they hope to get him inside the Ghost Shirts as a spy. Paul goes along with the plan, although he has no intention of actually giving the company any information. Or does he? Is he a mole pretending to be a revolutionary or a revolutionary pretending to be a mole? Dr. Paul Proteus was developing into an interestingly complex character.\n\nKurt had an excellent new idea too: he would write a series of inter-chapter vignettes showing the lives of common Ilium people under the present technological regime. He thought they would give the novel a depth that one man's story alone might lack. The only problem was figuring out how to fit those sketches in. He could just insert them, maybe put them in italics. But it would be better to weave them in somehow so they didn't feel like an interruption. At some point during the summer, he had hit upon the perfect device. He would create a character, a luminary of sorts, and send him on a grand tour like that given the prime minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, in 1950. Just as the prime minister visited farms and schools and factories and of course Schenectady, Kurt's luminary would visit homes and factories and of course the Ilium Works. Maybe he'd even get to see EPICAC.\n\n\"The Shah of Bratpuhr, spiritual leader of 6,000,000 members of the Kolhouri sect,\" he began, \"wizened and wise and dark as cocoa, encrusted with gold brocade and constellations of twinkling gems, sank deep into the royal-blue cushions of the limousine\u2014like a priceless brooch in its gift box.\"\n\nHe had fun making up words for the shah's native language, drawing on his Chicago studies of linguistics. Khabu meant \"where?\" Brahouna meant \"Live!\" And takaru meant \"slave\": the shah is constantly mistaking American citizens for takaru. Kurt had the shah visit the same kinds of places the prime minister had\u2014Army installations, a barbershop, even an average American home. He wrote humorous set pieces\u2014the Army private's resentment, the family man's sad adulteries, the barber's interminable analysis of current affairs. He had particular fun with the character of the shah's tour guide from the State Department, Dr. Ewing J. Halyard, graduate of Cornell, as sartorially florid as he was occupationally stultified. But all that would change. Kurt had plans for Dr. Halyard. He might find out that his boring job is not as secure as he thinks.\n\nAll in all, Player Piano was coming along nicely, guests or no guests. Which was good, because in September, Kurt received some bad news from Knox Burger. Although it had already paid for the story, Collier's killed \"The Commandant's Desk.\" He was kicked out of Operation Eggnog. Kurt figured he knew why: the magazine's conservative publisher, Edward Anthony, wasn't willing to risk running anything that could be construed as critical of the American army. Kurt had changed a story about the unrelieved awfulness of all wars and all occupations into a story about Americans as reluctant, but fair, occupiers. But his changes weren't enough. The tenor of the times\u2014at least as Collier's saw it\u2014had veered away from complexity and embraced dogmatism. So Knox had found something to replace \"The Commandant's Desk,\" undoubtedly something anodyne and blandly patriotic. Kurt's political sentiments had lost him the most significant publication of his literary career to date.\n\nHe redoubled his work on Player Piano. It was growing difficult to ask the questions he thought needed asking in short stories for the slicks. The novel would put him on the map as a writer of serious literature.\n\nShifting Winds\n\nBernard entered the East Ballroom of the giant Curtis Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, his name tag stuck to his left lapel, and took his seat on the dais. The panel on cloud seeding at the October AMS meeting was packed. Members of the public as well as meteorologists crowded the room: Minnesota's farmers wanted to know how to make rain.\n\nJoining Bernie to give papers that afternoon were Irving Krick, Wallace Howell, Robert Elliott, and Paul MacCready\u2014commercial rainmakers, all of them. The only other serious researcher listed on the docket was Sol Resnick, a professor at Colorado A&M. But there was a last-minute addition to the roster\u2014Herbert C. S. Thom, statistical expert from the Weather Bureau, added through bureau machinations.\n\nBernie was going to outline the construction of his spray-nozzle smoke generator for dispensing silver iodide. The commercial rainmakers were giving papers much more ambitious in scope. Wallace Howell was surveying methods of evaluating artificial rainmaking programs. Paul MacCready was reporting on fantastically successful cloud-seeding operations over ten thousand square miles of Arizona. Robert Elliott was showing time-lapse movies demonstrating the effects of using differing amounts of silver iodide. And Krick, in typically enterprising fashion, was holding forth on the topic most likely to interest the locals: the economic benefits of rainmaking, including dollar-for-dollar returns in crop yields and better grazing conditions that western farmers could expect if they hired someone like him.\n\nAfter all that, Professor Resnick was going to report on a study showing that rainmaking didn't work, and Herbert Thom would denounce the methods of statistical analysis that suggested it did.\n\nThis was the absurd position Bernie found himself in. He wasn't one of the boosters, the salesmen who drove the Weather Bureau mad with their unsubstantiated claims. He wasn't even as big an advocate as Langmuir, who was now declaring that cloud seeding was probably causing most of the nation's weather glitches by altering cyclonic development. Langmuir had finally succeeded in getting the Project Cirrus generators in Socorro turned off and was expecting the periodicity to vanish, finally proving irrefutably that silver iodide was its cause.\n\nBut if Bernie wasn't an unthinking promoter, he wasn't a naysayer either, one of the people Irving called \"wet blankets\" who made it their mission to prove that rainmaking was hokum. Bernie believed that it probably worked and that they should quit bickering and get down to investigating possible unintended results. Because ever since the Great Plains floods, Bernie had been growing more alarmed.\n\nEarlier that month, Bernie had voluntarily attended the Project Cirrus steering committee meeting. Afterward, he wrote a letter to the Signal Corps' Dr. Michael Ference, head of the committee. He had attended the meeting, he said, because he was concerned about the possible relationship between cloud seeding and floods. Langmuir was convinced there was a connection, and the Weather Bureau was convinced there wasn't. Bernie didn't quite know what to think, but he thought the floods that summer had been tragic. If they were preventable, it was even more tragic.\n\nBernie politely suggested that Project Cirrus release a measured statement. He thought it could be worded so that it simply pointed out potential dangers without provoking controversy. It was important that people racing to use this new technology understand that it might have unintended human consequences.\n\n\"Project Cirrus is supported by the public, and it seems to me that it is very clearly our responsibility to inform the public to the best of our ability,\" he wrote. \"If we fail to do this now, and new floods occur which can possibly be attributed to the cloud seeding, I think we will rightfully share in the blame and deserve the harshest criticism.\"\n\nThe kind of criticism, that is, that he was reading in almost every story his brother wrote.\n\n\"I have taken the liberty of expressing my views to you despite the fact that I am not a member of the Steering Committee,\" Bernie wrote in closing, \"because I feel I have a share in the responsibility involved.\"\n\nHe was sticking his neck out because he wanted to do what was right. He wouldn't let love of his invention blind him to his duty to humanity.\n\nBernie still loved the science. But here in Minneapolis, it was more obvious than ever that the very topic of rainmaking caused people to behave in completely unscientific ways. They either became fanatical crusaders or closed-minded skeptics. They either hoped to profit from it before the science was complete or refused to believe any science that didn't fit with their preconceived ideas. Where were the calm voices of reason that might keep real harm from being done?\n\nIt was not unlike what was going on in the nation, in the world in fact. Russia was evil, and America was good. Or, if you were Russian, the Soviet Union was good, and America was evil. Politics was not even a battleground anymore; it had become a kind of puppet theater where caricatures of goodness browbeat caricatures of evil, and no one wanted to hear the more complex story told.\n\nScience\u2014real science\u2014was always a complex story. It was rare for things to be black-and-white, for evidence to be irrefutable and results to be obvious to all. Science was a conversation; it was the back-and-forth dialogue that mattered. When the dialogue degenerated into fanaticism and politics, it no longer functioned as science. Finding the truth and mapping the best course of action became impossible.\n\nBernie gave his paper on the spray-nozzle generator to the assembled meteorologists and farmers. He would publish it, giving co-authorship to Kiah Maynard. But it would be his last published paper on making rain.\n\n* * *\n\nCollier's special issue, \"Preview of the War We Do Not Want,\" hit newsstands in late October. The cover depicted a sorrowful but grimly determined American MP standing in front of a colorful map of the Soviet Union. The word \"occupied\" was stamped on the Ukraine, and a UN flag was planted on Moscow. The list of writers underneath the picture was impressive: Robert Sherwood, Arthur Koestler, Walter Winchell, Edward R. Murrow, J. B. Priestley, Philip Wylie. It would have been nice to see Kurt Vonnegut Jr. among them. But in the place of \"The Commandant's Desk\" was a limp story by John Savage called \"Trouble at Tuaviti,\" in which a brave American missionary and his loyal Pacific Islanders foil a Soviet sneak attack.\n\nKurt read the issue with growing distaste. The whole magazine treated atomic war as something that could be won\u2014that would be won, naturally, by the United States. And then everything would come out okay in the end, because for America everything always did. The issue was lavishly illustrated: Washington, D.C., after a nuclear bomb assault; parachutists dropping into the Ural Mountains; Grand Central Terminal after a bombing; women packing a Moscow stadium for the first post-Soviet fashion show\u2014because of course after atomic war has devastated the planet, the first thing a woman's mind turns to is hemlines and hats. Collier's must be raking in the profits, because the issue was packed with advertising: General Motors, Body by Fisher, Pall Mall, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Firestone, Frigidaire, and of course GE, using the prospect of World War III to sell washing machines.\n\nKurt particularly disliked Philip Wylie's story, \"Philadelphia Phase,\" a sentimental love triangle between an American officer, his blue-blooded girlfriend, and a Russian immigrant, set in a nuclear-war-ravaged Philly. It turns out the Russian girl has been made sterile by radiation, so she kills herself, leaving the hero to go back to his Main Line sweetheart. Boy gets girl, even amid the inconvenience of atomic holocaust.\n\n\"The Commandant's Desk\" had been true to the grating inhumanity of war and the moral hazards of occupation. It had treated soldiers as complicated human beings and war as a threat to our better selves. That, Kurt knew, was why his name wasn't flying off the newsstands with the rest of them.\n\nBut he couldn't spend time worrying about it. He had more important work to do. Scribner's Harry Brague, who was editing Player Piano, had written to say that he loved the new inserts about the shah of Bratpuhr. He assured Kurt that this was going to be a good novel, a novel Scribner would be proud to publish. And while not pressuring him exactly\u2014the publisher did want him to write the best book he could\u2014he informed Kurt that in order to make the spring list, the book needed to be in Scribner's hands by November 15. That was less than a month away, and there was still quite a lot to go. Paul Proteus had come to his crossroads, the place where he would have to decide whether he was a company man or a rebel. He would either inform on the revolution or join it.\n\nWhen he started the novel, Kurt had not known what Paul would do. He had made several outlines. Ed Finnerty would become a revolutionary, but Paul would side with the machines. Or Finnerty would rebel, and Paul would reluctantly testify against him. Or Finnerty would persuade Paul to join the revolution, and Anita would testify against Ed to get Paul back.\n\nBy October, he had made up his mind. He was going further than any of his previous endings. Dr. Paul Proteus, having quit his job, would accept the role of leader of the revolution and would refuse to inform on his fellow rebels, even though he would lose everything for it\u2014his wife, career, friends, status.\n\nIt was his first scientist character since Professor Barnhouse who would refuse to let love of his invention blind him to his duty to humanity.\n\nHe brought it all to a head at the Meadows. Here was a chance to expose the absurdity of Camp General Electric, that craven corporate pep rally on Association Island, and he used all the ammunition he had. The men arrive at the island by boat, just as in real life. They line up for flag-raising ceremonies under the old oak\u2014counterpart to GE's treasured elm. They are divided into four color teams and attend a play that seems to be directly based on Lemuel Boulware's skit for 1948, the summer Vince Schaefer and the News Bureau's Roger Hammond attended. The loudspeaker at the Meadows blasts songs from the Association Island songbook.\n\nAs he wrote the Meadows section, Kurt wove in two new storylines that were also rooted in his GE experience. In one, Dr. Ewing Halyard of the State Department gets a letter informing him that he never completed his physical education requirements at Cornell, invalidating his undergraduate degree. With no bachelor's degree, \"he had never been entitled to his Ph.D., his classification numbers, or, more to the point, to his pay check.\" Halyard is put on probation until he can make up the missing credits. He goes to Cornell, only to discover that the head of the athletic department is still angry about a letter Halyard wrote to the alumni magazine complaining about the football team's rowdy postgame behavior at an establishment called Club Cybernetics. The coach takes his opportunity for payback, flunking Halyard on his PE exam. Halyard will never get his degree, and he will lose his job because of it.\n\nIn another section, the shah of Bratpuhr experiences a bout of lust. He begins shouting untranslated but obviously indecent suggestions to women from the window of his limousine: \"Pitty fit-fit, sibi Takaru? Niki fit-fit. Akka sahn nibo fit-fit, simi Takaru?\" A reluctant Halyard prepares to play pimp; he's done it before. But then a woman hearing the shah's catcalls agrees to get in the car. She seems like a normal American housewife, and Halyard tries to tell her that she has made a mistake. The woman says she knows exactly what she's doing. \"He was asking for something, wasn't he?\" Halyard says yes. \"There's been no misunderstanding,\" she tells them. She has agreed to prostitute herself because her husband has been fired. Four days earlier he had the classification number W-441, or \"fiction novice.\" He turned in a book that was beautifully written, but twenty-seven pages too long, almost ten points above the acceptable \"readability quotient,\" and with an anti-machine theme.\n\n\"So he was ordered into public-relations duty,\" she concludes.\n\n\"So the story has a happy ending after all,\" Halyard says.\n\n\"Hardly. He refused,\" the wife tells them. Halyard is shocked that a man would rather have his wife prostitute herself than go into public relations. \"I'm proud to say,\" the woman replies, \"that he's one of the few men on earth with a little self-respect left.\"\n\nThat was him, of course, the novel bending back on itself to suggest that Player Piano might be the very book\u2014twenty-seven pages too long, ten points beyond readability, with an anti-machine theme\u2014written by a writer husband who despises PR. It was the first of Vonnegut's many surprise cameos\u2014Hitchcock-like\u2014in his own novels. Together the two tangential stories\u2014Halyard's and the writer's\u2014reflected the anxieties that had colored his time at GE. Kurt lacked the degree that made him worthy of his rank and pay scale, and he had been improperly consigned to public relations, a job he ultimately refused. His novel thus raised and vanquished the twin demons that had haunted him at GE: the fear that he didn't fit in, and the fear that he did.\n\nAnd he did it at the same time that he was resolving his feelings about Paul Proteus, the scientist inventor, the golden boy of the Ilium Works who must choose between an easy life as a company man and what he knows in his heart is right. When he is captured in a raid on a Ghost Shirt meeting, Paul is given a stark choice. He can claim he was acting as a spy and name the leaders of the revolution. Or he can confess to having joined the revolution, forever destroying his chance of returning to his comfortable place among the elite. Paul recognizes the mythic quality of his decision:\n\nHere it was again, the most ancient of roadforks, one that Paul had glimpsed before, in Kroner's study, months ago. The choice of one course or the other had nothing to do with machines, hierarchies, economics, love, age. It was a purely internal matter. Every child older than six knew the fork, and knew what the good guys did here, and what the bad guys did here...\n\nBad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't\u2014no matter when, no matter what.\n\nPaul Proteus would end the novel as a good guy. He would claim his position as leader of the Ghost Shirt Society and happily accept the manifesto written in his name by one of the revolution's leaders, the political science professor Ludwig von Neumann.\n\nLudwig von Neumann is so unlike John von Neumann it seems likely his name was selected for irony. When the revolution backfires, it's he who bemoans the fact that the revolutionaries failed to destroy EPICAC. His manifesto ends with an incantatory list of affirmations of what is human in human beings:\n\nI hold, and the members of the Ghost Shirt Society hold:\n\nThat there must be virtue in imperfection, for Man is imperfect, and Man is a creation of God.\n\nThat there must be virtue in frailty, for Man is frail, and Man is a creation of God.\n\nThat there must be virtue in inefficiency, for Man is inefficient, and Man is a creation of God.\n\nThat there must be virtue in brilliance followed by stupidity, for Man is alternately brilliant and stupid, and Man is a creation of God.\n\nYou perhaps disagree with the antique and vain notion of Man's being a creation of God.\n\nBut I find it a far more defensible belief than the one implicit in intemperate faith in lawless technological progress\u2014namely, that man is on earth to create more durable and efficient images of himself, and, hence, to eliminate any justification at all for his own continued existence.\n\nImperfection, frailty, inefficiency, stupidity: these were precisely the qualities John von Neumann had dedicated his life to eradicating not just in meteorology but in every human endeavor.\n\nKurt mailed the final manuscript to his editor Harry Brague with a stipulation. If Scribner liked the novel and decided to publish, it must never publicize his relationship with General Electric. The company, he explained, was holding a hostage: Bernie. He did not want his brother's career put at risk because of something he had written.\n\nFor the first time in his life, Kurt found himself in the position of looking out for his older brother.\n\n* * *\n\nMore than four hundred people crammed into New York's Roosevelt Hotel for the January 1952 AMS meeting. But to those who were paying attention, the tide had turned. The Weather Bureau campaign was beginning to vanquish belief in rainmaking.\n\nThe Weather Bureau scientists were taking a more diplomatic tone; ever since the disaster of the May Senate hearings, McDonald's pounding fist had been thudding in Chief Reichelderfer's head. Congress controlled the bureau's budget: the negative press after McDonald's outburst had cost it real money! The campaign was now being conducted mostly behind the scenes. Weather Bureau analysts were double-checking all the Project Cirrus data, and Harry Wexler was ever present in the background, quietly making sure anyone who was exposed to Project Cirrus heard the Weather Bureau's side of things too. Most important, Weather Bureau statisticians were working to disprove Langmuir's claims.\n\nLangmuir was unconcerned. He didn't mind that his AMS meeting talk on the seven-day periodicities was scheduled for a panel with two Weather Bureau statisticians. He actually thought their work would help him to prove that his seeding had caused the weather periodicities. In fact, it was doing the opposite. For all his brilliance, Langmuir had failed to see the irremediable flaw in his method pinpointed by the bureau statisticians. Langmuir's calculations of probabilities for rainfall in seeded areas assumed that rain in one area could be considered independently of rain in the next\u2014that in looking for patterns, he could treat rainfall levels as if they were random numbers. But rain in one place is probabilistically related to rain in a place nearby; a touch in one place eddies and flows, setting up a touch in the next, and so on, until you have reached the other side of the earth.\n\nIt was the statisticians who would, in the end, cast the Project Cirrus research into doubt and consign Irving Langmuir, once the nation's most famous chemist, to a marginal place in the history of science. Irving did not see it coming. He did not see that his whole way of doing science\u2014his generalist, do-it-yourself, paper-clip-and-string mode of Victorian science\u2014had become a liability. Science was being sorted into silos, and interaction between them was strictly regulated. As a chemist who had strayed into meteorology and then statistics, his failure to stick to his specialty branded him an outlier, someone who could safely be ignored.\n\nOnly one group of people considered him relevant. Recently, two officers from the Joint Chiefs of Staff had approached Irving and said they'd like to meet him in Schenectady to discuss military applications of weather control. Happily, he gave them his contact information. He had already renewed his security clearance, expecting he would soon be working directly with the military. Word was getting around that GE planned to discontinue Project Cirrus as of July, the end of the current contract. Under the reign of \"Razor Ralph\" Cordiner, the company was being reorganized into business units\u2014even the Research Lab. Lab managers were given orders to organize teams of researchers to carry out prescribed projects\u2014projects that were likely to lead to monetary results for GE. Doc Whitney's question, \"Are you having fun today?\" was no longer the watchword in the House of Magic.\n\nAfter the AMS meeting, Irving returned to his island on Lake George, where he was now conducting most of his work. Visitors and colleagues who wanted to talk to him had to write in advance, because he had no telephone on the island. Then they would go to the Adirondack town of Bolton Landing, where arrangements would be made for Langmuir's Chris-Craft, Wendy, to bring them across Lake George to the laureate's leafy Neverland.\n\n* * *\n\nWhat are people for? Kurt was pondering that on Christmas Eve. The line was the very heart of the novel, the most succinct statement of his theme, and his editor Harry Brague had cut it out.\n\nEditors!\n\nPlayer Piano wound down with a failed revolution. After refusing to rat out the insurgents, Paul is tried for treason. During his trial, the Ghost Shirt Society starts an uprising, freeing Paul and aiming to take the world back for humanity. But the attack on the machines rapidly turns into a free-for-all. Drunk on destruction\u2014and on liberated booze\u2014the people smash everything from the Ilium Works assembly lines to bakeries and sewage disposal plants. Weakly, Paul, Finnerty, and the other leaders try to stop them from destroying the useful machines, but it's hopeless. There is no middle ground between fanatical love of the system and fanatical hate. Technology is either an absolute good or an absolute evil: the more complex story Paul wanted to tell is lost in the joyous upheaval of the downtrodden taking charge of their destinies.\n\nHomestead is isolated by government troops, who refuse to come in and help clean up the mess until the revolution's leaders are handed over. Paul and the others briefly hope to build a truly human existence: to chop wood and grow food and build shelters. But, in a final irony, as soon as the frenzy of ruin has given way to the cold light of day, people miss the machines. The revolution's leaders come upon a group gathered around a smashed vending machine that once dispensed a soda called Orange-O. Everyone has always hated Orange-O, but they are cheering on a comrade as he repairs the machine. The people, it seems, are doomed to reassemble the very world that had oppressed them.\n\nRemarkably prescient, Player Piano foresaw a world divided between well-educated whiz-kid executives who believe technology is the answer to every human problem and alienated service workers showered with shiny new techno-gadgets in place of real roles as citizens. At the center of this world is the computer, deified by the paternalistic, paranoid culture of the modern corporation. Previous dystopian novels taught readers to look for hope in the success of the revolution\u2014or despair in its failure. Winston Smith's revolution fails in 1984, leading to his brutal torture and \"re-education.\" Bernard Marx's attempt to escape the system in Brave New World leads to his exile. The dark irony of Player Piano is that no torture, no exile, is required. Before the revolution's smoke has even cleared, the rebels are at work rebuilding the very technology they revolted against, because technology tells far too seductive a lie. It tells us we can transcend our banal physical limitations; we can travel at the speed of sound, think at the speed of light, live forever in a shiny digital Eden. We humans, the novel implies, will always crave Orange-O machines and computers and video games and iPhones and self-driving cars, even if we suspect that these false gods are robbing us of our humanity.\n\nDisconsolately, Paul and the other leaders turn themselves over to the state.\n\nThe original draft of Player Piano concluded with a scene between Ewing J. Halyard and the shah of Bratpuhr. Halyard decides to escape demotion by immigrating to Bratpuhr with the shah. But the shah explains that he will be a slave there if he can't rotate his navel. Halyard rages at the ridiculousness of assigning status based on something so pointless, but the shah is implacable. So Halyard performs his last duty as a member of the State Department, offering the shah and Bratpuhr an American \"modernization\" package that will endow them with all the machines and computers necessary to re-create the American economy. The shah refuses, instead giving Halyard one more question for EPICAC: \"What are people for?\"\n\nThat question was the one Kurt wanted to leave ringing in the reader's head. But early in November, Kenneth Littauer had called to say that Harry Brague didn't like Kurt's ending at all. The whole book contract hung in the balance. Kurt flew down to New York to meet with Harry in person and figure out a better conclusion. Together, the writer and the editor decided that it was wrong for the book to end on Halyard. The protagonist was Paul; the story should end with him.\n\nKurt wrote a new conclusion to follow the shah's departure, an epilogue in which, seventeen years after the failed revolution, Paul Proteus is released from prison and comes home to his farmhouse to find his former boss Kroner waiting to welcome him. Paul has spent his incarcerated years as the prison librarian, and his embrace of classic literature has given him a new, more spiritual view of life. He recognizes that the world will always change, and he just hopes humans can hold on to their spiritual values despite the relentless forward march of technology.\n\nHarry Brague didn't hate the new conclusion, and at long last he issued Kurt a contract for the book. But after reading it a few times, the editor wondered if the epilogue was necessary. In fact, he thought Kurt could dispense with the last two chapters, ending the novel on the willing surrender of Paul and other leaders of the revolution. It would be a starker ending, and more serious. Kenneth Littauer thought it would make the novel feel pessimistic, but Kurt liked the idea. It might leave people wondering, arguing: Was the ending happy or sad? Was the writer an optimist or a pessimist? Was there hope for humanity? He wanted his novel, like Orwell's or Huxley's or Koestler's, to start conversations, arguments even.\n\nBut he was unwilling to lose the shah's question for EPICAC: What are people for?\n\nThe question is reminiscent of the penultimate chapter of Norbert Wiener's Human Use of Human Beings. \"Our papers have been making a great deal of American 'know-how' ever since we had the misfortune to discover the atomic bomb,\" Wiener wrote. \"There is one quality more important than know-how and we cannot accuse the United States of any undue amount of it. This is 'know-what': by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be.\" In order to explain the difference between \"know-how\" and \"know-what,\" Wiener gave the example of a \"prominent American engineer\" who bought an expensive player piano. But the engineer was not interested in the music; he was interested in the piano's mechanism. \"For this gentleman,\" Wiener wrote, \"the player piano was not a means of producing music, but a means of giving some inventor the chance of showing how skillful he was at overcoming certain difficulties in the production of music.\"\n\nOn perhaps the last innocently joyous night of his life, just before he heard that Hitler had invaded Poland, Kurt had spent an evening with his buddies at Woolaroc Ranch in Oklahoma, smoking cigars and loading rolls of music into the player piano. They hadn't been interested in the piano's mechanism, in the know-how of it. They had been interested in hearing the tunes while they hung out, a tribe of three, enjoying one another's company. Like his brother, Kurt loved music: jazz and classical and the Beatles\u2014it all partakes of the know-what, the higher truth that gives beauty and purpose to human existence. It's the music, not the mechanism, that people are for.\n\nSo, on Christmas Eve, Kurt found a place earlier in the book where the shah's question \"What are people for?\" could be reinserted, and he typed up an insert and mailed it to Harry Brague. And with that, his first novel was complete.\n\nKurt was so excited for the book to come out he could hardly stand it. He was eager for the royalties to start rolling in. He needed the money. Harry told him to sit tight and put the book out of his head. Get going on the next one, he advised. The only thing left to do now was to write a dedication, if he wanted one. Kurt sent one back right away: \"For Jane\u2014God bless her.\"\n\nWhen the galleys of his first book arrived in March, he thought they were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He wrote to Harry suggesting a few people to whom Scribner should send advance copies of the book, hoping they might help spread the word. One of them was Norbert Wiener.\n\n* * *\n\nJohn von Neumann's computer was a thing of beauty. There it sat, eight feet long, six feet high, and two feet wide\u2014a Corvette in a world that until now had only seen 18-wheelers. At a mere thousand pounds, it was smaller and sleeker than Harry Wexler had ever imagined a computer could be. It had twenty-three hundred vacuum tubes and forty raked cylinders along its sides and would be faster than ENIAC by far, doing 2,000 multiplications or 100,000 additions per second. It would whip through a twenty-four-hour forecast in a mere three hours.\n\nIn other words, it had roughly as much computing power as the kind of handheld calculator you might find in a cereal box today. And it was going to revolutionize computing.\n\nIt was May 1952, and von Neumann and his engineers were still working out the kinks, but the computer was finally operating. And unlike ENIAC, it didn't break down all the time. The summer before, it had run smoothly for sixty straight days doing a large thermonuclear calculation. Soon it was going to start in on the weather. The Meteorology Project's mathematical model had been growing increasingly complex, but the team believed it was sophisticated enough to predict cyclogenesis. As Harry Wexler had suggested, they were going to test the new equations by attempting to predict the formation of the 1950 Thanksgiving Storm.\n\nA year from now, the computer would successfully forecast the cyclogenesis that led to the Thanksgiving Storm of 1950, proving that the so-called Rainmakers' Flood was a predictable act of nature. But even now, before that triumph, when Harry looked at the computer, he felt the satisfaction of having reached a peak he had only vaguely discerned during the long ascent. The days of predicting the weather using history and human intuition were about to end. Imperfection, frailty, and inefficiency were not part of Johnnie's new machine. The atmosphere could be understood deterministically. It could be reduced to equations and solved. And after the atmosphere, what next? The computer would continue to grow speedier and smarter, would solve more and more human problems. Harry Wexler was looking at the future not just of weather but of technology. The future of science. Of humanity. He was seeing a world just like that of Player Piano, but unlike Kurt, he had no problem with it.\n\nOne of the project engineers later summed up the magnitude of that moment in history. \"A tidal wave of computational power was about to break and inundate everything in science and much elsewhere,\" he wrote, \"and things would never be the same.\"\n\n* * *\n\nGuy Suits had asked Bernie to come see him. Bernie figured it was about his future at GE.\n\nProject Cirrus was officially shut down. GE was getting out of weather modification; the liabilities were too big and the profit potential too small. Vincent and Bernie were unhappy about it, but there was nothing they could do. Under the new regime of Razor Ralph, they had to work on what they were told to work on.\n\nThe most fun Bernie had had at work lately was trying to \"play\" a germanium crystal on the Project Cirrus facsimile machine. It hadn't worked. The etched surface of germanium had a complicated structure, like a record, but the facsimile machine was not sensitive enough to pick up its signal. It had been worth a try. Purified germanium was a semiconductor, and its structure had been of great interest to the entire world since 1948, when scientists at Bell Labs had introduced the world to a new device that used a germanium semiconductor: the transistor.\n\nTransistors! These tiny, pea-sized devices were all anyone could talk about. Smaller, faster, more durable, and more efficient than vacuum tubes, transistors were going to revolutionize electronics. It was the dawning of a new age for that industry, which experts predicted would soon grow to rival the chemical industry. Forget about better living through chemistry: better living through electronics was the future now. Power transfer, communications, lighting\u2014even thinking was going to be done by transistors one day. There would be televisions half the current size! Radios that could fit in your pocket! Computers that could sit on a desk! They were all just around the corner because of Bell Labs' new invention.\n\nEveryone wanted in on the promising new product, and GE was no exception. Research Lab scientists were being redeployed to the semiconductor section, Bernie among them. Vincent, too, was told that he should consider taking up semiconductors now that GE was divesting itself of weather.\n\nBernie wrote up his research in Research Lab Report RL-723: \"Variations in the Contact Resistance of a Copper Point Moving over Etched Surface of Germanium Crystal.\" Diodes were interesting, but his heart wasn't in semiconductors and transistors. And he didn't want to be told what to research.\n\nHe had begun to look around for other jobs. He was corresponding with Bill Hubert, formerly with Project Cirrus, who was now at the Institute of Meteorology in Stockholm. The institute wanted a good cloud physics man to come to Stockholm for a few months. Bill had suggested Bernie, and Bernie was tempted. But Sweden was a big trip for the family, and he had also received a job offer from Arthur D. Little, a private research company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Arthur D. Little conducted research in many different fields, and its scientists had more control of what they worked on than scientists at the GE Research Lab did now.\n\nGuy Suits had clearly gotten wind of the fact that Bernie was thinking of leaving GE. When Bernie got to his office, Suits had a speech prepared. It was a big step Bernie was thinking of taking, he said. He hoped Bernie wouldn't take the decision to leave GE lightly. After all, there were a lot of factors to weigh.\n\n\"One of the things you must consider,\" he declared, \"is your equity in the pension plan.\"\n\nHere it was again, that same fork in the road that had confronted his brother. Of course, the choice at hand had nothing to do with pension plans, Quarter Century Clubs, appliances, or clambakes. It was purely an internal matter. Every kid past sixteen knew this fork, what the good guys did here, and the bad guys. Good guys stayed true to their love of science, their pursuit of knowledge for the good of humanity. Bad guys were venal. They made choices based on money.\n\nBernie knew at that moment, listening to Guy Suits, that he had made his decision and that it was the right one. He would leave GE, which in 1952 was no longer the company that had hired him in 1945. It had changed, radically. But then, so too had the nation.\n\nAnd so, in fact, had he.\n\n* * *\n\nKurt was crushed: Norbert Wiener hated Player Piano.\n\nIt was the latest in a series of small crises in the run-up to the publication that had left Kurt a nervous wreck. First he spent a couple of weeks worrying that a soda company somewhere might actually make something called Orange-O and that it would sue him for saying no one liked it. He had persuaded Harry Brague to have the Scribner lawyers look into it. The lawyers could find no evidence of a real Orange-O.\n\nThen he had somehow got it in his head that Scribner was holding off publishing the book until fall, nearly a year after he'd completed it, and he freaked out, fearing he wouldn't get any royalties until he and his family had starved. Harry assured him that the book was slated for late summer. Somewhat reassured, Kurt retired to his study to write promotional taglines and sketch ideas for the cover. He sent these to Harry, who ignored them, along with Kurt's concepts for marketing campaigns and avowals that his next book would be better.\n\nBut this latest blow was the worst of all. Norbert Wiener had written Scribner a scathing letter. Kurt thought Wiener would love the novel! After all, Wiener's ideas were threaded throughout the whole book. Kurt even had Paul Proteus credit him with the idea of the second industrial revolution. He'd asked Scribner to send Wiener the book because he thought the mathematician would take it as a kind of tribute. Instead, Wiener accused Kurt of setting the novel in a dystopian future in order to avoid indicting what was actually happening in science today.\n\nIt was a problem Kurt would bump into over and over in his career. People would read his work as some sort of futuristic science fantasy, persisting in seeing his books as comic space operas and druggy head trips, when he thought he was writing pointed social satire.\n\nIn 1973, David Standish would ask him in Playboy why he had turned to science fiction for his first novel. Kurt told him about working at General Electric and seeing things like the automated milling machine.\n\n\"So science fiction seemed like the best way to write about your thoughts on the subject,\" Standish pressed.\n\n\"There was no avoiding it,\" Kurt said, \"since the General Electric Company was science fiction.\"\n\nIt's unclear what set Wiener off, though he was notoriously touchy about his ideas being co-opted, often declaring himself \"not a Wienerian.\" Yet Kurt had captured exactly the moral questions raised in Cybernetics and The Human Use of Human Beings, questions Wiener would continue to explore in later works like God and Golem Inc. It may be that some of Wiener's hostility resulted from jealousy. He had literary aspirations himself\u2014he published science fiction stories in the MIT magazine Tech Engineering News and would write a novel in 1959\u2014and Kurt had conveyed many of Wiener's ideas in a form more accessible and enjoyable than the mathematician's own.\n\nWiener seemed most upset by the fact that Kurt had used his friend John von Neumann's name for one of the novel's revolutionaries. In his letter, he told the folks at Scribner to tell Vonnegut \"he cannot with impunity... play fast and loose with the names of living people.\" This of course is balderdash: writers play fast and loose with the names of living people all the time. What really upset Wiener might have been that Professor Ludwig von Neumann\u2014described as \"a slight, disorderly old man who had taught political science at Union College in Schenectady\"\u2014might better have been called Ludwig Wiener. Ludwig von Neumann sounds absolutely Wienerian when he declares in his Ghost Shirt manifesto, \"Without regard for the wishes of men, any machines or techniques or forms of organization that can economically replace men do replace men. Replacement is not necessarily bad, but to do it without regard for the wishes of men is lawlessness.\"\n\nAfter Scribner forwarded Wiener's letter, Kurt and Jane spent a couple of days fantasizing about suitably mean retorts. Then Kurt wrote Wiener a chilly note thanking him for troubling himself with Player Piano and stating that he felt his indictment of contemporary science should be clear. He apologized for having innocently given offense, claiming he had picked the name von Neumann at random. He might have thought he did, but Kurt never picked names at random. He pulled them from his personal store of words with private significance. Senator Warren Foust in \"Barnhouse\" was likely suggested by Commander Elwood Faust, one of Project Cirrus's key pilots. Winston Niles Rumfoord of The Sirens of Titan and Bertram Copeland Rumfoord of Slaughterhouse-Five were almost surely born of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, who endowed the Rumford Prize won by Irving Langmuir. George M. Helmholtz, a recurring character in Vonnegut's stories, invokes the mathematician Hermann von Helmholtz, whose equation was utilized in much of the Project Cirrus work. GE names, like GE ideas, would surface persistently and evocatively in everything Kurt ever wrote.\n\nIn mid-August, Player Piano landed in bookstores across the country\u2014except for those in Schenectady. Not one bookstore in GE's company town would agree to stock it; every bookseller made an improbable excuse. Bernie had received his copy, signed with love from Kurt. He had probably already read it when the review in The New York Times Book Review came out. On August 17, 1952, the eminent critic Granville Hicks praised the book's humor, calling Kurt a \"sharp-eyed satirist.\"\n\n\"It is a little like Brave New World,\" Hicks wrote, \"except that Mr. Vonnegut keeps his future closer to the present than Aldous Huxley succeeded in doing, and his satire therefore focuses more sharply on the contemporary situation. The machines he is talking about are not gadgets he has dreamed up; they are in existence, as he is careful to point out.\"\n\nThe next day was Bernie's last day at the GE Research Lab. Between the final edits and the Orange-O freak-out, the Wiener letter and The New York Times, somewhere in there Bernard Vonnegut had walked into the office of Guy Suits and handed in his official resignation.\n\nLater, he would say that his career at GE ended when he went on vacation and someone cleaned off his desk. Whether or not the story was true, it was an elegant way of expressing the choice he had made at his own crossroads, a choice to trust his own messy, imperfect spirit over the order and efficiency of GE. Confident he was doing the right thing, Bernie turned in his keys, his all-hours pass, his patent notebook, his lab supplies, his meters and instruments, and his K parking permit, and he walked out of the Knolls Research Lab. He didn't look back.\n\nThe secretary carefully filled out his termination sheet, noting his new address: 704 Country Way, North Scituate, Massachusetts. His new home was close to the ocean and close to Kurt and Jane.\n\nFor the first time in his life, Bernie was following in his brother's footsteps, instead of the other way around.\n\n* * *\n\nIn June 1953, a mile-wide tornado plowed through Worcester, Massachusetts. Tornadoes in Massachusetts are rare, and the storm cell that spawned this one was so huge that people on Cape Cod could see it as it churned northeast, killing ninety-four people and leaving ten thousand more homeless in the eighty-four minutes it took to get to the coast. Later it was called the Worcester Twister and given a rare F4 rating on the Fujita scale.\n\nAs news of the storm broke, Bernie went down to the beach in Scituate with his camera to watch the giant stomp across the Boston area. The storm was about 160 kilometers away, but he could see its electrical discharges filling the sky. Blinking his eyes as fast as he could, he couldn't get a glimpse of the storm not lit up by lightning. The release of all that energy must be heating the air and creating updrafts, which could explain the storm's size. He estimated the storm's top to be about twenty kilometers up, in the stratosphere, which would mean its vertical winds were traveling upward at a hundred meters a second. The lightning was still going like gangbusters when the storm reached the shore and headed out to sea.\n\nHe was as awed as he had been as a kid, when he snuck out of the house in Chatham and went down to the ocean. He was witnessing a firestorm made by nature. Scientists didn't even know if the winds caused the lightning or the lightning caused the winds. But Bernie had an intuition that electrical charge might play a larger role than people thought.\n\nThe original impulse behind Project Cirrus was a simple mystery: What makes clouds give rain? But the query about the natural world had nearly been lost in a whirlwind of controversy and competing desires. The military men wanted weapons, the commercial rainmakers wanted profits, GE wanted free publicity, and the meteorologists wanted to protect their turf.\n\nIn 1953, Congress appointed the new Advisory Committee on Weather Control to investigate, once more, whether the government should conduct research on the topic. Bernie was asked to write a report for the committee. Five years later, when congressional hearings were held, he asked to testify. Of his own volition, he wrote up a statement on House Bill 86. The bill, he said, was based on a false premise: that anyone could know what kind of research would lead to weather control. In fact, he told them, Vince's original experiment had been driven by the desire to understand how nature works, not by a desire to control it.\n\n\"I believe the best way to achieve weather control,\" he wrote, \"will be to sponsor basic research in the physical sciences necessary to the understanding of weather.\"\n\nThat same year, Commander William Kotsch of the U.S. Navy wrote to Bernie asking for a copy of his report on the uses of weather as a weapon. Bernie sent him a copy of the report he wrote for the Advisory Committee on Weather Control. But the commander was bound to be disappointed, he said. He dealt \"very sketchily\" with the use of weather as a weapon.\n\nIn fact, he didn't mention it at all.\n\nAfter leaving GE for Arthur D. Little, Bernie would sometimes accept funding from the military. But never again would he work on something that had obvious military applications. Instead, he began developing a new theory about thunderstorms, proposing that updrafts and downdrafts caused electrical charge in thunderclouds and that electrical charge led to rain, instead of vice versa. One of his cleverest experiments concerned the fact that thunderstorms almost always have a positive charge at the top and a negative charge at the bottom. One summer in New Mexico, Bernard and his colleague Charlie Moore strung a two-kilometer wire between two mountains to release negative charge. When thunderstorms came through and encountered the negative charge, they reversed their polarity. Over the course of two weeks, Bernie and Charlie Moore created three storms that discharged positive charge to the ground\u2014electrical storms turned electrically upside down. It was perhaps his best joke on nature. Bernie spent much of the rest of his life marshaling evidence for his theory about electrical charge in thunderstorms, but he once admitted he wasn't really driven by the need to prove it.\n\n\"I'm [just] trying to find out,\" he said, \"what's going on.\"\n\nHe no longer wanted to control. He wanted to know. And the purpose of knowing was not, in the end, to banish mystery. It was to appreciate it. To note how it glows.\n\n* * *\n\nIn May 1954, Kurt tried and failed to get a job at Time Inc. He was broke. Player Piano had received a few polite notices but had not sold well and had quickly faded from view. It had not made his fortune or his name. Worse, Collier's had stopped buying his stories. The short story market was shrinking. And Jane was pregnant with their third child. Desperate for income, he sent Harry Brague at Scribner all he had, six chapters of a book he was now calling Cat's Cradle.\n\nThat month, Collier's published a sensational cover story called \"Weather Made to Order?\" Written by Howard Orville, chair of the Advisory Committee on Weather Control, the piece trotted out all of the most dramatic claims about the coming era of man-made weather: hurricanes, tornadoes, and thunderstorms would be quelled; deserts and dust bowls would bloom; forest fires and floods would be prevented. Weather would be used as a weapon, deluging enemies with rain or causing them to starve by preventing it. According to Collier's, this was all laudable, American enterprise at its finest.\n\nKnox Burger was not at Collier's anymore; he had left to become a book editor at Dell. Kurt's last two stories for Collier's, \"Poor Little Rich Town\" and \"With His Hand on the Throttle,\" were both GE based, the first about a GE-type efficiency expert and his attempt to streamline life in a small village and the second about a model railroad fanatic inspired by Herb Hollomon. But the magazine market for fiction was rapidly drying up as popular entertainment was increasingly delivered by television. Collier's itself would cease publication in 1957.\n\nKurt could see that clearly enough, and he had turned to writing plays. He had even purchased a television and was starting to write teleplays in the hope of breaking into the new medium. But they weren't selling. And he couldn't seem to get very far with the new novel. Ever since the disappointing debut of Player Piano, Kurt had been racked with writer's block. Harry Brague had encouraged him, trying to convince him that the novel's reception had actually been good and that he should sit down and write a new one before the public forgot his name. He had even advanced Kurt $500 on the unspecified next novel when Kurt was desperate for cash. It didn't help.\n\nHarry Brague didn't quite know what to make of the six chapters Kurt sent of Cat's Cradle. In fact, it would take ten years and two more books before the former \"Ice-9\" would morph into Kurt Vonnegut's breakthrough book. Kurt would fix its problems by stepping back and turning the straightforward adventure story into a story about stories, an adventure stumbled into by a writer-narrator called Jonah who is trying to research a book about the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He wants to call it The Day the World Ended.\n\nIn the final version, Dr. George Hoenikker becomes Dr. Felix Hoenikker, \"father of the atomic bomb\" and inventor of the even more dangerous ice-nine. Dr. Hoenikker is already dead as the book opens, but Jonah researches his book by tracking down Hoenikker's three children and traveling to Ilium, New York, home to the Research Lab of General Forge and Foundry, where Felix Hoenikker worked. The Research Lab is described as a kind of playground, where \"men are paid to increase knowledge... the most valuable commodity on earth.\" Felix Hoenikker is its star scientist, viewed by the Research Lab's main client, the Pentagon, as \"a sort of magician who could make America invincible with a wave of his wand.\"\n\nAs Jonah explores Ilium, he collects stories about Dr. Hoenikker, many of which are versions of stories about Irving Langmuir. Dr. Hoenikker played cat's cradle with his son Newt\u2014one of Langmuir's favorite games to play with children. Hoenikker once left a tip for his wife, as Irving had for Marion; he was known to declare, as Kurt had heard Irving say, that any scientist who couldn't explain his work to a child was a charlatan. A secretary at General Forge and Foundry tells Jonah that Dr. Hoenikker once challenged her to tell him something that was absolutely true, to which she replied, \"God is love.\" This is what Clare Boothe Luce told Irving Langmuir when they were chatting before appearing on the radio together and he challenged her to think of a statement that was true but not provable. But Langmuir's comment on the exchange was \"She sure had me there!\" Kurt has Felix Hoenikker reply, \"What is God? What is love?\"\n\nThe connections between Felix Hoenikker and Irving Langmuir made it clear that, as Kurt would frequently declare in years to come, the absentminded scientist was based on his brother's former boss. But Felix Hoenikker's last gift to humanity\u2014ice-nine, \"a new way for the atoms of water to stack and lock, to freeze\"\u2014that invention was Bernie's.\n\n\"Suppose,\" explains Dr. Asa Breed, vice president in charge of the Research Laboratory of General Forge and Foundry,\n\nthat the sort of ice we skate upon and put into highballs\u2014what we might call ice-one\u2014is only one of several types of ice... And suppose... that there were one form, which we will call ice-nine\u2014a crystal as hard as this desk\u2014with a melting point of, let us say, one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit, or, better still, a melting point of one-hundred-and-thirty degrees.\n\nDr. Breed tells Jonah to imagine the many ways oranges could be stacked in a crate, or cannonballs piled on a courthouse lawn. It was exactly how Bernie had explained cloud nucleation to Kurt.\n\nOne of the things critics rarely understand about Cat's Cradle is that it is not about the misuse of science. It's about the failure of people to understand the significance of a scientific advance. The threat in the book is not that scientists will produce something dangerous but that the community won't recognize it when they do. Felix Hoenikker is a bad guy not because he invented ice-nine but because he failed to warn anyone about it. Only creators can really understand the hazards of what they create: it's their moral obligation to make sure the rest of the world understands them too.\n\nAt GE, Kurt had witnessed his brother trying to do just that.\n\nIn putting the story in the mouth of the anthropologist-like Jonah, Kurt made the major breakthrough of shifting the emphasis from Dr. Felix Hoenikker to his three children: Franklin, the genius scientist with \"a wiry pompadour... that arose to an incredible height\"; Angela, the tall sister who plays the clarinet brilliantly; and Newt, the glum midget who paints pictures. It's not hard to see the similarity between the names Hoenikker and Vonnegut, or the way in which the Hoenikkers are versions of the three Vonnegut siblings: Bernard, the genius scientist; Alice, the ethereal artist; and Kurt, the glum wordsmith painting clowns as the world goes to hell.\n\nHis other main breakthrough was to bring in the outlawed religion of Bokononism. In short, evocatively titled chapters\u2014each about the length of a press release\u2014Kurt gets Jonah and the Hoenikker siblings, each carrying a shard of ice-nine, to the island of San Lorenzo. The banana republic is run, as it was in early drafts, by the dictator Papa Monzano, but it has a new element: Bokonon and his made-up faith.\n\nThe conclusion of Cat's Cradle echoes the earliest drafts of \"Ice-9\": the novel ends with apocalypse. Papa Monzano has gotten hold of some of Felix's ice-nine, and he takes it to kill himself. When the San Lorenzo air force bombs his palace, his body slips into the sea, and the world's water supply is converted to ice-nine by chain reaction. An epic cyclone reduces most of the planet to rubble. Jonah and his love object, Mona, survive by hiding in a bomb shelter constructed in the palace dungeon. When they emerge, most of the population is dead; for the sad remnant left behind, it's only a matter of time until they accidentally ingest some ice-nine and their own water molecules seize up. Angela Hoenikker dies when, unconcerned, she picks up a clarinet and plays. Just as in the Vonnegut family by then\u2014Alice died of breast cancer in 1958\u2014the Hoenikker brothers are all that remains of the family. As human history draws to its close, Franklin, the scientist, builds an ant farm and passes his days marveling at ant behavior. When provoked, he issues a \"peevish lecture on all the things that people could learn from ants.\" It's a scene reminiscent of the end of \"The Petrified Ants,\" a story never published in Kurt's lifetime, where the exiled brothers Josef and Peter marvel at the adaptability of the insects.\n\n\"Men could learn a lot from ants, Peter my boy,\" Josef tells his younger brother.\n\n\"They have, Josef, they have,\" Peter replies. \"More than they know.\"\n\nIn Cat's Cradle, as in \"The Petrified Ants,\" Kurt used a pair of brothers to address the moral duties of scientists. But in the earlier story, the siblings were meant to be contrasted with each other: the older one morally compromised by conformity, the younger one an individualist working to maintain his integrity. In Cat's Cradle, the brothers are equally compromised\u2014they both carry shards of ice-nine\u2014and equally ineffective at saving the world. Newt, the younger brother, occupies himself much as Franklin does in the apocalypse. He too is just farting around waiting to die, making paintings with scavenged paint. There's no wisdom to be gleaned from the end of the world, from destruction on a global scale.\n\nThe real hero of Cat's Cradle is Bokonon, the prophet who admits that his wisdom is based on lies but whose invented religion gives human beings comfort. Like the Ghost Shirt Society in Player Piano and the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent in The Sirens of Titan, Bokononism provides an alternative to the sterile technological belief in truth personified by Felix Hoenikker. It uses false myths and harmless lies\u2014foma\u2014to encourage humans to love one another, to acknowledge their connectedness, and to spend their short time on earth with grace and compassion.\n\nIn crafting the creed of Bokononism\u2014for which he would finally, years later, be granted his anthropology degree from the University of Chicago\u2014Kurt found perhaps his best embodiment of the truth he had learned all those years ago in The Brothers Karamazov: If God did not exist, human beings would have to invent him. And if that's the case, why not invent a kind and loving God, a God who encourages us to find the sacred in nothing more, and nothing less, than our own human selves?\n\n\"Let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all together,\" Alyosha says at the end of Dostoevsky's novel, \"united by a good and kind feeling which made us, for the time we were loving that poor boy, better perhaps than we are.\" He is appealing to the boys to embrace their best natures in his absence because he is leaving, about to accompany his brother Dmitri to Siberia.\n\n\"You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home,\" he says. \"People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.\"\n\nThat was the line that Jane's Swarthmore professor had shared with her and that she shared with Kurt on their honeymoon. Kurt always kept that piece of paper. It reminded him of the sacredness of memory. He had his own sacred memory preserved from childhood, the memory of his childhood swim across Lake Maxinkuckee. Thanks to the way the human mind lets us travel in time, he could revisit that lake anytime he wanted. He could dive in and swim across it just as he had done as a child, his arms and legs churning like an engine, the waves sliding off his body, a body that always looked best, he thought, in the water. In the water, he was beautiful. In the freshwater lake, he was at home. The water would buoy him up, and he would swim, happy to be swimming in what to him was an ocean, the second-largest lake in Indiana, with his sister and his brother at his side.\nEpilogue: Rainbow's End\n\nKurt sat in his office around 9:30 in the evening. In one hand, he had a cigarette, and in the other a piece of paper. Bernie had given it to him earlier that day.\n\n\"We do have some other photographs of the poor man's Steinmetz, and I may send them to you in my own sweet time.\"\n\nIt was his letter to Uncle Alex, written in 1947, fifty years earlier, when he was still a young man. He was an old man now. Bernie was even older, of course. Old and sick. He had handed the letter to Kurt in Albany, where Kurt went every week by train to see his older brother as he faded away from lung cancer.\n\nBy now, Kurt was famous, very famous. But success had not come easily. After Player Piano, he was blocked for years. Scribner had sold the paperback rights to Bantam for $4,000, and the book that was going to earn him some literary respect was retitled Utopia 14 and released in a lurid mass-market edition, complete with a futuristic city and writhing half-dressed people on the cover. \"Man's revolt against a glittering, mechanized tomorrow,\" it read, next to the cover price of thirty-five cents. Thus began the process of consigning Kurt Vonnegut novels to the shelf marked \"science fiction,\" a designation he would alternately embrace and bemoan.\n\nFor years, all he could produce were short stories to pay the mortgage, and even those were not plentiful enough. He took copywriting jobs, teaching jobs; he opened one of the nation's first Saab dealerships. It failed. Cape Cod wasn't quite ready for Saabs.\n\nWhen he finally broke through his writer's block and wrote The Sirens of Titan\u2014published as a paperback original\u2014he was still writing about the war. War remained the backdrop for his books for another fifteen years: battles, mortar attacks, artillery shellings, air assaults, ships firing cannons, bombs dropping on jungles and castles and cities, hordes of nameless refugees, legions of dead. He even designed and tried to market a military strategy board game called GHQ, with counters representing infantry, artillery, and paratroop units arrayed on a checkerboard, as if he were turning his story \"All the King's Horses\" into an actual game, as if he were refighting the Battle of the Bulge.\n\nHe started and restarted his Dresden book, five times, ten times, more times than he cared to guess. He wrote it as a teleplay, a short story, a nonfiction essay. He was working on it when Cat's Cradle was published in 1963, and ice-nine\u2014along with the terms karass, foma, and wampeter\u2014entered the language. He was working on it when he published Mother Night and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, each admired by a few critics and contributing to his underground reputation. He was working on it when his sister, Alice, died of cancer, two days after her husband, Jim Adams, was killed in a freak train wreck on New Jersey Transit. He was working on it when he and Jane took in her four orphaned boys and suddenly had seven kids, as they always knew they would.\n\nFinally, in the late 1960s, with the nation cycling through gloom and guilt and rage over events in Vietnam, Kurt was offered a teaching position at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The mood in the nation plus the literary stimulation of Iowa and the escape from his own routine broke the logjam that had lasted for a quarter century. He began to rewrite what he had always called Slaughterhouse-Five, wrestling the material that had haunted him since 1945 into his own unique novel form. He was finally able to use Norbert Wiener's idea of \"Newtonian time\"\u2014reversible time in which nothing new can ever happen\u2014to full effect. When Billy Pilgrim begins to experience time as the Tralfamadorians do, it is not just a far-out concept of quantum physics but also the time we all live in, where at any moment we might be transported back to a former moment in our lives.\n\nOne of the last typescript drafts before Slaughterhouse-Five began with the line \"Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.\" Above it, Kurt wrote one word by hand: \"Listen.\"\n\nGrowing up as the youngest child, he always yearned to say this to his parents and siblings. As the younger brother who wanted to be a writer, not a chemist, he had longed to say it to Bernard. As an adult, he finally learned to say it, learned to work his desire to say it into the style we now recognize as uniquely his.\n\nAt once an antiwar treatise and a psychological depiction of post-traumatic stress, Slaughterhouse-Five electrified readers and made Kurt a literary icon. His time in Iowa salvaged his reputation, assured his family's financial future, and gave him what he had always wanted: a place in the literary pantheon. It was also where he launched an affair that would begin the process of ending his marriage to Jane. So it goes.\n\nRecently, as Bernie lay dying in Albany, he had told Kurt that he didn't think scientists made very good husbands. They were too focused on the fascinating things going on in their own heads.\n\nYou could say the same for writers, of course.\n\nBut Jane's confidence in Kurt had shaped him, and her voice was there in the work. In Slaughterhouse-Five, he concluded one of the most compelling descriptions of a massacre ever written with the voice of a bird: the last word in the novel is \"Po-tweet?\" It summed up Jane's undergraduate history thesis at Swarthmore: no sense can be made of history; no meaning can be gleaned from a massacre. The only thing to do is to listen to the birds.\n\nAnd, like Dostoevsky's Father Zossima, to ask forgiveness of them.\n\nTwo years after Kurt published Slaughterhouse-Five, newspapers broke a fantastic story: the CIA had been using cloud seeding as a weapon of war. Since 1966, U.S. planes had flown more than twenty-six hundred cloud-seeding missions over Indochina, spraying the clouds of Vietnam and Laos with aerosolized silver iodide. The intent was to make rain: rain to wash out river crossings and muddy up the Ho Chi Minh Trail, rain to slow supply lines and troop movements in North Vietnam. Like so many weather modification projects, the program had a sci-fi-like name: Operation Popeye.\n\nBernard was horrified to see his invention used in actual combat. But news of the missions led to an international outcry and, eventually, something he had always desired, a UN treaty banning the use of weather modification as a weapon of war.\n\nBy the time Bernie heard about Operation Popeye, he had left industrial science and become an academic. His career at Arthur D. Little in Cambridge had been spent investigating electrification in tornadoes and thunderstorms. In the summers, he continued to chase clouds and lightning in Socorro, based at what became the Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research. Then, in 1967, he accepted a faculty position at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, founded six years earlier by Vincent Schaefer at the State University of New York at Albany. Along with several other former colleagues from the Project Cirrus team, Bernie became a professor and continued his research while teaching, nurturing young scientists with his passion for weather.\n\nFrom Schenectady to Scituate to Albany, through childbirth and schooling, through children growing up and succeeding or struggling, through his wife's death, and his son's illness: through all those years, Bernie had kept Kurt's letter to Uncle Alex. He must have found it funny. He liked a good joke as much as any of them. But maybe he found the letter touching too, a reminder of the younger sibling unable to resist a chance at a potshot, the jealous kid brother who lives on in kid brothers everywhere.\n\nIn 1985, MIT invited Kurt to give a speech. He must have been gratified to be invited to hold forth at his brother's and father's and grandfather's alma mater. To make the scientists at one of the biggest science factories of all listen to him. He felt as if he might actually be able to do some good. So he told the graduating class about his brother, Bernard, a fellow graduate of MIT.\n\n\"My brother knew early on that he would be a research scientist, and so could not be self-employed,\" he told them. To make a living, his brother was going to have to work for somebody else, to make someone else's technological dreams come true. Bernie, he told them, got his doctorate on the eve of World War II:\n\nIf he had gone to work in Germany after that, he would have been helping to make Hitler's dreams come true. If he had gone to work in Italy, he would have been helping to make Mussolini's dreams come true. If he had gone to work in Japan, he would have been helping to make Tojo's dreams come true. If he had gone to work in the Soviet Union, he would have been helping to make Stalin's dreams come true. He went to work for a bottle manufacturer in Butler, Pennsylvania, instead. It can make quite a difference not just to you but to humanity: the sort of boss you choose, whose dreams you help come true.\n\nIt was a reprise, in some ways, of an address Kurt gave to the American Association of Physics Teachers in 1969 called \"The Virtuous Physicist.\" Scientists at several major research universities were protesting the misuse of science as a tool of war. After his talk, Kurt was asked by reporters what defined a virtuous physicist. He told them it was simple: \"one who declines to work on weapons.\"\n\nSomeone should write an oath for them, Kurt told the scientists at MIT nearly twenty years later. One modeled on the Hippocratic oath, something like \"The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of all life on this planet, according to my own ability and judgment, and not for its hurt or for any wrong. I will create no deadly substance or device, though it be asked of me, nor will I counsel such.\"\n\nBernie read and approved of Kurt's talk before he gave it.\n\nThe year after Kurt spoke at MIT, Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky\u2014she had married the Harvard law professor Adam Yarmolinsky\u2014succumbed to cancer at the age of sixty-four. Not long before she died, Jane called Kurt. Their conversation was affectionate. Jane asked Kurt to tell her what would determine the moment of her death. Why ask him? \"She may have felt like a character in a book by me,\" Kurt wrote later. \"In a sense she was.\" Of course Jane was nobody's fictional character but a living, breathing woman full of life and energy and purpose. Without her, the Kurt Vonnegut we know would never have existed. To a great extent, he was a character created by her. And yet what he said was somehow true to the times in which they made their home and raised their children. The men wrote the stories of their lives. The women played their parts in them.\n\nKurt told Jane that a ten-year-old boy would be standing at the end of Scudder's Lane, the street where they had lived most of their years on Cape Cod. Standing on the boat ramp that reaches out into the pond, the boy would be sunburned and bored but happy. \"I told Jane that this boy, with nothing better to do, would pick up a stone, as boys will. He would arc it over the harbor. When the stone hit the water, she would die.\"\n\n* * *\n\nDid Bernie really make rain? Scientists have been debating the efficacy of cloud seeding ever since Vincent dispensed dry ice over Mount Greylock in 1946, but the general consensus today is that in certain conditions it works in a limited way. The huge modifications Irving promised never came to pass. Immediately after GE shut down Project Cirrus, the military conducted six large-scale experiments. Five yielded inconclusive results, and one showed a positive result: the seeding of supercooled stratus clouds with dry ice and silver iodide. Officers from the Office of Naval Research consulted with Irving Langmuir on these experiments, though they would not reveal any specifics, and the results were classified until 1957. Irving had by then completed his magnum opus: his final report on Project Cirrus. But the nearly six-hundred-page treatise was classified as well. When it was finally published as volume 11 of his Collected Works in 1962, Irving was dead; he had died in 1957, with the work he considered his legacy to humanity unknown to science. Today, he is well-known among chemists, but his popular reputation died with his dream of widespread weather control.\n\nBernie's invention is the main legacy of Project Cirrus. Silver iodide remains the most widespread method of enhancing precipitation. Utilities in California have been using silver iodide to increase the winter snowpack in the Sierra Nevada since the early 1950s. The Desert Research Institute in Nevada has been using it to seed clouds since not long after that; currently, it has three operational programs in Nevada and California. In the 1960s, the Bureau of Reclamation conducted rainmaking experiments over reservoirs, with some apparent success, under the name Project Skywater. In the 1960s and 1970s, a joint U.S. Navy\u2013Weather Bureau experiment called Project Stormfury attempted less successfully to modify hurricanes with seeding.\n\nResearch spending on weather modification dwindled after the 1970s. Factors blamed for the field's decline include early overpromising, the lack of rigorous research, environmentalist campaigns against altering nature, and Reagan-era reductions in government funding. Another key element: the early 1980s were an exceptionally wet period in the United States. The weather modifiers have a saying for this: \"Interest in cloud seeding is soluble in rainwater.\"\n\nToday's changing climate has renewed interest in weather modification. In the West and the Great Plains, severe drought and diminishing aquifers have led water utilities, hydropower producers, agriculture groups, and ski resorts to fund cloud-seeding programs. In Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, California, Utah, and Nevada, rainmakers are hired to augment the snowpack. In Texas and Kansas, cloud seeders are at work to induce rain. In North Dakota, clouds are seeded to make them precipitate before they can produce crop-damaging hail. California, Nevada, and Arizona contribute funds to cloud-seeding projects over the Colorado River's upper basin, in hopes of increasing their water supply.\n\nAnd yet many people today believe that weather modification is a hoax: the early overselling of rainmaking somehow caused it, down the line, to be grouped in the public mind with conspiracy theories about mind-altering \"chemtrails,\" shock-jock speculation that the government manufactures tornadoes, and paranoid fantasies about \"weather wars\" involving earthquakes broadcast via the stratosphere. The reality is far less dramatic. A rigorous five-year randomized study sponsored by the Wyoming Water Development Commission and funded by the National Science Foundation is on track to yield results showing that seeding certain clouds can be expected to increase precipitation by about 10 to 15 percent.\n\nAs for Project Cirrus's widespread periodicities and whether they resulted from Bernie's little generator huffing away in New Mexico, the general consensus among those who've even heard of the experiment is that the periodicities were a freaky coincidence. The Weather Bureau meteorologist Roscoe Braham called Langmuir's experiment \"one of those tantalizing things.\" The MIT meteorologist Henry Houghton called it \"the most mysterious thing I have ever run up against... If it wasn't chance, it was a totally new effect.\" Another meteorologist in 1953 said the episode was \"a great tragedy.\"\n\n\"If Langmuir actually influenced the weather,\" he said, \"no one will believe him. If the periodicities were mere coincidence, nature played Langmuir a dirty trick.\"\n\nOf course, nature plays dirty tricks on us all the time, if by that we mean that it shimmies out of grasp, foiling our urge to master and sometimes our desire to know.\n\n\"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,\" writes Bokonon in Cat's Cradle. \"He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.\"\n\n\"Perhaps if he had comprehended fully the magnitude of atmospheric phenomena,\" the meteorologist Horace Byers wrote years later of Irving Langmuir, \"he might have been discouraged from the start.\" But in one way Langmuir\u2014and Bernie too\u2014understood the magnitude of atmospheric phenomena better than almost anyone. They understood that the atmosphere was such a huge, complex, and dynamic system that we would never nail it down with numbers. The weather, Langmuir wrote in his great work, \"is not definitely determinate. It depends in large part and essentially upon meteorological events that originate from small and unpredictable beginnings, such as the location and concentration of freezing nuclei that may set off chain reactions.\" Today we call this chaos.\n\nDeveloped by the meteorologist Edward Lorenz beginning in 1960, chaos theory holds that in some huge systems\u2014weather and other things like it\u2014small contingencies cascade upward to produce large effects. Scientists named it \"sensitive dependence on initial conditions.\" Norbert Wiener had already seen this in 1954, calling it \"the self-amplification of small details in the weather map.\" Langmuir's theory of convergent and divergent phenomena was an early version of chaos theory, another startling intuitive achievement and one for which he has never been given credit. Langmuir and Wiener were right, and John von Neumann was wrong. The weather cannot be entirely solved by equation, because it is not deterministic. It's all flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. The flutter of a butterfly's wing can touch off whirlwinds ten thousand miles away.\n\nIt's all an ocean, after all.\n\nWeather prediction today combines von Neumann's mathematical approach with Wiener and Langmuir's probabilistic one. The weather can be predicted with a good degree of accuracy for about a week out. It can be predicted with somewhat less accuracy for up to two weeks. After that, it all falls apart, because the effects of very tiny disturbances multiply with great speed. Eventually, you get far enough out that statistics and probabilities smooth out the variations, and you can make largely accurate guesses about long-term climate, but in the zone between two weeks and two millennia it's still a mystery. The computer did not turn out to be Laplace's demon\u2014the all-knowing consciousness of a clockwork universe\u2014though hope that it might still morph into that being can sometimes be whiffed in the tech factories of Silicon Valley.\n\n* * *\n\nAs for John von Neumann, in early 1955 he was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission and moved to Washington. That June, he published an essay in Fortune called \"Can We Survive Technology?\" He outlined the sweeping technological advances about to transform the world: nearly free atomic energy, automation of everything, and global climate control. All of these advances, he acknowledged, had immense potential for harm as well as good. But that was the nature of science. To attempt to control or restrain it was impractical.\n\n\"For progress,\" he wrote, \"there is no cure.\"\n\nKurt\u2014and Bernie\u2014would disagree. The cure for progress was simply remembering that we are human.\n\nNot long after his essay appeared, von Neumann slipped and fell in a Washington hallway and was subsequently diagnosed with bone cancer, possibly due to his presence at so many early atomic tests. He died eighteen months later, under military guard with top clearance, for fear that in his agonized raving he should reveal military secrets. He was tormented beyond all reason by the fact that he, too, turned out to be frail, imperfect, inefficient, that for the progress of life there is no cure. Before he died, the lifelong atheist requested the ministrations of a priest.\n\n* * *\n\nHarry Wexler eventually gave up his opposition to the idea of weather control. In 1959, he attended a meeting on weather modification chaired by Edward Teller, who had become a believer. Three years later, Harry gave a paper called \"On the Possibilities of Climate Control\" at the AMS meeting in Boston. The subject of weather control, he told the audience, was \"now becoming respectable to talk about.\" Indeed, President Kennedy had called for international cooperation on climate control in his inauguration speech that year. The UN had also voiced hope that nations would cooperate on this front.\n\nWexler outlined some interventions in the climate that seemed to him feasible, given the greater climate understanding both satellites and computers were providing. But, he pointed out, \"we are in weather control now whether we know it or not.\" Wexler talked about the dangers of inadvertent damage to the ozone layer via ozone-depleting chemical reactions. He noted the fact that \"we are releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide and other gases and particles to the lower atmosphere which may have serious effects on the radiation or heat balance which determine our present pattern of climate and weather.\" He was still investigating these phenomena just months later when he died, tragically, of a heart attack at age fifty-one. His research was largely forgotten until the 1970s. It would be interesting to know what might have happened had such a forceful character been around to advocate investigating the dangers of chlorofluorocarbons and greenhouse gases more than a decade before the majority of scientists thought to do so.\n\nIn fact, the most significant legacy of Project Cirrus might be that it laid the foundation for studying human impacts on the climate, a field previously considered the domain of science fiction. In 1978, Bernie explained,\n\nProject Cirrus's investigations of ways that man can intentionally affect the weather cast a new light on how man's activities might unintentionally have a large influence on weather processes. Along with the scientific study of deliberate weather modification, a new vigorous research activity is developing to explore how man may be affecting his environment by the gases, aerosols and heat he emits into the atmosphere in the course of his many activities... In recent years several international workshops on inadvertent weather modification have been held. These are undoubtedly only the first of many similar ones that will be held in the future on this subject.\n\n* * *\n\nGE continued to move to the right throughout the 1950s, blacklisting employees who wouldn't cooperate fully with HUAC and gradually reining in its unions through tough negotiation tactics that came to be known as Boulwarism. Two years after Bernie left, GE hired an underemployed actor to serve as its public relations spokesman and to host the company television show GE Theater. Taken under the ideological wing of Lemuel Boulware, he was purged of his previous liberal convictions and indoctrinated in the virtues of unfettered markets. Ten years later, that actor, Ronald Reagan, would make a stunning speech in support of Barry Goldwater at the Republican National Convention, launching a conservative revolution and his own political career.\n\nThe nation by then had thrown itself so fully into the Cold War and the arms race that even the Republican president, Eisenhower, famously warned against letting the \"military-industrial complex\" have too much power. The hope shared by so many\u2014including Kurt and Bernie\u2014in the late 1940s, hope for peace through disarmament and world government, came to seem like a distant pipe dream. Kurt never stopped longing for America to be what he believed it could be\u2014the progressive, freethinking nation that had given birth to the New Deal\u2014and in his work he returned to the theme again and again. America, he wrote in novels and essays and newspaper columns, could live up to its promise if only people would embrace their better selves\u2014the selves dedicated to equality and free speech and kindness and giving the downtrodden a hand. By the time Bernie gave him back the letter he had sent to Uncle Alex fifty years earlier, Kurt was growing disheartened. That old America, he told friends, was gone. In his novel Gal\u00e1pagos, in many ways a rewrite of Player Piano, he had proposed that humanity would only improve when humans evolved away from being big-brained tool users and into furry, fish-eating amphibians. As Bernie was dying, Kurt was working on Timequake, in which the entire planet is forced to repeat a whole decade, \"betting on the wrong horse again, marrying the wrong person again, getting the clap again. You name it!\" History is literally doomed to repeat itself, at least in a clockwork universe. The novel is a kind of thought experiment about what it might be like to inhabit a completely deterministic world. But, as if shaking off the ghost of John von Neumann, Kurt returned the world to its messy unpredictability in the end. There's even a glimmer of hope in the mantra Kilgore Trout and a crew of volunteers use to spur people back into action once the timequake has ended and free will has returned: \"You were sick, but now you're well again, and there's work to do.\"\n\n* * *\n\nBernard Vonnegut's last published work was about art. During his research at Arthur D. Little, he had been introduced to a technique for making dendritic electrical discharge patterns on blocks of transparent plastic\u2014little lightning bolts preserved in plastic like fossils in amber. Contemplation of the branching images had changed his thinking about lightning. Later, he and a colleague made convective flow patterns between sheets of plastic using aluminum paint and kerosene. Eventually, just for the fun of it, he began making permanent patterns by squeezing paint between two smooth surfaces\u2014ceramic tile or glass or plastic\u2014then pulling the surfaces apart.\n\n\"Physicists may already know enough about the behavior of liquids to predict the patterns that form, based on such variables as the rate at which the surfaces are pulled apart, the thickness of the liquid film, the viscosity and surface tension of the liquid and the angle at which it wets the surfaces,\" he wrote in his piece. In other words, physicists would see this process as reducible to a series of equations, would understand the know-how. But what about the know-what? Would they note how it glowed?\n\nKurt would. Bernie sent some of his patterns to his brother and asked him, is this art? Kurt's letter back reads as if he still occasionally relished the chance to lecture Bernie. \"This is almost like telling you about the birds and the bees,\" he began. Art, he told his brother, was in the eye of the beholder. Contemplating it was a social activity.\n\n\"You are a justly revered experimentalist,\" Kurt wrote. \"If you really want to know whether your pictures are, as you say, 'art' or not, you must display them in a public place somewhere, and then try to judge whether or not strangers liked to look at them, were glad that you had made them. That is the way the game is played. Let me know what happens.\"\n\nBernie's dendritic prints might or might not have been art. But in calling his brother a \"justly revered experimentalist,\" Kurt was admitting something he had probably known for a long time: his brother was an artist. Bernard's real art was in the pages of scientific journals. It was scrawled in his notebooks. It was in tubes and jars and Rube Goldberg contraptions cluttering his disaster of a desk. It was ice crystals glinting in the sunlight, gammas carved out of the clouds, a thunderstorm flipped on its back like a turtle. It was water summoned from a cloud-painted sky. There's more art to science than most of us believe.\n\nAccording to Kurt, at the end of his life Bernie cherished a collection of favorite quotations by Albert Einstein. One of them was \"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.\"\n\nAnother was \"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.\"\n\nBernie died not long after giving Kurt his old letter. Before dying, he told his brother, \"If the superpowers decide to duke it out with silver iodide, I think I can live with that.\"\n\nFour days after Bernie died, Kurt finished the highly personal Timequake, his fourteenth novel, and the last he would ever write.\n\n\"I was the baby of the family,\" he explained at the end. \"Now I don't have anybody to show off for anymore.\"\n\nBernie's son Terry died not long after him, losing a long struggle with cancer. Family members took both their ashes up in a small plane. They flew to the vicinity of Mount Greylock, where it all began, and scattered father and son into the clouds.\n\nKurt published a tribute to Bernie in The New York Times Magazine. Thinking back to those early days after Hiroshima, when the scientists first knew sin, Kurt declared that Bernard had \"original virtue.\" And then he described New York City's rainmaking efforts of 1950, a story that somehow the city had forgotten. But Kurt had not. The deluge was beautiful. Sure, he allowed, it might have \"washed away a lot of privies and gazebos or whatever. But it did fill the reservoirs to brimming.\n\n\"And what the heck,\" he concluded. \"It was only water.\"\nNotes\n\nPlease note that some of the links referenced in this work may no longer be active.\n\nArchives and Abbreviations\n\nIAS | |\n\nShelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton\n\n---|---|---\n\nLL-KV | |\n\nKurt Vonnegut Manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington\n\nLL-MH | |\n\nS. M. Harris Manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington\n\nLOC-FR | |\n\nFrancis Reichelderfer Papers, Library of Congress\n\nLOC-HW | |\n\nHarry Wexler Papers, Library of Congress\n\nLOC-IL | |\n\nIrving Langmuir Papers, Library of Congress\n\nMEG-BV | |\n\nBernard Vonnegut Papers, 1828\u20131997, M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany, State University of New York\n\nMEG-GW | |\n\nGeorge Wise Papers, M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany, State University of New York\n\nMEG-UA | |\n\nUniversity Archives, M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany, State University of New York\n\nMEG-VS | |\n\nVincent Schaefer Papers, 1891\u20131993, M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany, State University of New York\n\nMIS-GE | |\n\nGE Archive, Museum of Innovation and Science, Schenectady, N.Y.\n\nMIT-JC | |\n\nJule Charney Papers, 1936\u201381, MC 184, Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries\n\nMIT-NW | |\n\nNorbert Wiener Papers, MC 22, Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries\n\nNCAR-AMS | |\n\nAMS Oral History Project, Archives, National Center for Atmospheric Research\n\nNCAR-PDT | |\n\nPhilip Duncan Thompson Papers, Archives, National Center for Atmospheric Research\n\nNYPL-CC | |\n\nCrowell-Collier Publishing Company records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library\n\nNYPL-NY | |\n\nNew Yorker records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library\n\nNYU-AS | |\n\nNational Council for American-Soviet Friendship Records, TAM 134, Tamiment Library\/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University\n\nPU-CS | |\n\nArchives of Charles Scribner's Sons, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library\n\nRAC-DM | |\n\nPapers of Duncan A. MacInnes, Rockefeller University Archives, RG 450, Rockefeller Archive Center\n\nUP-LB | |\n\nLemuel R. Boulware Papers, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania\n\n1. Autumn Fog\n\nAt the bottom of a snowy hollow: Much of my account of Vonnegut's personal war experience comes from his discussion in his interview for The Paris Review 69 (Spring 1977), reprinted in Allen, Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut. \"It was nice there for a few minutes,\" he said. The porcupine image is his.\n\nHe hadn't realized how much he needed that: Kurt Vonnegut to Jane Cox, June 1944, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nStill, for the first time in his life: Shields, And So It Goes, 56. Late in life, Kurt was asked to choose a single memory that he would want played endlessly in the afterlife: he chose the moment he rolled to the front, \"where I was doing everything right, where I was beyond criticism... I was right where I belonged.\" J. Rentilly, \"The Best Jokes Are Dangerous: An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut: Part II,\" McSweeneys.net, September 17, 2002, www.mcsweeneys.net\/articles\/the-best-jokes-are-dangerous-an-interview-with-kurt-vonnegut-part-two.\n\n\"the incredible artificial weather\": Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 106.\n\nCome out, the Nazis ordered again: Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death, 96.\n\nThen out of the predawn darkness: \"It was as if the sky fell in,\" recalled Sam Giles of the 423rd's Company K, in Szpek, Idzikowski, and Szpek, Shadows of Slaughterhouse Five.\n\n\"A hurricane of iron and fire\": Gunther Holz, quoted in Kershaw, Longest Winter, 79.\n\nGeneral Eisenhower had a standing bet: Dupuy, Hitler's Last Gamble, 5.\n\nDuring World War I: Norway relied on its fishing fleet to keep its citizens fed. But when war broke out, the British\u2014knowing the weather could provide a tactical advantage\u2014classified their weather forecasts. The Norwegian fleet had always relied on the British forecasts; the new secrecy caused fishing hauls to plummet, and Norwegians began to starve. A group of scientists at the Geophysical Institute in Bergen offered to provide weather services to the government. These theoretical heavyweights brought a new rigor to the study of large weather patterns that came to be called air mass analysis. A thorough account of the rise of this school of meteorology is Harper, Weather by the Numbers.\n\nPetterssen told Eisenhower's team: Petterssen's Weathering the Storm tells the story of this historic forecast in detail.\n\nThe attack that would come to be called: Dupuy, Hitler's Last Gamble, 18.\n\nTwo-thirds of its troops: Like many personal details from this period, Kurt's attempts to get transferred to public relations duty come from his unpublished letters to Jane Cox from the period; Vonnegut family collection. Idzikowski cites the low age of the 106th in his introduction to Szpek, Idzikowski, and Szpek, Shadows of Slaughterhouse Five, 22. Kurt would make note of this in the full title of his war book: Slaughterhouse-Five; or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death.\n\nThey wanted to go: In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt has Edgar Derby, the high school teacher who is executed for stealing a teapot, recount a capture that is almost exactly his own story. In the end, \"the Americans put their weapons down, and they came out of the woods with their hands on top of their heads, because they wanted to go on living, if they possibly could.\" Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 107.\n\n\"It's a nasty picture\": A collection of the Cornell Daily Sun columns is in LL-KV; along with his letters to Jane from the same period, the columns give a lively picture of Kurt's undergraduate years.\n\nHe'd been sixteen: Kurt describes this 1939 trip in \"The Rover Boys,\" an unpublished manuscript composed of his letters home. LL-KV.\n\nHe bragged about that to Jane Cox: Kurt Vonnegut to Jane Cox, multiple dates, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nIn Ithaca: \"I was happiest here,\" he later told a Cornell audience, \"when I was all alone\u2014and it was very late at night, and I was walking up the hill after having helped to put the Sun to bed.\" Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, 60.\n\nToward the end of high school: Shields has Vonnegut landing a job offer from The Indianapolis Star. But the Star was the city's staunchly conservative paper; the Vonneguts were readers of The Indianapolis Times. In Timequake, Vonnegut declares that he was offered a position at the Times through the machinations of a lawyer friend of his father's. Vonnegut, Timequake, 154.\n\nBe anything, he said bitterly: Shields, And So It Goes, 34.\n\nThat, Kurt said later, \"was his idea of me\": Ibid., 35.\n\neven Kurt had to admit it: Kurt met Bow while on leave from the Army and commented on her beauty in a letter to Jane, March 1944, Vonnegut family collection.\n\n\"the Flying Icing Wind Tunnel\": Ice Research Base report, May 7, 1945. MEG-VS. Another airplane was later given the same name.\n\nThe sergeant would sit casually by the hole: Robert Morton Cunningham, autobiography online, www.egoaltar.com\/fogseeker\/.\n\n\"He attended Cornell University\": Indianapolis Times, January 15, 1945, 3.\n\n\"I am very favorably impressed\": Bernard Vonnegut to C. G. Suits, February 15, 1945. MIS-GE. His correspondence with Langmuir and Schaefer is in MEG-VS.\n\nSometimes they worked: Icing would remain a problem for aviation. The 2009 crash of an Air France Airbus in the Atlantic was attributed to icing on the plane's pitot tube\u2014a problem first diagnosed in the 1920s.\n\nHe'd been playing around with aircraft deicing: The friend was James V. Dotson. Jim Dotson was killed while conducting test experiment flights on a Lockheed Electra in 1943, and Bernie became deicing director. James V. Dotson obituary, MIT Technology Review 46 (1944). Also Robert Morton Cunningham, autobiographical sketch dated August 7, 1997, MIT Museum.\n\nHe sometimes joked: Bernard Vonnegut, talk given at the Weather Modification Association meeting, Los Angeles, 1976. Copy in MEG-BV. He also discusses going to work with Jim Dotson and Henry Houghton at MIT.\n\nOnce, when he was in his early teens: Scott Vonnegut, interview with the author, July 2013.\n\nPresident Charlie Wilson: There were two CEOs named Charlie Wilson at the time: Engine Charlie of General Motors and Electric Charlie of GE. Engine Charlie was later appointed secretary of defense by Eisenhower. The Texas politician Charlie Wilson, played by Tom Hanks in the film Charlie Wilson's War, is another Charlie altogether.\n\nHe planned for GE: Chauncey Guy Suits, oral history, IEEE Global History Network, www.ieeeghn.org\/wiki\/index.php\/Oral-HistoryGuy_Suits.\n\nThere he met some of GE's scientific luminaries: The GE scientists' interview evaluations of Bernard are still in MIS-GE, as is his application form.\n\n2. Precipitating Events\n\nSomeone was knocking on the door: The story of the run-up to the Russia trip was told in a letter from Dean Langmuir to Ruth Van de Water, June 18, 1945, and quoted at length in Rosenfeld, Quintessence, 282\u201392. The chemist Duncan MacInnes kept a very informative diary of the entire trip, RAC-DM.\n\n\"Dear People,\" it began: The letter was published posthumously. Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect, 11\u201313.\n\nBut Bernard didn't tell Kurt about it: No one I talked to from Kurt's or Bernard's family was aware of the publication, and Kurt never mentioned it.\n\nEven before Kurt wrote to his family: Vonnegut to Cox, May 25, 1945, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nShe had graduated from Swarthmore: Vonnegut, Timequake, 222.\n\nHe insisted on taking the wheel: The account of picking up Kurt and the car ride home was written by Alex Vonnegut to Ella Vonnegut Stewart, July 4, 1945. Wakefield, Letters, 9.\n\nIt was hard to believe: Vonnegut to Cox, August 2, 1945, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nHe consoled himself: Vonnegut to Cox, n.d., but from context late July 1945, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nWhile awaiting Bernie's arrival: Indianapolis had three papers in the 1940s: the morning Indianapolis Star, the evening Indianapolis News, and the afternoon Indianapolis Times. The Star and News had conservative reputations, and elsewhere Kurt identified the progressive Times as his family paper. It printed a society page announcement of his wedding and was the only Indy paper to review Player Piano. But Kurt identified the News as the paper whose offices he visited in his Paris Review \"Art of Fiction\" interview, and it makes sense he would visit the city's largest paper, \"the great Hoosier daily,\" to get a sense of what was printed. Allen, Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, 175.\n\nStrategic bombing was the front-page story: Indianapolis News, February 14, 1945.\n\nHe called the family: Vonnegut to Cox, August 7, 1945, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nThe usually unflappable Bernie: \"My brother was utterly sickened,\" Kurt wrote many years later. \"It hit him in the gut. I really had no idea how horrible the news was, except through his reaction.\" McCartan, Kurt Vonnegut, 148.\n\n\"the battle of the laboratories\": White House press release, August 6, 1945. Along with \"the greatest achievement of organized science in history,\" this phrase from Truman's press release was widely quoted in newspapers across the nation, including Indianapolis's.\n\n\"Scientists' Dream Comes True\": Indianapolis Star, August 7, 1945.\n\nThere was no keeping: Kurt told Jane that there was no secret in an undated letter clearly written shortly after the bomb was dropped, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nKurt and Jane took the small, leaky rowboat: Kurt tells this story in Fates Worse Than Death, 51\u201352.\n\nThe wedding had been moved: Earlier newspaper announcements (as well as Shields) set the date on September 14. But The Indianapolis Times, The Indianapolis News, and The Columbian (the magazine of Indianapolis's posh Columbia Club) all reported on September 1 that the couple were marrying that day, and it was the date of their anniversary. Kurt wrote to Jane about the Miami orders in August, and Bernard wrote to Chauncey Guy Suits on August 28 from Cambridge, so it's a pretty safe assumption that the orders led to moving up the date. Ben Hitz reported that it seemed as if there were a dark cloud over Kurt on his wedding day, and he assumed it was the war. Shields, And So It Goes, 83.\n\nIn the newspaper announcements: Indianapolis Times, September 1, 1945, reported that Kurt \"attended Cornell.\" The Filomena Gould write-up for The Indianapolis Star, September 1, 1945, is the one Kurt carefully saved. LL-KV.\n\nHe'd get a good job: Vonnegut to Cox, August 2 and 3, 1945, Vonnegut family collection.\n\n\"It's all an ocean\": Kurt told the scholar Donald Fiene that this was one of Jane's favorite quotations. Fiene, \"Elements of Dostoevsky in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut,\" Dostoevsky Studies 2 (1981): 135. I quote from the Constance Garnett translation, which would have been the one Kurt and Jane owned in the Modern Library edition.\n\nIt made her happy to believe: \"Jane could believe with all her heart anything that made being alive seem full of white magic.\" Vonnegut, Timequake, 135.\n\nAs a child, Kurt had drawn: Allen, Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, 232.\n\nThis could only be the dream: \"A hammer is still my Jesus, and my Virgin Mary is still a crosscut saw,\" he wrote in a 1980 essay on how he lost his innocence concerning technology. It was a theme he returned to many times. \"How sick was the soul revealed by the flash at Hiroshima?... It was so sick that it did not want to live anymore.\" Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, 62\u201363.\n\n\"Some good sacred memory\": Fiene, \"Elements of Dostoevsky,\" 134.\n\nFor his subject, he chose a chair: Ibid., 131.\n\nIrving Langmuir took his seat: David Lilienthal published his notes on this conference as appendix A in his journals. Atomic Energy Years, 639. My account of the conference also comes from Wittner, The Struggle Against the Bomb; Smith, A Peril and a Hope; Ashmore, Unseasonable Truths; and Glenn T. Seaborg, \"Premonitions After the Bombs,\" Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1985.\n\nYet many of the Chicago scientists: In June 1945, a group of the Chicago scientists led by Szilard, Eugene Rabinowitch, Arthur Compton, and James Franck had sent a document called the Franck Report to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. They had argued vigorously that the first atomic bomb should be dropped not on a Japanese city but on an uninhabited island or desert spot. Only if the Japanese still refused to surrender should it be dropped on an actual city. Truman and his advisers rejected the idea. After all, they only had two bombs.\n\n\"The physicists have known sin\": This widely quoted line seems to have first appeared in print in J. Robert Oppenheimer, Physics in the Contemporary World (Anthoensen Press, 1947), 11. Life magazine quoted it in 1949.\n\nHe stuck to the script: Langmuir's every pronouncement was widely reported in the media. \"Langmuir Warns of Danger to U.S.,\" New York Times, October 9, 1945; \"Langmuir Urges Atom Pact, Says War Might Strip Earth,\" New York Times, November 17, 1945; \"Crisis by '55 Seen in Atom Disunity: Scientist Tells of Atomic Energy,\" New York Times, December 1, 1945.\n\nKurt stood in the shower: Kurt Vonnegut to Jane Vonnegut, October 6, 1945. Much of my understanding of this period in Kurt's life is based on his unpublished letters to Jane between 1941 and 1946, nearly daily during his time at Fort Riley, generously shared with me by the Vonnegut family. Sadly, Jane's letters were not preserved, so where I have described her response, it is because Kurt mentioned or described it in one of his letters.\n\nThe day the acceptance letter arrived: At least he remembered it as such later. Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, 177.\n\nHe would study anthropology: He planned to study anthropology before arriving at Chicago. Kurt Vonnegut to Jane Vonnegut, December 1, 1945, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nKurt had thought about going to its law school: He wrote this to Jane from the Army in 1944, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nOne of the very first: Kurt included \"Palaia\" in a list of stories he intended to write in a letter to Jane, October 9, 1945, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nBernie was the great one: Vonnegut to Cox, August 3, 1945, Vonnegut family collection. Protestations about his lack of genius were a regular theme in his letters to Jane from the Army.\n\n3. Head in the Clouds\n\nOne of the most famous stories told about Steinmetz: This version is mostly cribbed from the MIT president Charles M. Vest's Charge to the Graduates, June 4, 1999, <http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/newsoffice\/1999\/vestspeech.html>. The story is also frequently told in the self-help books for businessmen and Bible students commonly sold in airport bookstores.\n\nThe rest of the time: My information about Doc Whitney and the Research Lab comes largely from Wise, Willis R. Whitney, General Electric, and the Origins of U.S. Industrial Research, 77. It's interesting that tech companies have been given credit for inventing policies like Google's 80\/20 rule\u2014in which engineers spend 20 percent of their time working on things that interest them\u2014when they are simply following the GE model.\n\nAlbert Hull taught Greek: Lee de Forest, quoted in Rosenfeld, Quintessence, 154.\n\nIf he didn't find something quickly: Bernard Vonnegut, typescript interview with Barrington Havens, February 12, 1952, MEG-BV.\n\nThe horror of Hiroshima: This brand of postwar optimism makes frequent appearances in Kurt's fiction and nonfiction. \"Think of the new era that is being born,\" Jailbird's narrator, Walter Starbuck, tells his wife, Ruth, right after the war. \"The world has learned its lesson at last, at last. The closing chapter to ten thousand years of madness and greed is being written right here and now\u2014in Nuremberg... It's the most important turning point in history.\" Vonnegut, Jailbird, 67\u201368. Kurt himself wrote to Marc Leeds in 1995, \"Once the Great Depression and the Second World War were over, we planned to build a Garden of Eden here.\" Wakefield, Letters, 364.\n\nBut there were also tedious scientific tasks: \"I was still cowed by the science thing,\" he later recalled. McCartan, Kurt Vonnegut, 134.\n\nThe adviser had recommended cultural anthropology: Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, 178.\n\n\"Wailing Shall Be in All Streets\": This essay would remain unpublished until 2008, after Kurt's death. Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect, 33\u201334.\n\nJane went through it: A typed manuscript of this essay is in LL-KV; Edie Vonnegut identified the hand in which the edits were written as her mother's.\n\nSnow had brought Vincent: Schaefer, \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University.\"\n\n\"Look, Vince,\" he said: Vincent relates this conversation in a conversation with Bernie, Raymond Falconer, and Duncan Blanchard videotaped in 1989. \"Conversations on the Early Days of Cloud Seeding and the Development of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center,\" MEG-UA.\n\nVince had an idea: My account of the discovery of dry ice nucleation comes from Katharine Blodgett, \"Vincent Schaefer and Snow Making,\" a paper read at a meeting of the Schenectady Fortnightly Club, February 2, 1948, MIS-GE; Schaefer, \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University\"; and Vincent Schaefer GE lab notebooks, MEG-VS.\n\nTogether they went looking for her adviser: Vonnegut, Timequake, 126.\n\nWhen he heard the whine of an airplane: The early days of Project Cirrus have been reconstructed using Havens, Jiusto, and; Vonnegut, Early History of Cloud Seeding; Project Cirrus Occasional Reports; Project Cirrus Flight Data; and Vince and Bernie's lab notebooks, MEG-VS and MEG-BV. Also critical were Langmuir, Cloud Nucleation, and Langmuir's lab notebooks, LOC-IL. Bernie's lunchtime story is told in Steven Spencer, \"The Man Who Can Make It Rain,\" Saturday Evening Post, October 25, 1947.\n\n\"I could see it\": Blodgett, \"Vincent Schaefer and Snow Making.\"\n\n\"Well, Schaefer made it snow\": Havens, Jiusto, and Vonnegut, Early History of Cloud Seeding, 7.\n\n\"Scientists of the General Electric Company\": GE News Bureau press release, November 14, 1946.\n\nLetters and telegrams poured into the Research Lab: Letters and clippings were collected by both Vincent and Bernie, MEG-VS and MEG-BV.\n\n\"Time to go home, Barney\": Blodgett, \"Vincent Schaefer and Snow Making.\" My account of Bernie's discovery is also based on his papers and GE lab notebooks, MEG-BV.\n\n\"Schaefer made some seeding runs\": Langmuir to C. N. Touart, December 26, 1946, MEG-VS.\n\nNow Langmuir was talking in sweeping terms: Horace Byers, \"History of Weather Modification,\" in Hess, Weather and Climate Modification.\n\n\"comprehend all the forces\": Laplace, Essai sur les probabilit\u00e9s, 4. Quoted in Newton, From Clockwork to Crapshoot, 108.\n\n\"He who would master nature\": Cited in a memorial to Harry written by Francis Reichelderfer, Monthly Weather Review, October 1963.\n\nThe GE scientists' revelations were the \"outstanding contribution\": Report to the Bureau Chief, LOC-HW. He would continue to denigrate their \"naive\" approach for years.\n\n\"I promise to scrub the bathroom\": Wakefield, Letters, 13\u201314.\n\nHe wanted to be part of it: \"I looked on the University of Chicago community as a folk society\u2014and I felt like an outsider in it... I wasn't treated badly, but they already had a family,\" Kurt wrote in \"A Very Fringe Character,\" in McQuade, Unsentimental Education.\n\nhe exhibited three paintings: Kurt and Jane Vonnegut to Walt and Helen Vonnegut, September 1, 1947. Wakefield, Letters, 20.\n\n4. Bolt of Lightning\n\nHe was thinking about computers: Cited by George Dyson, son of Freeman Dyson, in Turing's Cathedral, ix. My background data on von Neumann come from Macrae, John von Neumann; and Heims, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener.\n\nNow he was refining the architecture: There is some confusion about the name of the institute computer. Early on, some people would refer to it as \"Johnniac,\" then later \"MANIAC.\" Ultimately, it was simply known as the IAS machine. The name \"Johnniac\" was later used officially for a Rand computer, and \"MANIAC\" was used for one built at Los Alamos, both using the institute machine's design, which came to be known as the von Neumann architecture.\n\nAnd that's where Harry Wexler came in: My account of the institute's Meteorology Project is based on Harper, Weather by the Numbers; Nebeker, Calculating the Weather; George Dyson, Turing's Cathedral; oral histories at NCAR-AMS; papers at NCAR-PDT, LOC-FR, and LOC-HW; and 2014 interviews at the Institute for Advanced Study with Freeman Dyson, who came there as a young scholar during the Meteorology Project.\n\nIn October 1945, Zworykin issued: Vladimir Zworykin, \"Outline of Weather Proposal\" (white paper, October 1945), reprinted in History of Meteorology 4 (2008).\n\n\"first steps towards influencing\": Harper, Weather by the Numbers, 102\u2013103.\n\nIt was just the kind of experiment he liked: Kurt calls Bernie's approach to science \"a form of practical joking\" in a 1987 interview with Hank Nuwer. Allen, Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, 246. Bernie's son Scott recounted his father's earthy sense of humor, interview with the author, July 2013.\n\nHe did it over and over: Blodgett, \"Vincent Schaefer and Snow Making.\"\n\nInstead, flight experiments would be \"conducted by the government\": Quoted in Havens, Jiusto, and Vonnegut, Early History of Cloud Seeding, 8\u20139.\n\nJust to be safe, Irving resigned his sponsorship: Irving Langmuir to William Howard Melish, March 31, 1947, NYU-AS. Irving was one of the earliest to resign; later, its long list of scientific and artistic members would dwindle to nearly none as people scrambled to avoid persecution in the McCarthy era.\n\nIn keeping with their new publicity aims: \"Army and GE Join to 'Make Weather,'\" New York Times, March 14, 1947.\n\nHe'd applied for a job: Kurt recounts this in a letter to Knox Burger, July 2, 1949, NYPL-CC.\n\nIn the solicitation letter: Wakefield, Letters, 16. The letter to General Motors that Wakefield prints is an exact duplicate, but for the name, of the one Kurt sent to GE, which was generously shared with me by Mark Vonnegut.\n\nAs Rear Admiral Luis de Florez had written: \"Weather\u2014the New Super Weapon,\" American Magazine, September 1946.\n\nThat's what he'd tried to do earlier that month: \"GE Rainmakers' Aid Sought to Quell California Fire,\" Schenectady Gazette, August 8, 1947.\n\nGeneral George Kenney, of the Strategic Air Command: \"28,000,000 Urged to Support MIT,\" New York Times, June 15, 1947.\n\nIt was an overpriced French joint: Kurt calls it a \"clip joint\" in his letter to Walt and Helen. Wakefield, Letters, 19.\n\nBut the couple would have to face: Dan Wakefield writes, \"Kurt's classmate Victor Jose told me that 'if they stayed in Indianapolis, they feared that Jane would be expected by her family to join the Junior League, and she and Kurt didn't like that \"socialite\" kind of life. They both were rebels even then.'\" Ibid., 5. They were, but Jane still joined the Junior League in Schenectady, where they worked hard to fit in.\n\nBernie had already told George: Kurt mentioned Bernie's recommendation in his letter to General Electric. Also, Shields, And So It Goes, 94; and Wakefield, Letters, 19.\n\n5. Eye of the Storm\n\n\"I own a home now\": Wakefield, Letters, 23.\n\nHe felt manly enough: Shields, And So It Goes, 96.\n\nThere, it became part: Nye, Image Worlds, 60.\n\nHis new bosses gave him a physical: Kurt Vonnegut to Jane Vonnegut, dated only Friday, Vonnegut family collection. Writers on Vonnegut almost inevitably fail to be clear about the distinction between GE (whose motto was \"Progress is our most important product\"), the GE Research Lab (called the House of Magic), the Schenectady Works (the plant itself), and the Schenectady Works Lab (like the many GE plants, the Schenectady Works had its own separate research lab). Many critics and biographers repeat not only the incorrect statement that Kurt worked for the GE Research Lab but also the erroneous claim that he wrote publicity for Project Cirrus.\n\nStories about things: The GE sales force refrigerator that walked and talked was featured in an unsigned story in The GE Monogram in January\/February 1949 that was likely written by Kurt. It eventually morphed into female form and became the subject of Kurt's short story \"Jenny,\" unpublished until the posthumous While Mortals Sleep.\n\n\"A hurricane is a complicated thing\": My account of the hurricane seeding comes from Havens, Jiusto, and Vonnegut, Early History of Cloud Seeding; Schaefer, Final Report Project Cirrus, Part 1; and Schaefer, \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University.\"\n\nThe steering committee drew up an official plan: Irving Langmuir, \"The Control of Hurricanes\" (white paper, December 15, 1955), MEG-BV.\n\n\"We accomplished our purpose\": The press conference was reported in many newspapers, but the most complete account was the front-page story in GE's hometown paper. \"Hurricane Study Only Begun, Says Schaefer,\" Schenectady Gazette, October 17, 1947.\n\nThat's not what The New York Times had reported: \"Hurricane Sweeps into Atlantic Leaving Florida Widely Flooded,\" New York Times, October 13, 1947.\n\n\"The next great tropical storm\": \"Hurricane Busters Ready to Test Chemical Seeding,\" Rome Sentinel, September 8, 1947.\n\nThe steering committee composed a press release: It's unclear if this press release was ever issued. Undated draft of Project Cirrus press release, MEG-BV.\n\nNevertheless, when the Project Cirrus team: Mobile Press-Register, October 12, 1947.\n\n\"pretty sore at the army and navy\": Quoted in Fleming, Fixing the Sky, 152.\n\n\"low Yankee trick\": \"Science: Yankee Meddling?,\" Time, November 10, 1947.\n\nThe sheriff of Savannah: Schaefer, \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University.\"\n\n\"Did science, for the first time\": Schenectady Gazette, October 31, 1947.\n\n\"Perhaps you saw the news reports\": Wakefield, Letters, 23. In this letter, Kurt also discusses his plans to take his master's exams and work on finishing his thesis at Columbia.\n\nHe submitted them all: A rejection letter for \"Basic Training\" from Redbook dated August 4, 1949, is in the rejection letters file, LL-KV. Based on the juvenile style and comments in letters to Jane, I believe Kurt actually started the novella in Indiana, before going to Chicago, but could not confirm it definitively.\n\nThey put candles: Yarmolinsky, Angels Without Wings, 7.\n\nHe was looking forward: Bernard Vonnegut, interview with Havens, February 12, 1952. This account was also put together using Bernard's paper \"Experiments with Silver Iodide Smokes in the Natural Atmosphere,\" Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 31, no. 5 (May 1950): 151\u201357; Schaefer, Final Report Project Cirrus, Part 1; and flight data from \"Data, Catalogue of Data for PC 1950\" folder, MEG-BV.\n\n\"The photograph of General Electric's Dr. Bernard Vonnegut\": Wakefield, Letters, 25.\n\nAnd at some point, he gave it to Bernie: Kurt included the letter with a typed explanation in his papers, LL-KV. He also recounted the letter's journey from Alex to Bernie to him in the epilogue to Timequake.\n\nLangmuir was giving the keynote address: \"A hectic day,\" Irving wrote in his diary after his day with the GE legal team, LOC-IL. Also, Rosenfeld, Quintessence, 300. Irving's paper was published as \"The Growth of Particles in Smokes and Clouds and the Production of Snow from Super-cooled Clouds,\" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 92:3 (July 1948).\n\nProject Cirrus was wading: Byers gives an account of meteorologists' response to Langmuir's talk in \"History of Weather Modification,\" 14.\n\nChief Reichelderfer convened an advisory committee: He sent Langmuir an invitation to join but then never invited Langmuir to attend a single meeting. Irving Langmuir lab notebook, LOC-IL. Other facts about the Weather Bureau's anti-Cirrus campaign have been collected from LOC-HW and LOC-FR.\n\n\"Some 15 different types of finely divided soil\": GE News Bureau press release, April 22, 1948, initialed KV, MIS-GE.\n\nHe didn't love playing in the snow: Local newspapers reported on the snowmaking scientist's broken ankle with great glee.\n\nGE cultivated this obsessiveness: Kurt described the Research Lab as a playground in the essay \"Think Bank.\" Forbes ASAP, May 31, 1999.\n\nThey were in the business of seeking truth: \"Buggering truth for money\" is Kurt's phrase, from the introduction to his second short story collection, where he attributes it to a college professor talking about public relations men and writers of slick fiction. Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House, xiv.\n\nHe stayed lost in thought: Rosenfeld, Quintessence, 304.\n\nKurt could get annoyed: Scott Vonnegut tells a funny story about how even when they were old, Kurt sometimes had to work to get a word in edgewise, once even interrupting Bernie by jumping up and down and yelling, like a small child, \"You never let me speak!\" in a half-serious parody of his own younger-brother frustration. Interview with the author, July 2013.\n\nIf subjected to enough pressure: Ice-2 crystals are now recognized to have the shape of a rhombohedron\u2014a prism with six rhomboid faces.\n\nAnd who knew: Today, scientists have identified more variant forms of ice than of any other known material. Normal ice is known to science as ice-1h. After that, it has variants from ice-1 all the way through ice-15.\n\nThe songbook also had the words: Vince's songbook and commemorative booklet are in MEG-VS. The script of the 1948 pageant is in UP-LB.\n\nMr. Bullshit was more like it: In a 1983 letter to The Washington Spectator, the former GE employee David Anderton wrote, \"Boulware's first name was, I am certain, Lemuel. He was known to the union then as 'Mr. Bullwhip' and to some of us in a GE Management course as 'Mr. Bull\u2014\u2014t.' Ask Vonnegut.\" Kurt cut this letter out and saved it in his files.\n\nGE wouldn't be caught dead: Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box, 8.\n\nIn Monday morning staff sessions: Reminiscences of Ollie Lyon and Bob Pace from Happy Birthday, Kurt Vonnegut, a birthday festschrift put together by his second wife, Jill Krementz, for his sixtieth.\n\nFrequently, they didn't even know the cause: A new young physicist at GE named Robert Vought was denied security clearance for mysterious reasons and had been struggling unsuccessfully for more than a year to clear his name. Guy Suits eventually suggested he look for another job. See Wang, American Science in an Age of Anxiety, 102\u201317.\n\nThey didn't know that the FBI was compiling dossiers: I received the FBI dossier on Irving Langmuir through the National Archives after filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI. The FBI would neither confirm nor deny that it had a file on Bernard Vonnegut: its letter said that potentially relevant records were destroyed in 1987.\n\n\"GE Disease\": Krementz, Happy Birthday, Kurt Vonnegut.\n\nActing president of the tiny New Mexico School of Mines: Jack Workman ended up at the New Mexico School of Mines after launching a research and development division at the University of New Mexico physics department, where he originally taught. During the war, Workman and his team developed the proximity fuse, bringing in a huge influx of government money, and in 1946 the University of New Mexico tried to force them to share it with the rest of the school. Jack and most of his division resigned and moved to the School of Mines. Chew, Storms Above the Desert, chapter 2.\n\nEveryone was terrified except Irving: Schaefer, \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University.\"\n\n\"The odds in favor of this conclusion\": Langmuir, \"Results of the Seeding of Cumulus Clouds in New Mexico,\" Research Laboratory Report No. RL: 364, June 1950.\n\n6. Watersheds\n\n\"If you think that's bad\": This comment captured something about Bernie for Kurt, who repeated the story in a number of interviews and essays, as he often did his best material. \"Address to the American Physical Society\" (1969), in Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, 93. Duncan Blanchard, Bernard's young colleague at GE, also described for me the chaotic danger zone of Bernie's work space.\n\nYou turned on the tap: The remark about \"nothing\" coming out of the taps sounds like Bernie's sense of humor, and the reporter clearly spent much of his time with the Project Cirrus team. The quip is in the same section as a description of the team's new quarters. \"300 Tour Main Wing of GE Research Lab,\" Schenectady Gazette, December 3, 1948.\n\n\"You'll know when I'm retired\": Havens, Jiusto, and Vonnegut, Early History of Cloud Seeding, 11.\n\nAs Kurt and Jane prepared to go out: Ollie Lyon recalls this incident in John Dinsmore, \"Kurt and Ollie,\" Firsts, October 1992. The Schenectady Gazette always printed guest lists for Junior League dances; the list of November 26, 1948, includes Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Vonnegut but not Mr. and Mrs. Ollie Lyon. Majie Failey describes Alice Vonnegut wearing sneakers with an evening gown in We Never Danced Cheek to Cheek, 58.\n\nOn weekdays in Building 6: My account of Kurt's early work is based largely on his short story drafts, LL-KV. Some of the PR work he did at GE can be found in MIS-GE.\n\nSo in the evenings and on weekends: Shields, And So It Goes, 101.\n\nA smooth, steady clacking: Jane describes listening for the rhythm of his typing in Yarmolinsky, Angels Without Wings, 5.\n\nThey knew they'd find Kurt: John Dinsmore, \"Kurt and Ollie,\" Firsts, October 1992. This interview with Ollie Lyon, a colleague of Kurt's at the GE News Bureau, is a rare account of the work environment there. It is also probably the source of a frequently repeated mistake: the claim that Kurt wrote most of the publicity for Project Cirrus. Initialed GE press releases prove that in fact the company seems to have deliberately avoided having one brother write about the other.\n\nWhen Jane gave him a grocery list: Rejection letters folder, LL-KV.\n\nHe had a sneaking suspicion: \"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.\" Epigraph to Vonnegut, Mother Night.\n\nAnd so, right there in Building 6: Some short paragraphs from early drafts of \"Mnemonics\" are written on a Building 6 notepad.\n\n\"There is no use worrying\": Langmuir, \"Large-Scale Seeding of Stratus and Cumulus Clouds with Dry Ice.\" Stenographic record of paper given at the January 1949 AMS meeting, LOC-IL.\n\nAnd it was simply outrageous: Langmuir, Cloud Nucleation, 556.\n\n\"The experiments showed\": Richard Coons, R. G. Gentry, and Ross Gunn, Second Partial Report on the Artificial Production of Precipitation: Cumuliform Clouds, Ohio (U.S. Weather Bureau, 1949).\n\nAfter the talk, Irving took Reichelderfer aside: An account of this conversation is in Langmuir, Cloud Nucleation, 213.\n\n\"Rain-Making Held of No Importance\": New York Times, January 26, 1949.\n\nThe Navy and the Signal Corps liked his silver iodide generator: R. W. Larson to Ruth Dwyer, GE memo, February 1, 1949, MEG-BV.\n\nThey simply assumed: Project officer (Naval Science Division, Office of Naval Research), to Bernard Vonnegut, January 21, 1949, MEG-BV.\n\n\"The policy of the government itself\": \"A Scientist Rebels,\" The Atlantic, January 1947.\n\nWiener's letter had made: It also had a big effect on Harry Wexler, who found it infuriating. He and one of the researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study began calling it \"the affair of Wiener,\" NCAR-PDT. In essays and interviews, Kurt frequently discussed the GE scientists' interest in ethical questions.\n\nTwo years of debate: Kurt mentions the Wiener essay in several interviews, including one with Playboy. Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, 269. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists would have been widely read in Schenectady; it's reasonable to think that Kurt would have seen the follow-up essay or heard about it. He discussed Wiener's refusal directly in a 1980 interview with Robert Musil, published in The Nation and later collected in McCartan, Kurt Vonnegut, 73.\n\n\"The degradation of the position\": Norbert Wiener, \"A Rebellious Scientist After Two Years,\" Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 4, no. 11 (1948).\n\nKurt's new story: In interviews later in life, Kurt would refer to \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect\" as his first story. It would be his first published story, but the manuscripts prove it was far from the first he wrote. Still, a surprising number of literary critics have taken him at his word, failing to perceive the long, grueling apprenticeship that led to it. The drafts at LL-KV show the story's painstaking evolution. The only lines I quote are those that are consistent in early drafts and in the final published version in Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House.\n\n\"It is not possible\": William Lewis to Irving Langmuir, memo, June 23, 1949, LOC-IL.\n\nIt had proved: \"Trial by Newspaper,\" Scientific American, February 16, 1949.\n\nThe stories were brisk: Russell to Vonnegut, February 18, 1949, rejection letters folder, LL-KV.\n\nThat month, three thousand delegates: Robbie Lieberman, \"Does That Make Peace a Bad Word? American Responses to the Communist Peace Offensive, 1949\u20131950,\" Peace & Change 17, no. 2 (April 1992).\n\n\"This is a little sententious for us\": This undated letter from Knox Burger is in the general rejection letters file at the Lilly and is quoted by Shields, And So It Goes, 101. However, by cross-referencing the note with Kurt's own scrupulous records of his early stories and their submissions, one can see that the story he sent to Collier's in April was \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect,\" not \"Mnemonics,\" as Shields has it. Burger's letters in NYPL-CC show that Vonnegut sent him \"Mnemonics\" after they met for lunch in July.\n\nClams, cigars, cocktails: Kurt literalized the idea of the corporate clambake as a kind of funeral in the famous clambake celebrating Kilgore Trout and memorializing American eloquence threaded throughout his valedictory last novel, Timequake.\n\nGeorge Burns was a photographer: Kurt's first letter to Knox Burger begins, \"George Burns, who, never having read anything of mine, takes a casual interest in my writing career, allowed as to how he had a friend on Collier's fiction staff who might be able to give me some help. The friend turned out to be you.\" NYPL-CC, and Wakefield, Letters, 26. Wakefield, like Shields, seems to have taken the name George Burns to refer to the popular comedian\u2014an understandable mistake, because Vonnegut sometimes referred to the famous George Burns as well. However, the letter only makes sense if referring to his acquaintance George Burns.\n\nAfter flying over Nagasaki: \"G-E Photographer Takes Pictures of Atomic-Bombed City,\" Schenectady Works News, September 21, 1945.\n\nOnce, Knox had even taken Kurt's suggestion: Shields, And So It Goes, 40.\n\n\"Sorry you didn't care\": Wakefield, Letters, 26. Kurt's underlining of \"typewritten\" is not reproduced in Wakefield, though it would seem to be essential to understanding his tone. The original letter is in NYPL-CC.\n\nHe would see if he could do anything: Account taken from Bernard Vonnegut interview, 1952, and Data: GE Research Notepad, July 19, 20, and 21, 1949, both MEG-BV. Also Schaefer, Final Report Project Cirrus.\n\nIf the bureau scientists were using other compounds: Bernard Vonnegut, \"Note on Nuclei for Ice Crystal Formation,\" BAMS 30, no. 5 (May 1949).\n\nThat meant the winds were carrying: \"Whooping it up\" is Bernie's phrasing from his lab notebook, MEG-BV.\n\n\"You were running the generator today?\": Bernie recounted these conversations with Langmuir in his February 12, 1952, interview with Havens.\n\n\"Taking all in all\": Quoted in Langmuir, Cloud Nucleation, 208.\n\nThe FAA had ruined flying for him: Vincent recounts this fact in \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University.\"\n\n\"What river is that?\": Langmuir, Cloud Nucleation, 110.\n\nAs Langmuir enthused: Teller, Memoirs, 253. Teller places this meeting in 1947; however, it seems clear from context that he must be misremembering the date.\n\n\"In phase,\" he would chant: Rosenfeld, Quintessence, 183. Vonnegut relates the charlatan comment in Palm Sunday, 145.\n\nThe next day, Knox returned \"Mnemonics\": Vonnegut to Burger, July 1, 2, 6, 17, and 20, 1949; Burger to Vonnegut, July 8, 1949; Gertrude Buckman to Vonnegut, July 14, 1949, all NYPL-CC.\n\nUnless he wrote in a secretary: Burger to Vonnegut, July 13, 1949, LL-KV.\n\n\"I told him\": Burger to Vonnegut, July 19, 1949, NYPL-CC, and quoted in Shields, And So It Goes, 108. Kurt's much-edited draft of his response is in LL-KV.\n\n\"the net result lacks conviction\": Burger to Vonnegut, August 1, 1949, NYPL-CC.\n\nKnox returned it almost immediately: Vonnegut to Burger, July 20, 1949; Burger to Vonnegut, July 26, 1949, NYPL-CC.\n\nHe figured it had the best chance: Vonnegut to Littauer, August 18, 1949, LL-KV.\n\nCollier's itself had recently run: \"UN Is Doing a Job,\" Collier's, July 9, 1949.\n\nNo editor would stand for: Littauer to Vonnegut, LL-KV.\n\n\"Only the descendants\": Albany Times-Union, August 28, 1949.\n\n7. Rainmakers\n\nEver since the Project Cirrus team had returned: Bernie's activities were recorded in his lab notebook, MEG-BV. Irving wrote up his Crown Island experiment and his conclusions in his own lab notebook, LOC-IL. Guy Suits described his meeting with all three scientists in a letter to Irving cc'd to Vince and Bernie. Suits to Langmuir, August 26, 1949, MEG-BV.\n\n\"in which the behavior\": These definitions are quotations from his paper \"Science, Common Sense, and Decency,\" first given in 1942 and published as chapter 1 of his book Phenomena, Atoms, and Molecules (1950), but he had been developing the idea much earlier, including in his 1934 paper \"Science as a Guide in Life.\"\n\nIt was simply a matter of knowing: Freeman Dyson, who heard von Neumann speak on the topic around 1950, summarizes Johnnie's attitude as \"All processes that are stable we shall predict. All processes that are unstable we shall control,\" in Infinite in All Directions, 182. Dyson's paraphrase of Johnnie's attitude has often been incorrectly attributed to von Neumann as a quotation.\n\nThere would never be: Wiener had begun insisting in Cybernetics that weather prediction should be undertaken not in a deterministic way but in a probabilistic one. Von Neumann and his chief meteorologist, Jule Charney, disagreed. The argument flared up periodically at conferences and meetings. Charney even heard that Wiener considered Johnnie and him to be gonifs\u2014Yiddish for \"scoundrels\"\u2014in their attempt to hoodwink the world into believing that they could turn the weather into an equation. Jule Charney, \"Conversation with George Platzman,\" in Lindzen, Lorenz, and Platzman, Atmosphere, 57.\n\nThe idea he came up with: I discussed Langmuir's experiment with Freeman Dyson. \"It was the right approach,\" he said, \"to produce a signal.\" Interview, February 2014.\n\n\"should be carried out\": Suits to Langmuir, cc'ed to Vonnegut and Schaefer, August 26, 1949, MEG-BV.\n\n\"Why doesn't he use his real name on the story?\": Burger to Littauer, October 13, 1949, NYPL-CC, and quoted in Shields, And So It Goes, 109.\n\nKurt knew in his heart: Letters between Vonnegut and Littauer are in the short story files, LL-KV.\n\nBut as Jane giddily told a neighbor: Shields, And So It Goes, 110.\n\n\"I think I'm on my way\": Wakefield, Letters, 27.\n\n\"An oath, an oath\": Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death, 26.\n\nHis paper came: Harry Wexler, trip report, March 10, 1949, LOC-HW.\n\nHad Project Cirrus been around in World War II: C. Lester Walker, \"The Man Who Makes Weather,\" Harper's, January 1950.\n\nIt was Kenneth collecting: Kurt's earlier rejections are in a separate file in LL-KV. The rejections sent to Littauer are in NYPL-CC and NYPL-NY.\n\nThere was even a hilarious playlet: \"Das Ganz Arm Dolmetscher\" was ultimately published as \"Der Arme Dolmetscher\" in The Atlantic in July 1955 and in Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box, in 1999, 228.\n\nIn fact he'd spent: Vonnegut to Miller Harris, May 19, 1950, LL-MH.\n\nAnd now, at the annual AMS meeting: Irving noted that it was the most important paper of his career in his lab notebook. The paper, \"Control of Precipitation from Cumulus Clouds by Various Seeding Techniques,\" was published in Science, July 14, 1950.\n\nLangmuir triumphantly took William Lewis out to lunch: Langmuir recounts this conversation in his lab notebook.\n\n\"a graduate of the University of Chicago\": Schenectady Gazette, February 3, 1950.\n\nHe was, Kurt grumbled, turning to Yaddo again: Vonnegut to Miller Harris, February 16, 1950, in Wakefield, Letters, 32.\n\nFirst noticed by a scientist at Bell Labs: Harry Wexler wrote to the Bell Labs scientist M. W. Baldwin Jr. in November 1948 asking him for a copy of his original paper about the \"ghosts.\" LOC-HW.\n\nKurt made his main character: Vonnegut, \"Thanasphere,\" in Bagombo Snuff Box.\n\n\"a competent meterologist\": The New York Times, February 16, 1950.\n\nBut after the war: Eventually, Sverre Petterssen would write a corrective memoir that historians of meteorology consider authoritative: Weathering the Storm. James Rodger Fleming has written a succinct summary of the debate: \"Sverre Petterssen, the Bergen School, and the Forecasts for D-Day,\" Proceedings of the International Commission on the History of Meteorology 1, no. 1 (2004).\n\n\"using GE and the names Langmuir, Schaefer and Vonnegut\": Hammond to Langmuir, cc'ed to Bernard Vonnegut, February 3, 1950, MEG-BV.\n\na \"new way\" to make rain: \"New Way Is Found of Producing Rain,\" New York Times, December 24, 1949.\n\nThen Langmuir took him aside: Langmuir lab notebook.\n\nDr. John Herbert Hollomon invited Kurt: \"Dr. Hollomon at Home,\" a press release signed by Vonnegut with photos signed by Burns, March 1950, MIS-GE.\n\n\"A one-armed robot on wheels\": GE News Bureau press release initialed \"KV,\" March 14, 1950.\n\nKurt couldn't blame the inventors: \"To have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs.\" Kurt Vonnegut, interviewed by David Standish, 1973, in Allen, Conversations, 93.\n\nLangmuir and Katharine Blodgett: \"Conversations on the Early Days of Cloud Seeding and the Development of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center.\"\n\n\"Are machines smarter than ME?\": \"Mechanized Math Shark: The Computer,\" GE Monogram, March\u2013April 1950.\n\nWiener defined cybernetics: The definition was the subtitle of Cybernetics.\n\nKurt named his story: \"EPICAC\" was collected in Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House.\n\nKnox returned it with notes: Burger to Vonnegut, undated letter filed with \"EPICAC\" drafts, LL-KV.\n\nThe first flight of New York's rainmakers: My account of New York City's rainmaking is compiled from the near-daily newspaper stories on it at the time, mostly in The New York Times, but also the New York Daily News, the Schenectady Gazette, The Kingston Daily Freeman, and the Catskill Mountain News. The story is also recounted briefly in Galusha, Liquid Assets.\n\n\"no vested property rights\": Slutsky v. City of New York, 97 N.Y.S.2d 238 (Sup. Ct. 1950).\n\n\"No,\" he had said: Kurt told this story, and the story of Langmuir's idea, repeatedly throughout his life, including in a 1974 interview with Joe David Bellamy and John Casey reprinted in Allen, Conversations, 161.\n\nAt the stroke of twelve: The image is reminiscent of the famous \"Doomsday Clock,\" visualizing how close the world is to precipitating Armageddon, printed on every issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.\n\nStill, he thought it was the best thing: He says so in a May 19, 1950, letter to his Cornell friend Miller Harris, LL-MH.\n\n\"There is nothing moral\": General Office News, May 19, 1950.\n\nHe would write a novel: Vonnegut to Miller Harris, May 19, 1950, LL-MH.\n\n\"I have made rain\": \"Dr. Howell Yields: Yes, He Made Rain,\" The New York Times, August 8, 1950.\n\nWhen Irving found out, he was furious: Langmuir lab notebook.\n\n8. Out of the Blue\n\nThen he was taken: GE News Bureau press release, May 24, 1950. The prime minister's visit was also covered extensively by newspapers.\n\nHe figured that's what he'd been writing: \"I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch,\" he wrote to Miller Harris on February 28, 1950. Wakefield, Letters, 32.\n\n\"I haven't given it a thought\": Kurt described this talk many years later in an address to the American Physical Society in 1969. Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, 100. A detailed account of the talk ran in the Schenectady Gazette, March 8, 1950.\n\nHe wanted to write: \"I cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World,\" Kurt declared in the Playboy interview. Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, 263.\n\nHe was going to bite the hand that fed him: \"I bit the hand that used to feed me,\" Kurt wrote in the introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box, 8.\n\n\"The first industrial revolution\": Wiener, Cybernetics, 37. I cite the 1948 edition that it is likely Kurt read.\n\nThe job was making him crazy: \"K. has got to quit before any such gigantic length of time,\" Jane wrote to Fred Rosenau around this time, after he suggested that Kurt's success might take years, \"because this idiotic job of his is such a drag on his spirit. It's making us both psychotic.\" Shields, And So It Goes, 112.\n\n\"the property of the client\": \"Weather Control and Augmented Potable Weather Supply,\" joint hearings on S. 5, S. 222, and S. 798 before subcommittees of the Committees on Interior and Insular Affairs, Interstate and Foreign Commerce, and Agriculture and Forestry, 82nd Congress (March 14, 15, 16, and 19, and April 5, 1951).\n\nA high school senior headed for Caltech: Langmuir lab notebook.\n\nHe had chosen to sleep in: Schaefer, \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University.\"\n\n\"The cold resolve deserted Kelly\": \"White King\" was eventually published as \"All the King's Horses.\" Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House, 102.\n\nWhile they were in Gloucester: Mark Vonnegut identified this painting as having been done in Gloucester, and Edie Vonnegut generously let me see it. Kurt always liked clowns. Humor was one of the few things in the world in which he never lost faith. \"Historians of the future, in my opinion,\" he would write when old, \"will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.\" Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, 127.\n\n\"Many farmers, ranchers and civic-minded people\": Quotations from Bernie's speech appeared in \"Rainmaker Licenses Seen by GE Weather Scientist,\" Schenectady Gazette, August 26, 1950.\n\n\"He has been known to sit for half an hour\": Time, August 28, 1950.\n\n\"Ice-9,\" Kurt's story about a scientist: Kurt Vonnegut to Ben (Hitz?). The letter is an undated draft but mentions that it is written on the evening of Kurt and Jane's fifth wedding anniversary, hence August 31, 1950. LL-KV.\n\nThat was highway robbery: Vonnegut to Littauer and Max Wilkinson, draft letter, n.d., LL-KV. It's fortunate \"Ice-9\" was not sold to Astounding Science Fiction (as it was retitled in 1938); if it had been, Cat's Cradle would never have been written.\n\n\"I am a registered Democrat\": Vonnegut to Burger, October 31, 1950, in Wakefield, Letters, 37.\n\nKurt had been looking: An article in Scientific American two years earlier, \"The Army Ant,\" June 16, 1948, might have suggested the topic. It made an interesting connection between some of the more irrational behaviors of ants and of men. Kurt almost surely saw this piece: he read Scientific American regularly at GE as part of his job (Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons, 84), and the echoes of this feature in his story are many. Kurt took notes on Wheeler, which are preserved in \"The Ants of Erz Gebirg\" file in LL-KV. It's notable that Wiener used ants as frequent examples in Cybernetics as well.\n\nLike \"Ice-9,\" the new story: All quotations are from \"The Petrified Ants,\" published posthumously in Vonnegut, Look at the Birdie. The published story is one of the many story drafts in LL-KV. It's impossible to tell if it is the last one.\n\nThe story is set in the Erzgebirge: As usual, the location has personal significance for Kurt: he had been marched into the Erzgebirge, half-starved, as the Red Army approached Dresden. It also demonstrates how attuned he was to political events: the Russians really did search for uranium in the region.\n\nJosef tells Peter that he mustn't speak: Josef's explicit instructions and Peter's seeing him as \"frail\" and compromised are in early manuscripts, then excised, then put back in. They are in the version of the story that was ultimately published in Vonnegut's posthumous collection of short fiction, Look at the Birdie.\n\nHe saw it as a chance: Byers, \"History of Weather Modification.\"\n\n\"It seems to me\": Reichelderfer to Charles Brooks, September 27, 1950, LOC-HW.\n\nHe had Weather Bureau charts: Vince Schaefer describes the presentation, calling it a \"spectacular demonstration,\" in \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University.\"\n\nBernie was back at work by then: \"Seven Day Periodicity in Weather in 1950,\" BAMS, March 1951. Letters between Reichelderfer and Langmuir and Robert G. Stone and Langmuir are in MEG-VS.\n\n\"It is hoped\": Copies of Bernie's letters and some of the replies are in MEG-BV.\n\nThe storm intensified that night: My information about the floods comes from the U.S. Geological Survey water-supply paper \"Floods of 1950\u201351 in the Catskill Mountain Region, New York\" (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1957), as well as local newspapers, The New York Times, and Galusha, Liquid Assets.\n\nThey disagreed on whether cloud seeding was sufficiently proved: Harry Wexler, trip report, December 8, 1950, LOC-HW.\n\nHe also suggested Kurt try: Burger to Vonnegut, September 13, 1950, LL-KV.\n\n9. Cold Fronts\n\nEventually, he would give up on it: Kurt never saw \"From Timid to Timbuktu\" in print; it was published only posthumously. Given that he doesn't seem to have shopped it around, it's reasonable to think he probably wouldn't have liked it being published.\n\nEventually, more than 130 upstate clients: Catskill Mountain News, March 23, 1951.\n\nHe was even asserting: Langmuir wrote a paper about Hurricane King that remains unpublished to this day. A typescript of the first part was preserved by Bernie; MEG-BV. A typescript of the second part is in MIS-GE. Irving continued to try to get people to take his conclusions about the hurricane seeding seriously up to his death, even mentioning it again when appearing on the Today show following a vicious hurricane in 1956.\n\nWhen a young meteorologist at an MIT symposium: The insulted party, Charles Hosler, was taken aside afterward by Henry Houghton, chair of the MIT meteorology department, who explained that Langmuir was so abrupt because he felt his whole career was defined by his cloud-seeding work. Hosler recounted the event for James Fleming, who repeats it in \"The Pathological History of Weather and Climate Modification,\" Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 37, no. 1 (2006): 12.\n\nHarry Wexler spent Valentine's Day in Princeton: Harry Wexler, trip report, February 21, 1951, LOC-HW. The ENIAC logbook is in MIT-JC. Harper writes about this visit as well, though she never mentions the discussion of the periodicities, or any of the Project Cirrus work, in Weather by the Numbers.\n\nIt was spring: Kurt wrote a letter to Miller Harris on the back of a New Yorker rejection slip, saying that they would be in New York staying at the Algonquin on March 29\u201331. Vonnegut to Harris, February 26, 1951, LL-MH. Kurt and Knox exchanged letters about having had drinks with Jane afterward, NYPL-CC.\n\nBut what the hell?: In later years, Kurt himself had a slightly dismissive attitude toward much of his early magazine work. He included neither \"Mnemonics\" nor \"Little Drops of Water\" in the only collection of short fiction he ever put together himself, Welcome to the Monkey House. In 1999 he declared that \"no matter how clumsily I wrote when I was starting out, there were magazines that would publish such orangutans.\" \"Coda to My Career as a Writer for Periodicals,\" Bagombo Snuff Box, 349. He dedicated this collection to the memories of Littauer and Wilkinson, \"who taught me how to write.\"\n\nJust focus on the carpenter story: Knox called the Dresden story \"risky\" in a letter (jokingly) dated April 5, 1961, NYPL-CC.\n\nKurt invited Knox to come visit: Kurt told Knox he was selling his house in a letter on April 14, 1951; LL-KV. Knox congratulated Kurt on selling it at a profit in a letter in which he also commented on \"More Stately Mansions,\" May 22, 1951, LL-KV. Jane wrote to her mother that they moved to Provincetown expecting to roam the East Coast looking for a house that fall (September 15, 1951, Vonnegut family collection). So it's clear that Kurt and Jane decided to leave Alplaus and sold their house that spring, not in the fall, as Shields has it.\n\nCollier's intended to convey: Notes from the editorial meetings for Operation Eggnog, including many statements of intent and correspondence with a host of potential writers, are all in NYPL-CC.\n\nThe Atomic Energy Commission was ramping up: The Enewetak (then spelled Eniwetok) tests in April and May were known as Operation Greenhouse, and they were not secret. Details were released by the government in June. As was common, many newspapers ran a front-page story and photograph of the mushroom cloud. \"Tests Prove Gains in Hydrogen Bomb,\" New York Times, June 14, 1951.\n\n\"You say here\": \"Weather Control and Augmented Potable Weather Supply,\" joint hearings on S. 5, S. 222, and S. 798 before subcommittees of the Committees on Interior and Insular Affairs, Interstate and Foreign Commerce, and Agriculture and Forestry, 82nd Congress (March 14, 15, 16, and 19, and April 5, 1951).\n\nIn November, he had visited Schenectady: Langmuir lab notebook.\n\nIt was a PR disaster: Reichelderfer was still stewing about the fist pounding nearly a year later, noting in an internal memo on February 20, 1952, that the Weather Bureau had lost funding after the hearings and that it had been scrambling to improve its reputation ever since. LOC-HW.\n\nCondon had won the battle with HUAC: Even Irving knew to keep a low profile as far as HUAC was concerned. He had recently been asked by a lawyer to provide a character reference for another scientist who was being investigated, and he had insisted that his name be kept out of it. He would rather avoid publicity, he said. He didn't want to end up like Edward Condon. Langmuir to General Edward Greenbaum, February 2, 1951, LOC-IL.\n\nBut after the hearings ended: The Department of the Army's letter on behalf of the Department of Defense was added to \"Weather Control and Augmented Potable Water Supply,\" 34.\n\nHe was writing about what might be: The foreword to Player Piano declares, \"This is not a book about what is, but a book about what could be.\" All quotes are from Vonnegut, Player Piano.\n\nHe saw it as an American version: Kurt made this connection in an unfinished early description of the book. LL-KV.\n\nHis desire for the cat: The moment is eerily redolent of the many deaths on the electric fences of German death camps, a parallel Vonnegut does not push too hard. But it does hint, as do the early drafts of \"Mnemonics,\" at the deeper meaning of his mistrust of the Works and its world.\n\n\"Any labor that accepts the conditions\": Wiener, Cybernetics, 37.\n\nTen thousand farms: NOAA report, www.crh.noaa.gov\/mbrfc\/flood51.pdf.\n\nSenator Kem asked them to draft a statement: Langmuir lab notebook.\n\nMeanwhile, the governor of New Mexico: Roscoe Braham, interview, June 19\u201321, 2002, NCAR-AMS.\n\nIrving thought this was an excellent idea: Langmuir lab notebook.\n\nVincent went to the meeting instead: Langmuir lab notebook.\n\nNow the undersea warfare: R. W. Larson to Captain C. L. Murphy (head, Undersea Warfare Research, Office of Naval Research), June 25, 1951, MIS-GE.\n\nBesides, getting involved: Suits to Vonnegut, July 16, 1951, MIS-GE.\n\nDon't come to Provincetown: Jane Vonnegut to Mariah Cox, September 15, 1951, Vonnegut family collection.\n\nKurt would probably need to fly to New York: Edie Vonnegut, interview with the author, October 2013.\n\n10. Shifting Winds\n\nBernard entered the East Ballroom: The meeting was written up, with a photograph of all attendees, in Weatherwise 4, no. 6 (December 1951).\n\nThe only other serious researcher: Appalled that the panel was all \"rainmakers,\" Chief Reichelderfer pulled strings with the AMS president to get Thom added to the roster. Memo to Harry Wexler, September 20, 1951, LOC-HW.\n\nBernie was going to outline the construction: Program and abstracts ran in Bulletin of the AMS 32, no. 7 (September 1951).\n\nBut if Bernie wasn't: Lab notebook entries throughout July and August 1951 document Langmuir's frustration and his conversations with Bernard.\n\n\"Project Cirrus is supported by the public\": Bernard Vonnegut to Michael J. Ference Jr., October 3, 1951, MEG-BV.\n\nThat, Kurt knew, was why: Kurt wrote a sullen letter to Knox Burger about the whole affair the following April, declaring, \"Wild as my stories may be, I would never make World War III seem little more hazardous than and as interesting as an automobile trip from New York to Los Angeles in a Stutz Bearcat.\" As if that weren't enough, a sarcastic parody of the story's dialogue followed. Wakefield, Letters, 42. In a letter the same month to Harry Brague, Kurt complained that Collier's was growing so conservative his stories were no longer welcome there. Vonnegut to Brague, April 16, 1952, PU-CS.\n\nWhen he started the novel: Kurt's early outlines, notes, and drafts are in LL-KV.\n\nDr. Paul Proteus having quit: Vonnegut to Brague, October 18, 1951, PU-CS.\n\nThe loudspeaker at the Meadows: In one of the last pre-galley typescripts of Player Piano, Kurt cut out the team songs and replaced them with new ones that are even more similar to the actual fight songs from Camp GE in 1948. Because Vincent, Herb Hollomon, and Roger Hammond of the News Bureau all attended that summer, it seems clear that at some point during the revising of the manuscript, Kurt got his hands on one of their songbooks, but I could not confirm this. Photographs of the skit from that session also show a godlike figure attaching tinsel stars to the set sky and what appears to be a trial. This sounds exactly like the skit depicted at length in the novel. Photographs of Camp GE are in UP-LB. Vince's Camp GE songbook is in MEG-VS.\n\nLudwig von Neumann is so unlike John von Neumann: Kurt was very likely familiar with John von Neumann and his work. Von Neumann gave frequent talks at the same conferences as Bernie, and Project Cirrus received regular reports from the Institute for Advanced Study's Meteorology Project. Distribution list, IAS.\n\nWeather Bureau analysts were double-checking: According to his own handwritten notes, when he got wind of a meeting Langmuir scheduled with Henry Houghton of MIT to discuss the report he was writing, Harry called Hurd Willett, his mentor at MIT, and suggested that Willett attend the meeting and propose an alternative explanation for the periodicities. He then called Henry Houghton and arranged for him to see the Weather Bureau statistical data on the periodicities. LOC-HW. By the time Langmuir sat down with Houghton and Willett, they had been converted to the Weather Bureau's position. A baffled Irving called the meeting \"very unsatisfactory\" in his lab notebook entry of June 30, 1951.\n\nDoc Whitney's question, \"Are you having fun today?\": Vincent Schaefer writes about the changing feel of the lab in \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University.\"\n\nVisitors and colleagues: Many of the arrangements are reported in Irving's notebooks. Also Anthony Hall, \"A Laureate's Lake,\" Lake George Mirror, July 10, 2011.\n\n\"Our papers have been making\": Wiener, Human Use of Human Beings, 210.\n\nOn perhaps the last innocently joyous night: Vonnegut, \"Rover Boys,\" LL-KV.\n\nBut even now, before that triumph: Harry Wexler, trip report, May 7\u201310, 1952, LOC-HW.\n\n\"A tidal wave of computational power\": Julian Bigelow, the chief designer for von Neumann's computer, quoted in George Dyson, Turing's Cathedral, 153.\n\nGuy Suits had asked Bernie: Bernie recounted this conversation, and his feelings about GE then, in an interview with Earl Droessler, May 9, 1993, NCAR-AMS.\n\nHe was corresponding with Bill Hubert: Hubert to Vonnegut, June 13, 1952, MEG-BV.\n\nIt's unclear what set Wiener off: Conway and Siegelman, Dark Hero of the Information Age, 287.\n\n\"he cannot with impunity\": Wiener to Hope English, July 17, 1952, MIT-NW. Quoted in Conway and Siegelman, Dark Hero of the Information Age, 288.\n\nHe apologized for having innocently given offense: Vonnegut to Wiener, July 26, 1952, MIT-NW.\n\nHe pulled them from his personal store: Once, over lunch in Tulsa, a magazine editor told me he had always been baffled by Vonnegut's location of the demonology institute in Verdigris, Oklahoma, in \"Armageddon in Retrospect.\" Instinctively, I responded that the place must mean something to him. More than a year later, when I first read the manuscript \"The Rover Boys,\" it became clear what that was: on his road trip in 1939, he and his two friends stayed not far from Verdigris on the Woolaroc Ranch. While enjoying that paradise for sixteen-year-old boys, they heard on the radio that Hitler had invaded Poland. His own personal demonology began there.\n\nGeorge M. Helmholtz: Helmholtz Watson is also the frustrated writer character in Brave New World; all citizens in Huxley's imagined world have names taken from historical figures because real families no longer exist.\n\nNot one bookstore in GE's company town: Norman Snow to Henry Hohns, memo, September 3, 1952, PU-CS.\n\nBernie went down to the beach: Bernard Vonnegut, abstract of \"A Possible Mechanism for the Formation of Thunderstorm Electricity,\" BAMS 34 (1953), and \"Giant Electrical Storms,\" in Recent Advances in Atmospheric Electricity, ed. L. G. Smith (Pergamon, 1955). Meteorologists were at first skeptical of Bernie's estimate, but later improvements in wind-speed detection established that his estimates were close to correct. I am grateful to Scott Vonnegut for drawing my attention to the Worcester Twister as a formative event for his father.\n\n\"I believe the best way\": Bernie wrote to W. E. Williamson, clerk of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, on March 12, 1958, asking to testify; his statement is also in his files, MEG-BV.\n\nThat same year, Commander William Kotsch: Kotsch to Vonnegut, September 8, 1958, MEG-BV.\n\n\"I'm [just] trying to find out\": Quoted in Michael Lopez, \"Talk Soup,\" Albany Times Union, April 13, 1997.\n\nHe had even purchased a television: Kurt's teleplays are in the unprocessed files, LL-KV. They include an adaptation of Player Piano and a teleplay called \"Slaughterhouse 5\" that is nothing like the novel. In a letter to Harry Brague, February 7, 1954, Kurt complains of having \"squandered all my time on short stories and scripts that haven't sold.\" Wakefield, Letters, 52. He writes to Knox Burger about having bought a television on May 11, 1954. Wakefield, Letters, 57.\n\n\"What is God? What is love?\": Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle, 55. The Clare Boothe Luce story is told in Rosenfeld, Quintessence, 321.\n\n\"Let us remember how good it was once here\": Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 895. This is the Constance Garnett translation that Kurt would have read. Later in the same speech Alyosha says, in another passage demonstrating the book's lifelong impression on Kurt, \"Let us be, first and above all, kind.\"\n\nThanks to the way the human mind lets us: \"Everything about that lake was imprinted on my mind when it held so little and was so eager for information, it will be my lake as long as I live,\" he wrote in Architectural Digest. \"I have no wish to visit it, for I have it all right here.\" Reprinted in Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death, 50.\n\nEpilogue: Rainbow's End\n\nHe had handed the letter to Kurt: Kurt set this scene in a typed explanation dated April 13, 1997, included with Uncle Alex's letter in his files, LL-KV.\n\nCape Cod wasn't quite ready: Shields, And So It Goes, 142\u201344. Kurt later speculated in jest that the dealership failure had cost him the Nobel Prize. \"Have I Got a Car for You!,\" In These Times, November 24, 2004.\n\nHe even designed and tried to market: Notes and samples of the game are in LL-KV.\n\nHe was working on it when he and Jane: The smallest child was subsequently adopted by another relative in a traumatic family event.\n\nThey were too focused on the fasinating things: McCartan, Kurt Vonnegut, 148.\n\nBernard was horrified: Kurt discusses Bernie's reaction to the news in ibid. Bernard's sons have confirmed this. \"He was very much against it,\" Scott Vonnegut said. \"He was very, very much against the war... He wanted it used for agriculture, or for snowpack, for water.\" Interview with the author, July 2013.\n\n\"My brother knew early on\": He gets the location wrong, but a colleague Bernie worked with while at Hartford-Empire in Connecticut was based in Butler, Pennsylvania. The address was reprinted in Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death, 117.\n\n\"one who declines to work on weapons\": Walter Sullivan, \"Strike to Protest 'Misuse' of Science,\" New York Times, February 6, 1969.\n\n\"I told Jane that this boy\": Vonnegut, Timequake, 135.\n\nFive yielded inconclusive results: The Weather Bureau seeded clouds in Oregon and Washington with dry ice on a randomized basis with inconclusive results. Scientists at the University of Chicago, funded by the Department of Defense, seeded warm clouds in the Midwest and the Caribbean with water and dry ice, getting a positive result too small to be statistically significant. The Navy collaborated with NYU on Project Scud, an attempt to modify the development of nineteen large-scale extratropical cyclonic systems utilizing dry ice from airplanes and seventeen silver iodide generators scattered from Florida to New York. The Air Force collaborated with the Stanford Research Institute to study the physics of ice fogs. The Army, with Arthur D. Little, studied methods of dispelling warm fogs and stratus. And the Army Signal Corps conducted an extensive flight program to study seeding of supercooled stratus clouds with both dry ice and silver iodide, the one of these projects to get a positive result. The results were ultimately declassified and published as Cloud and Weather Modification: A Group of Field Experiments. Meteorological Monographs. Vol. 2, no. 11 (AMS, 1957). See also Byers, \"History of Weather Modification.\"\n\nOfficers from the Office of Naval Research: Irving guessed, correctly, what each of these projects was. Langmuir lab notebook, September 14, 1953.\n\nA rigorous five-year randomized study: Daniel Breed, \"Design and Preliminary Results of the Wyoming Weather Modification Pilot Program Randomized Seeding Experiment,\" Research Applications Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research. For an overview of the program, see <http:\/\/ral.ucar.edu\/projects\/wyoming\/>.\n\n\"one of those tantalizing things\": Oral history with Roscoe Braham, 2002, NCAR-AMS.\n\n\"If Langmuir actually influenced the weather\": This meteorologist remained anonymous in the article, but his generosity toward Langmuir rules out anyone at the Weather Bureau. It could have been Wallace Howell, or even Vince or Bernie. \"Tomorrow's Weather,\" Fortune, May 1953.\n\n\"Perhaps if he had comprehended fully\": \"History of Weather Modification,\" in Hess, Weather and Climate Modification.\n\n\"is not definitely determinate\": Langmuir, Cloud Nucleation, 456\u201357. Von Neumann's key meteorologist, Jule Charney, later acknowledged that \"in some fundamental way Wiener was probably right... Wiener I think anticipated the unpredictability of the atmosphere that Lorenz later formulated rigorously.\" George Platzman, Conversations with Jule Charney (NCAR Technical Notes, 1987).\n\nThe computer did not turn out to be Laplace's demon: See, for instance, theories about the \"singularity\" by the techno-utopian and Google director of engineering Raymond Kurzweil. Kurzweil credits John von Neumann with the original idea in his foreword to von Neumann's unfinished lecture series, published as The Computer and the Brain (Yale University Press, 2012).\n\n\"we are releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide\": Typed and handwritten lecture notes, LOC-HW.\n\n\"Project Cirrus's investigations of ways\": Epilogue written by Bernard in Havens, Jiusto, and Vonnegut, Early History of Cloud Seeding.\n\nThat old America: Loree Rackstraw recounts a letter in which Kurt says Timequake \"has to do with the disappearance of the America I tried to write for.\" Love as Always, Kurt (Da Capo, 2009), 182. Kurt writes something similar to Marc Leeds in 1995, describing the mood of his generation as \"wry disappointment with what the world has actually become, so inhospitable and snide. Once the Great Depression and the Second World War were over, we planned to build a Garden of Eden here.\" Wakefield, Letters, 364.\n\nIn his novel Gal\u00e1pagos: Interestingly, this idea too was proposed in Cybernetics. Wiener spends part of a late chapter considering the possibility that the human brain had grown too large to be efficient anymore and that humans might \"be facing one of those limitations of nature in which highly specialized organs reach a level of declining efficiency and ultimately lead to the extinction of the species.\" Wiener, Cybernetics, 180. This is, in a nutshell, the premise of Gal\u00e1pagos.\n\n\"Physicists may already know enough\": Bernard Vonnegut, \"Adventures in Fluid Flow: Generating Interesting Dendritic Patterns,\" Leonardo 31, no. 3 (1998): 207.\n\nKurt's letter back: Describing Bernie's question and quoting from his own reply in Timequake, Kurt says, \"I was pleased to reply with an epistle which was frankly vengeful, since he and Father had screwed me out of a liberal arts college education.\" Vonnegut, Timequake, 167. But of course the Kurt Vonnegut in Vonnegut's fiction was a satirical version. The tone of the real Kurt Vonnegut's letter is ultimately not vengeful at all: it is unmistakably loving.\n\n\"If the superpowers decide to duke it out\": Kurt told this story a number of times, including in an interview published in Stop Smiling Magazine, August 2006.\n\n\"washed away a lot of privies\": Kurt Vonnegut, \"Bernard Vonnegut: The Rainmaker,\" New York Times Magazine, January 4, 1998.\nBibliography\n\nAllen, William Rodney, ed. Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut. University Press of Mississippi, 1988.\n\nAshmore, Harry. Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins. Little, Brown, 1989.\n\nBates, Charles, and John F. Fuller. America's Weather Warriors, 1914\u20131985. Texas A&M University Press, 1986.\n\nBirr, Kendall. Pioneering in Industrial Research: The Story of the General Electric Research Laboratory. Public Affairs, 1957.\n\nBoyer, Paul. By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. University of North Carolina Press, 1984.\n\nBrands, H. W. American Dreams: The United States Since 1945. Penguin, 2010.\n\nChew, Joe. Storms Above the Desert: Atmospheric Research in New Mexico, 1935\u20131985. University of New Mexico Press, 1987.\n\nCoe, Jerome. Unlikely Victory: How G.E. Succeeded in the Chemical Industry. Wiley, 2000.\n\nConway, Flo, and Jim Siegelman. Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics. Basic Books, 2006.\n\nCotton, William R., and Roger A. Pielke Sr. Human Impacts on Weather and Climate. Cambridge University Press, 2007.\n\nCox, John D. Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin's Kite to El Ni\u00f1o. John Wiley & Sons, 2002.\n\nDickstein, Morris. Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945\u20131970. Harvard University Press, 2002.\n\nDonner, Leo, Wayne Schubert, and Richard Somerville. The Development of Atmospheric General Circulation Models. 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Liquid Assets: A History of the New York City Water Supply. Harbor Hill Books, 2002.\n\nGleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. Penguin, 1987.\n\nHammond, John Winthrop. Men and Volts: The Story of General Electric. J. B. Lippincott, 1941.\n\nHarper, Kristin. Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology. MIT Press, 2012.\n\nHavens, Barrington, James E. Jiusto, and Bernard Vonnegut. Early History of Cloud Seeding. Langmuir Laboratory, Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, and GE, 1978.\n\nHawkins, Lawrence. \"The Story of G.E. Research.\" Pamphlet published by GE. MIS-GE.\n\nHeims, Steve J. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. MIT Press, 1980.\n\nHess, Wilmot, ed. Weather and Climate Modification. John Wiley & Sons, 1974.\n\nKershaw, Alex. The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II's Most Decorated Platoon. Da Capo Press, 2005.\n\nKlinkowitz, Jerome. Kurt Vonnegut's America. University of South Carolina Press, 2009.\n\nKlinkowitz, Jerome, and John Somer, eds. The Vonnegut Statement: Original Essays on the Life and Work of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Dell, 1973.\n\nKrementz, Jill, ed. Happy Birthday, Kurt Vonnegut. Delacorte Press, 1982.\n\nLangmuir, Irving. Atmospheric Phenomena. Vol. 10 of Collected Works. Pergamon Press, 1962.\n\n______. Cloud Nucleation. Vol. 11 of Collected Works. Pergamon Press, 1962.\n\nLaskin, David. Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather. Doubleday, 1995.\n\nLilienthal, David. The Atomic Energy Years. Vol. 2 of The Journals of David Lilienthal. Harper & Row, 1964.\n\nLindzen, Richard S., Edward N. Lorenz, and George W. Platzman, eds. The Atmosphere, a Challenge: The Science of Jule Gregory Charney. American Meteorological Society, 1990.\n\nLingeman, Richard. The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War. Nation Books, 2012.\n\nLynch, Peter. \"The ENIAC Forecasts: A Re-creation.\" Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, January 2008.\n\nMacrae, Norman. John von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and Much More. American Mathematical Society, 2000.\n\nMariner, Rosemary, and G. Kurt Piehler, eds. The Atomic Bomb and American Society: New Perspectives. University of Tennessee Press, 2009.\n\nMcCartan, Tom, ed. Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. Melville House, 2011.\n\nMcQuade, Molly, ed. An Unsentimental Education: Writers and Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 1995.\n\nMeisler, Stanley. United Nations: The First Fifty Years. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995.\n\nMergen, Bernard. Weather Matters: An American Cultural History Since 1900. University Press of Kansas, 2008.\n\nMiller, John A. Men and Volts at War: The Story of General Electric in World War II. Bantam, 1948.\n\nMonmonier, Mark. Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize the Weather. University of Chicago Press, 1999.\n\nNebeker, Frederik. Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the Twentieth Century. Academic Press, 1995.\n\nNewton, Roger G. From Clockwork to Crapshoot: A History of Physics. Belknap Press, 2007.\n\nNye, David. Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890\u20131930. MIT Press, 1985.\n\nPetterssen, Sverre. Weathering the Storm: Sverre Petterssen, the D-Day Forecast, and the Rise of Modern Meteorology. Edited by James Rodger Fleming. AMS Historical Monographs, 2001.\n\nPhillips-Fein, Kimberly. \"American Counterrevolutionary: Lemuel Ricketts Boulware and General Electric, 1950\u20131960.\" In American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century, edited by Nelson Lichtenstein. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.\n\nRhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Simon & Schuster, 1986.\n\nRosenfeld, Albert. The Quintessence of Irving Langmuir. Pergamon Press, 1966.\n\nSchaefer, Vincent. A Field Guide to the Atmosphere. Peterson Field Guides. Houghton Mifflin, 1981.\n\n______. Final Report Project Cirrus Part 1: Laboratory, Field, and Flight Experiments. GE Research Laboratory Report No. RL-785, 1953.\n\n______. \"Twenty Years at Langmuir University.\" Unpublished autobiographical manuscript. MEG-VS.\n\nSchatz, Ronald W. The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse. University of Illinois Press, 1983.\n\nSheets, Bob, and Jack Williams. Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth. Vintage Books, 2001.\n\nShields, Charles. And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut, a Life. Henry Holt, 2011.\n\nSmith, Alice Kimball. A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists' Movement in America, 1945\u201347. University of Chicago Press, 1965.\n\nSumner, Gregory D. Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut's Life and Novels. Seven Stories, 2011.\n\nSzpek, Ervin, Jr., Frank Idzikowski, and Heidi Szpek. Shadows of Slaughterhouse Five: Recollections and Reflections of the Ex-POWs of Schlachthof F\u00fcnf, Dresden, Germany. Self-published, 2008.\n\nTeller, Edward. Memoirs. With Judith Shoolery. Perseus, 2001.\n\nVonnegut, Kurt. Armageddon in Retrospect. Berkley Books, 2008.\n\n______. Bagombo Snuff Box. 1999; Berkley Books, 2000.\n\n______. Breakfast of Champions. 1973; Dial Press, 2011.\n\n______. Cat's Cradle. 1963; Dial Press, 2006.\n\n______. Fates Worse Than Death. Berkley Books, 1991.\n\n______. Gal\u00e1pagos. 1985; Dial Press, 1999.\n\n______. Jailbird. 1979; Dial Press, 2011.\n\n______. Look at the Birdie. 2009; Dial Press, 2010.\n\n______. A Man Without a Country. Seven Stories, 2005.\n\n______. Mother Night. 1961; Dial Press, 2009.\n\n______. Palm Sunday. 1981; Dial Press, 2011.\n\n______. Player Piano. 1952; Dial Press, 2006.\n\n______. The Sirens of Titan. 1959; Dial Press, 2009.\n\n______. Slapstick. 1976; Dial Press, 2010.\n\n______. Slaughterhouse-Five. Dell, 1969.\n\n______. Timequake. Berkley Books, 1997.\n\n______. Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons. 1974; Dial Press, 1999.\n\n______. We Are What We Pretend to Be: First and Last Works. Vanguard, 2012.\n\n______. Welcome to the Monkey House. 1968; Dial Press, 2006.\n\n______. While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction. 2011; Dial Press, 2012.\n\nVonnegut, Mark. The Eden Express. Dell, 1975.\n\nWakefield, Dan. New York in the Fifties. Houghton Mifflin, 1992.\n\n______, ed. Kurt Vonnegut: Letters. Delacorte, 2012.\n\nWang, Jessica. American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War. University of North Carolina Press, 1999.\n\nWiener, Norbert. Cybernetics; or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. John Wiley & Sons, 1948.\n\n______. The Human Use of Human Beings. Houghton Mifflin, 1950.\n\nWise, George. The G.E. Story. Unpublished manuscript history of GE. MEG-GW.\n\n______. Willis R. Whitney, General Electric, and the Origins of U.S. Industrial Research. Columbia University Press, 1985.\n\nWittner, Lawrence. One World or None. Vol. 1 of The Struggle Against the Bomb. Stanford University Press, 1993.\n\nYarmolinsky, Jane Vonnegut. Angels Without Wings: A Courageous Family's Triumph over Tragedy. Houghton Mifflin, 1987.\nAcknowledgments\n\nThis book is a history. I have stuck to documented and verifiable fact, reconstructing the day-to-day activities of historical figures through published works, interviews, and archival sources. Where there is dialogue in quotation marks, it is because someone, somewhere, transcribed it. Some of my sources are Kurt Vonnegut's stories and novels. His entire oeuvre\u2014short stories, novels, essays, lectures\u2014can be read on one level as an autobiographical collage, a memoir unstuck in time. However, I have only attributed to him feelings he claims for himself, the author, not feelings or thoughts he ascribes to his characters.\n\nAs for the scientists in this book, I have found their published papers surprisingly helpful in developing an understanding of who they were. Their lab notebooks provided data about their activities but also conveyed\u2014through handwriting, underlining, and asides\u2014when they felt excited or rushed or cautious. I was also fortunate to find many oral histories, interview transcripts, and videos to help me get to know the people behind this story. All of these are listed in my sources.\n\nPerhaps most essential in developing a feeling for these wonderfully complex characters was the generous and heartfelt assistance of the Vonnegut-Adams family, as nice a tribe as one could imagine. In particular, Scott Vonnegut, Edie Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut III, and Mark Vonnegut corresponded with me, met with me, shared family photographs and documents, and exchanged ongoing e-mails to help me understand the facts and the people behind them. It is not easy to share one's family with the public, and they have done so with kindness and grace. I also owe a huge debt to Bernard Vonnegut's esteemed colleagues Sally Marsh and Duncan Blanchard for spending lavish amounts of time with me to help me understand a man they both knew so well. Bernard's student Tony Grainger not only talked to me about his mentor but did his best to explain cloud physics to me. I am indebted to the meteorologists Arlen Huggins, Jeff Tilley, and Don Griffin for helping me get a grip on weather modification and what it can do. I am grateful to the Weather Modification Association for allowing me to attend its annual meeting and plague the weather modifiers with endless questions. Dan Wakefield, a friend of Kurt Vonnegut's, was an especially delightful and informative correspondent. And I was thrilled when Freeman Dyson turned up at an early talk on this project. He gave me an inside look at the Institute for Advanced Study's Meteorology Project and the people he knew there as a young upstart.\n\nThis book would not have been possible without archives and the dedicated professionals who make them accessible. Perhaps most central were the papers of Bernard Vonnegut and Vincent Schaefer at the M. E. Grenander Special Collections at the SUNY Albany Science Library. Jodi Boyle and Geoffrey Williams were invaluable guides there. Equally critical were the manuscripts and papers of Kurt Vonnegut at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington. Special thanks to the Lilly Library for a Helm Fellowship to help me spend sufficient time with its amazing collection, and to Cherry Williams, Joel Silver, Craig Simpson, and the staff of its beautiful reading room.\n\nAnother invaluable resource was the General Electric Archives at the Museum of Innovation and Science (formerly the Schenectady Museum) in Schenectady. I am grateful to the curator Chris Hunter for helping me find things in his treasure trove of GE materials. Visiting the manuscripts room at the Library of Congress, as I did to access the papers of Irving Langmuir, Vannevar Bush, Francis Reichelderfer, and Harry Wexler, makes one proud to be a taxpayer. Jennifer Brathovde, in particular, went above and beyond in an effort to help me make the most of my time there.\n\nThe Manuscripts and Archives Division of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library provided access to the Crowell-Collier files, including the separate Operation Eggnog files, and the New Yorker files. Princeton University's Rare Books and Special Collections Department allowed me to use the Scribner files. Special thanks to Nora Murphy at the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections, home to the papers of Jule Charney and Norbert Wiener, for helping me on-site and for continuing to help me remotely. The Grems-Doolittle Library of the Schenectady County Historical Society was helpful in understanding the history of the Electric City, and the Indiana Historical Society was essential in finding newspaper resources. I must also thank Kate Legg at the National Center for Atmospheric Research Archives at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Julia Whitehead at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis, Christine Di Bella and Erica Mosner at the Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center at the Institute for Advanced Study, Michael Miller at the American Philosophical Society, Nancy Shawcross at University of Pennsylvania Special Collections, Chela Scott Weber at NYU's Tamiment Library, Deborah Douglas at the MIT Museum, and Lee Hiltzik, who directed me to many things I might not otherwise have found at the Rockefeller Archive Center.\n\nWriting this book required access to local newspaper archives in a variety of cities. In many cases, this involved using microform archives held by public libraries or universities and retrieved via interlibrary loan at the New York Public Library. This is one of the many special features of a strictly research library that makes maintaining the integrity of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building as a research library absolutely essential to people like me.\n\nI completed the first draft of this book while living in Portland, Oregon, as Tin House\/Portland State University writer in residence. My thanks to the PSU faculty and the editorial staff of Tin House for a perfect place to work and for listening to endless Vonnegutian ramblings and to my MFA students there for making me think hard about what nonfiction is. This book has also benefited from the unstinting intelligence of my editor at FSG, Ileene Smith, and the wisdom and enthusiasm of my agent, Jin Auh. And as always, I could not have done it without the support, love, and understanding of Robert Brown, who always comes along for the ride, no matter how bumpy. God bless him.\nIndex\n\nThe index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.\n\nAberdeen Proving Ground\n\nAbsolute Weapon, The (Brodie)\n\nAdams, Alice Vonnegut; death of\n\nAdams, Jim\n\nAdams, Kurt\n\nAdams, Steve\n\nAdirondack Record\u2014Elizabethtown Post\n\nAdirondacks\n\nAdvisory Committee on Weather Control\n\nAgriculture Department, U.S.\n\nAir Force, U.S.; see also Army Air Forces, U.S.\n\nAir Force Weather Service\n\nair mass analysis\n\nairplanes, icing up of\n\nair pollution\n\nAir Transport Command airfield (New York)\n\nAir Weather Service\n\nAlbany, N.Y.\n\nAlbany Times-Union\n\nAlbuquerque, N.Mex.\n\nAlexander, James\n\nAlgonquin Hotel\n\nAli Khan, Liaquat\n\nAllies\n\nAlplaus, N.Y.\n\nAlplaus Creek\n\nAlplaus Methodist Church\n\nAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science\n\nAmerican Association of Physics Teachers\n\nAmerican Association of University Women\n\nAmerican Chemical Society\n\nAmerican Magazine\n\nAmerican Mercury\n\nAmerican Meteorological Society (AMS); nonmilitary uses of Project Cirrus envisioned by\n\nAmerican Museum of Natural History\n\nAmerican Philosophical Society\n\nAmerican Physical Society\n\nAmerican-Soviet Science Society\n\nAmerican Steel and Wire plant\n\nAnderson, Clinton\n\nAngeles National Forest\n\nAngoff, Charles\n\nAnthony, Edward\n\nanticommunism\n\nAnts: Their Structure, Development and Behavior (Wheeler)\n\nAppalachians\n\nArgosy\n\nArizona\n\nArkville, N.Y.\n\nArmy, U.S.; Chemical Warfare Service of\n\nArmy Air Forces, U.S.; Air Weather Service of; see also Air Force, U.S.\n\nArmy Signal Corps, U.S.\n\nArmy Specialized Training Program (ASTP)\n\nart, science and\n\nArthur D. Little; BV at\n\nAshokan Reservoir\n\nAssociated Press\n\nAssociation Island\n\nAstounding Stories\n\nAthenaeum\n\nAtlantic\n\nAtlantic Ocean\n\nAtmospheric Sciences Research Center\n\natomic arms race\n\natomic bomb; Soviet detonation of\n\natomic energy, as source of hope and fear\n\nAtomic Energy Commission, U.S.\n\nAuschwitz\n\nAustin, Warren\n\nautomation, labor force and\n\nAutumn Fog (Herbstnebel)\n\nAviation Cadet School\n\nBackus, Frank\n\nBantam (publisher)\n\nBarnhouse, Professor (char.)\n\nBartlesville, Okla.\n\nBarzov, Major (char.)\n\nBeethoven, Ludwig van\n\nBell Labs\n\nBellow, Saul\n\nBeralikur (rowboat)\n\nBergen-Belsen\n\nBergsonian time\n\nBerkeley, University of California at, Hitchcock Lectures of\n\nBerkshire Museum\n\nBerkshires\n\nBerlin\n\nBerlin Airlift\n\nBig Tujunga Canyon\n\nBikini Atoll\n\nBlizzard Bowl\n\nBlodgett, Katharine\n\nBobbs-Merrill (publisher)\n\nBody by Fisher\n\nBokonon (char.)\n\nBokononism\n\nBolton Landing\n\nBoston, Mass.\n\nBoston Globe\n\nBoston Herald\n\nBoulware, Lemuel\n\nBoulwarism\n\nBrague, Harry\n\nBraham, Roscoe\n\nbrain, computers vs.\n\nBratpuhr, shah of (char.)\n\nBraun\n\nBrave New World (Huxley)\n\nBreed, Asa (char.)\n\nBridgman, Percy\n\nBrodie, Bernard\n\nBrooklyn Dodgers\n\nBrothers Karamazov, The (Dostoyevsky); see also Dostoyevsky, Fyodor\n\nBuffalo, N.Y.\n\nBulge, Battle of the; KV in\n\nBulletin of the American Meteorological Society\n\nBulletin of the Atomic Scientists\n\nBureau of Reclamation\n\nBureau of Standards\n\nBurger, Knox\n\nBurns, George\n\nBurns, Jimmy\n\nBush, Vannevar\n\nByers, Horace\n\nCaesar, Julius\n\nCalifornia; cloud seeding in; forest fires in\n\nCaltech\n\nCambridge, Mass.\n\nCambridge University\n\nCamp Atterbury\n\nCamp General Electric\n\nCanada\n\n\"Can We Survive Technology\" (von Neumann)\n\nCape Cod, Mass.\n\ncarbon dioxide\n\nCaribbean\n\nCarl's (store)\n\nCarnegie Institute of Technology\n\nCarney, Stephen\n\nCaroline Islands\n\nCase, Francis\n\ncat's cradle\n\nCatskill Mountains\n\nCavender, Charles\n\nCentral Park Zoo\n\nChambers, D. E.\n\nchaos theory\n\nCharleston, S.C.\n\nCharney, Jule\n\nChatham, Mass.\n\nChekhov, Anton\n\nchemical supply companies\n\nChemical Warfare Service\n\nChicago, Ill.; Committee to Draft a World Constitution in\n\nChicago, University of; conference on atomic energy at; intellectual life of; Office of Inquiry into the Social Aspects of Atomic Energy at\n\nChicago Tribune\n\nChile\n\nChina\n\nchlorofluorocarbons\n\nChristian, Linda\n\nCIA\n\nCity News Bureau\n\nClark, Edward\n\nCleveland, Ohio\n\nclockwork universe\n\nCloud Physics Project\n\nclouds, physics of\n\ncloud seeding; commercial; ethical implications of; flooding and; government regulation of; hurricanes and; military experiments with; New York City program of; renewed interest in; weaponizing of\n\ncloud seeding, GE experiments in; liability issues in; media accounts of; military applications of; military control of flights in; see also Project Cirrus\n\nCold Spring, N.Y.\n\nCold War\n\nCold War, The (Lippmann)\n\nCollier's; \"World War III\" issue of\n\nColorado\n\nColorado A&M\n\nColumbia University; Butler Library at; School of Mines at\n\nCommerce Department, U.S.\n\ncommercial rainmaking\n\nCommittee to Draft a World Constitution\n\nCommunist Party\n\nCommunity House hospital\n\nCompton, Karl\n\ncomputers; brain vs.; singularity and; weather forecasting and; weather modeling on\n\nCondon, Edward\n\nCongress, U.S.\n\nConnecticut\n\nConquest of Gaul (Caesar)\n\nconvergent phenomena\n\nCordiner, \"Razor\" Ralph\n\nCordon, Guy\n\nCoriolis effect\n\nCornell Daily Sun\n\nCornell University\n\nCornell Widow, The\n\nCorning, Erastus\n\nCoronet\n\nCosmopolitan\n\nCousins, Norman\n\nCox, Jane Marie, see Vonnegut, Jane Marie Cox\n\nCrown Island, Lake George\n\ncultural anthropology, KV's studies in\n\nculture, constant evolution of\n\nCurtis Hotel\n\ncybernetics\n\nCybernetics (Wiener)\n\nCzechoslovakia\n\nDachau\n\nDaily Worker\n\nDale, Franklin (char.)\n\nDarkness at Noon (Koestler)\n\nDayton, Ohio\n\nDayton Daily News\n\nD-Day\n\nDefense Department, U.S.; Research and Development Board of; weather control and\n\nDelaware\n\nDemocrats\n\nDerby, Edgar (char.)\n\nDesert Research Institute\n\nDeutsche Haus, Das, see Athenaeum\n\nDewey, Thomas\n\ndivergent phenomena\n\nDodo, The (Swarthmore literary magazine)\n\nDonora smog\n\nDonora Zinc Works\n\nDostoyevsky, Fyodor; see also Brothers Karamazov, The\n\nDotson, James V.\n\nDoubleday (publisher)\n\nDow\n\nDresden; Allied firebombing of\n\nDushman, Saul\n\nDyson, Freeman\n\nEast Germany\n\nEconomic Development Commission, New Mexico\n\nEDVAC\n\nEgypt\n\nEiffel Tower\n\nEinstein, Albert\n\nEisenhower, Dwight D.\n\nelectrical charge, in thunderstorms\n\nElizabethtown, N.Y.\n\nElliott, Robert\n\nElmer & Amend\n\nEngland\n\nENIAC\n\nEPICAC (fictional computer)\n\nErie, Lake\n\nEspy, James Pollard\n\nEsquire\n\nEurope\n\nEverglades\n\nFAA\n\nFahnestock State Park\n\nFarm Bureau Federation\n\nFaulkner, William\n\nFBI; GE Research Lab dossiers of\n\nFederation of American Scientists\n\nFerence, Michael\n\nFermi, Enrico\n\nFindeisen, Walter\n\nFinnerty, Ed (char.)\n\nFirestone\n\nFirst Friends Church\n\nFisher, Jo Ann\n\nFisher, John\n\nFisher Scientific\n\nFlorez, Luis de\n\nFlorida\n\nFloyd Bennett Field\n\nFlying Icing Wind Tunnel\n\nFonda, Gorton\n\nFort Riley\n\nFortune\n\n423rd Infantry Regiment, U.S.\n\n424th Infantry Regiment, U.S.\n\nFoust, Warren (char.)\n\nFrance\n\nFranklin, Ben\n\n\"Freezing Point Apparatus, A\" (B. Vonnegut)\n\nFrench Mountain\n\nFrigidaire\n\nFuncrest Hotel\n\nGalisteo Creek\n\ngame theory\n\nGE Digest\n\n\"GE Disease\"\n\nGE Monogram\n\nGeneral Electric (GE); anticommunist ideology of; anti-union policies of; blacklisting by; consumer production division of; culture of; government work of; holiday parties of; Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory at; postwar strike at; profits of; Project Cirrus canceled by; as source material for KV's fiction; World War II and\n\nGeneral Electric Research Laboratory; cloud-seeding experiments of, see cloud seeding, GE experiments in; cross-disciplinary philosophy of; FBI dossiers on scientists of; military's relationship with; pure research encouraged at\n\nGeneral Motors\n\nGeneral Office News\n\nGE News Bureau; KV at; KV's resignation from\n\nGE News Graphic\n\nGeophysical Institute (Bergen)\n\nGeorge, Lake\n\nGE Realty Plot\n\nGE Review\n\nGerman Americans\n\ngermanium\n\nGermany, Germans; surrender of\n\nGermany, Nazi\n\nGE Theater\n\nGhost Dance Society\n\nGI Bill\n\nGigliano, Louis (char.)\n\nGlamour\n\nGloucester, Mass.\n\nGod and Golem Inc. (Wiener)\n\nGoldstein, Simon\n\nGoldwater, Barry\n\nG\u00f6ttingen, University of\n\nGould, Filomena\n\nGourmet\n\nGrand Central Terminal\n\nGreat Appalachian Storm of 1950, see Thanksgiving Storm (1950)\n\nGreat Britain\n\nGreat Depression\n\nGreat Plains floods\n\ngreenhouse gases\n\nGreylock Mountain\n\nGriffin, George\n\nGroszinger, Bernard (char.)\n\nGrumman Goose (amphibious plane)\n\nGulf Stream\n\nGunn, Ross\n\nG. W. Merritt Lumber Company\n\nHalyard, Ewing J. (char.)\n\nHammond, Roger\n\nHanford, Wash.\n\nHans Grell's (bar)\n\nHarney's, see H. S. Harney (store)\n\nHarper's\n\nHarrison, Earl \"Hotbox\" (char.)\n\nHartford, Conn.\n\nHartford-Empire Company\n\nHarvard University; Blue Hill Observatory at\n\nHawaii\n\nHeine, Heinrich\n\nHellman, Lillian\n\nHelmholtz, George M. (char.)\n\nHelmholtz, Hermann von\n\nHenderson Harbor\n\nHerbstnebel (Autumn Fog)\n\nHersey, John\n\nHertz, Rudy (char.)\n\nHicks, Granville\n\nHirohito, emperor of Japan\n\nHiroshima, atomic bombing of\n\n\"Hiroshima\" (Hersey)\n\nHitler, Adolf\n\nHitz, Ben\n\nHo Chi Minh Trail\n\nHoenikker, Angela (char.)\n\nHoenikker, Felix (char.)\n\nHoenikker, Franklin (char.)\n\nHoenikker, George (char.)\n\nHoenikker, Newt (char.)\n\nHollomon, John Herbert\n\nHollomon family\n\nHosler, Charles\n\nHotel Astor (New York)\n\nHotel Jefferson\n\nHotel King Cole\n\nHotel Van Curler\n\nHoughton, Henry; cloud-seeding experiments of\n\nHouse Bill 86\n\nHouse Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)\n\nHowell, Wallace\n\nH. S. Harney (store)\n\nHubert, Bill\n\nHudson River\n\nHull, Albert\n\nHuman Use of Human Beings, The (Wiener)\n\nHungary\n\nHunt, Lester\n\nhurricanes; physics of; possible weaponizing of\n\nHutchins, Robert\n\nHuxley, Aldous\n\nHyannis, Mass.\n\nHyde Park, N.Y.\n\nhydrogen bomb\n\nIBM\n\nice, BV's research on\n\nice crystals, variants of\n\nice-nine\n\nIce Research Base\n\nice-2\n\nIndia\n\nIndiana\n\nIndianapolis, Ind.\n\nIndianapolis News\n\nIndianapolis Star\n\nIndianapolis Times\n\nIndustrial Bank of Commerce\n\nInstitute for Advanced Study; computers at; Meteorology Project of\n\nInstitute for Nuclear Studies\n\nInstitute of Meteorology\n\nInterior Department, U.S.\n\nIowa\n\nIowa Writers' Workshop\n\nIroquois River\n\nIsrael\n\nIwo Jima\n\nJacksonville, Fla.\n\nJacques (restaurant)\n\nJapan; atomic bombing of\n\nJefferson City, Mo.\n\nJodl, Alfred\n\nJoint Chiefs of Staff\n\nJonah (char.)\n\nJosef and Peter (chars.)\n\nJournal of Meteorology\n\nJunior League\n\nKansas\n\nKansas City, Kans.\n\nKansas River\n\nKappa Sigma\n\nKelly, Colonel (char.)\n\nKem, James\n\nKennedy, John F.\n\nKenney, George\n\nKentucky\n\nKhan, Kublai\n\nKing, Hurricane\n\nKingston Daily Freeman\n\nKirch, James\n\nKnolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL)\n\nKoestler, Arthur\n\nKorea\n\nKorean War\n\nKotsch, William\n\nKrick, Irving; long-range forecasting by; as self-promoter\n\nKurzweil, Raymond\n\nlabor force, automation and\n\nLa Guardia Airport\n\nLangmuir, Barbara\n\nLangmuir, Dean\n\nLangmuir, Irving; absentmindedness of; BV's silver iodide experiments of; BV's silver iodide successes announced by; chaos theory anticipated by; at Chicago conference on atomic energy; cloud-seeding experiments of; Collected Works of; on convergent and divergent phenomena; in desert rainmaking project; FBI file on; grandiose claims of; hurricane-seeding experiments of; Ice-9 concept of; intense curiosity of; marginalization of; meteorology research of; as model for Dr. Hoenikker; and New York City cloud-seeding program; Nobel Prize of; periodicity experiments of; pragmatism of; Project Cirrus report of; as proselytizer for science; in retirement from GE; Soviet Union trip of; statistical analysis embraced by; supercooling research of; war-related research of; weather seen as divergent phenomenon by\n\nLangmuir, Kenneth\n\nLangmuir, Marion Mersereau\n\nLangmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research\n\nLaplace, Pierre-Simon\n\n\"Laplace's demon\"\n\nLe Havre\n\nLeMay, Curtis\n\nLevy's Liquor Store\n\nLewis, William; Project Cirrus and\n\nLieber, Albert\n\nLife\n\nLilienthal, David\n\nLindbergh, Charles\n\nLippmann, Walter\n\nLittauer, Kenneth\n\nLittauer & Wilkinson\n\nLloyd's\n\nLockwood, Scammon\n\nLorenz, Edward\n\nLos Alamos, N.Mex.\n\nLos Angeles Times\n\nLuce, Clare Boothe\n\nLuxembourg\n\nLyon, Lavina\n\nLyon, Ollie\n\nMacCready, Paul\n\nMacDill Air Base\n\nMacon, Arnold (char.)\n\nMademoiselle\n\nMailer, Norman\n\nMalotti, Steve\n\nManhattan, Kans.\n\nManhattan District\n\nManhattan Project\n\nMan in the Gray Flannel Suit (Wilson)\n\nManzano Mountains\n\nMargaretville, N.Y.\n\nMarine Air Corps, U.S.\n\nMarion (char.)\n\nMaryland\n\nMassachusetts\n\nMaxinkuckee, Lake\n\nMaynard, Kiah\n\nMcCall's\n\nMcCarthy, Joseph\n\nMcCarty family\n\nMcDonald, Willard\n\nMcLeod, Robert\n\nmemory, sacredness of\n\nMen and Volts at War (GE)\n\nMerchant of Venice, The (Shakespeare)\n\nMerck\n\nMetcalf family\n\nMeteorology Project\n\nMexico, Gulf of\n\nMiami, Fla.\n\nMiami Beach, Fla.\n\nMiami Beach Redistribution Center\n\nMichigan\n\nMichigan, Lake\n\nMichigan, University of\n\nMiddletown, N.Y.\n\nMidwest, flooding in\n\nmilitary-industrial complex\n\nMiller, Arthur\n\nMiller, Henry\n\nMinneapolis, Minn.\n\nMinneapolis Star-Journal\n\nMinnesota\n\nMississippi River\n\nMissouri\n\nMissouri River\n\nMIT; Chemical Warfare Service at; KV's speech at\n\nMobile, Ala.\n\nMohawk Golf Club\n\nMohawk River\n\nMonongahela River\n\nMontgomery, Bernard\n\nMonzano, General (char.)\n\nMoore, Charlie\n\nMoorhead, Alfred (char.)\n\n\"Morning After\" (Kirch)\n\nMoscow\n\nMurrow, Edward R.\n\nNagasaki, atomic bombing of\n\nNaked and the Dead, The (Mailer)\n\nNapoleon Bonaparte\n\nNational Academy of Sciences\n\nNational Bureau of Standards\n\nNational Council of American-Soviet Friendship\n\nNational Press Club\n\nNational Science Foundation\n\nNative Americans\n\nNavy, U.S.\n\nNayar, Unni\n\nNeosho River\n\nNevada; cloud seeding in\n\nNevele Country Club\n\nNew Deal\n\nNew England\n\nNew England Association of Chemistry Teachers, on moral responsibility of scientists\n\nNew Hampshire\n\nNew Jersey\n\nNew Mexico; drought in; Project Cirrus experiments in\n\nNew Mexico School of Mines; Poverty Row at\n\nNew Republic\n\nNewsweek\n\nNewtonian time\n\nNew York, N.Y.; cloud-seeding program in; 1949\u201350 drought in; rainmaking liability claims against\n\nNew York, State University of, at Albany\n\nNew York Central railroad\n\nNew York City Board of Estimate\n\nNew Yorker\n\nNew York Giants (baseball team)\n\nNew York Post\n\nNew York State; 1950 storm in\n\nNew York Sun\n\nNew York Times\n\nNew York Times Book Review\n\nNew York Times Magazine; KV's tribute to BV in\n\nNew York University\n\n1984 (Orwell)\n\nNiskayuna, N.Y.\n\nNobel Prize\n\nNormandy\n\nNorth American Weather Consultants\n\nNorth Carolina\n\nNortheast, 1950 storm in\n\nNorth Korea\n\nNorth Sea\n\nNorth Vietnam\n\nNorway; weather forecasting in\n\nNotre Dame, University of\n\nnuclear arms race\n\nnuclear deterrence\n\nOak Ridge, Tenn.\n\nO'Dwyer, William\n\nOffice of Defense Mobilization\n\nOffice of Naval Research\n\nOfficer Club 1\n\nO'Hare, Bernard V.\n\nOhio\n\nOhio River\n\nOhio State University\n\nOklahoma\n\nOMIBAC\n\n106th Infantry Division, U.S.\n\nOne World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb\n\n\"On the Possibilities of Climate Control\" (Wexler)\n\nOperation Popeye\n\nOppenheimer, J. Robert\n\nOrange County, N.Y.; Board of Supervisors in\n\nOrdinal Memory Inspecting Binary Automatic Calculator, see OMIBAC\n\nOregon\n\nOre Mountains\n\nOrlando, Fla.\n\nOrville, Howard\n\nOrwell, George\n\nOsage River\n\nOSS\n\nOsterville, Mass.\n\n\"Outline of Weather Proposal\" (Zworykin)\n\nozone layer\n\nPabst Blue Ribbon\n\nPace, Bob\n\nPacific theater\n\nPakistan\n\nPalaia, Michael\n\nPalisades Amusement Park\n\nPall Mall\n\nParis\n\nPark School\n\nPasadena, Calif.\n\nPaul (char.)\n\nPenguin (motorboat)\n\nPennsylvania\n\n\"Perfect Day for Bananafish, A\" (Salinger)\n\nPetterssen, Sverre\n\nPfizer\n\nphenomena, divergent vs. convergent\n\n\"Philadelphia Phase\" (Wylie)\n\nPhillips, Frank\n\nPhillips Petroleum\n\nPhoenicia, N.Y.\n\nPilgrim, Billy (char.)\n\nPineapple Research Institute\n\nPine Hill, N.Y.\n\nPine Hill Country Club\n\nPittsburgh, Pa.\n\nPittsfield, Mass.\n\nPi Ying (char.)\n\nPlayboy\n\nPoland\n\nPolice Protection (game)\n\nPopeye, Operation\n\nPriestley, J. B.\n\nPrinceton, N.J.\n\nPrinceton University\n\nprogress, downside of\n\nProject Cirrus; California forest fires and; canceling of; as cause of 1950 storm; commercial rainmakers as threat to; desert rainmaking experiment of; hurricanes and; hurricane-seeding experiments of; Langmuir's grandiose claims about; legacy of; Lewis and; liability issues and; media accounts of; New Mexico experiments of; nonmilitary uses of research from; public reaction to hurricane seeding by; silver iodide experiments of; Weather Bureau attack on\n\nProject Scud\n\nProject Skywater\n\nProject Stormfury\n\nProteus, Paul (char.)\n\nProvincetown, Mass.\n\nPTA\n\nPuerto Rico\n\nQuarter Century Club\n\nRainier, Mount\n\nRainmakers' Flood (1950)\n\nrainmaking, see cloud seeding\n\nRanger Development Company\n\nRCA Labs\n\nReader's Digest\n\nReader's Scope\n\nReagan, Ronald\n\n\"Rebellious Scientist After Two Years, A\" (Wiener)\n\nRedbook\n\nRed Cross\n\nRedfield, Robert\n\nReichelderfer, Francis\n\nRepublicans\n\nResearch Lab Report RL-723: \"Variations in the Contact Resistance of a Copper Point Moving over Etched Surface of Germanium Crystal\" (B. Vonnegut)\n\nResnick, Sol\n\nRex, Daniel\n\nRice, Major (char.)\n\nRio Grande\n\nRio Salado\n\nRome, N.Y.\n\nRoney Plaza Hotel\n\nRoosevelt Hotel\n\nRosenthal, A. M.\n\nRossby, Carl-Gustaf\n\nROTC\n\nRotterdam, N.Y.\n\nRotterdam Democratic Club\n\nRoyal Air Force (RAF)\n\nRumfoord, Bertram Copeland (char.)\n\nRumfoord, Winston Niles (char.)\n\nRumford, Benjamin Thompson, Count\n\nRussell, Diarmuid\n\nRussell, Jane\n\nRussell & Volkening Inc.\n\nRussia; see also Soviet Union\n\nRussians\n\nSt. Louis, Mo.\n\nSt. Petersburg Times\n\nSt. Vith\n\nSaipan\n\nSalinger, J. D.\n\nSandia Mountains\n\nSan Francisco, Calif.\n\nSan Jose, Calif.\n\nSan Juan Islands\n\nSanta Fe, N.Mex.\n\nSanto Domingo, N.Mex.\n\nSaturday Evening Post\n\nSaturday Review of Literature\n\nSavage, John\n\nSavannah, Ga.\n\nScandinavians\n\nSchaefer, Vincent J.; Atmospheric Sciences Research Center founded by; BV's silver iodide experiments and; at Camp GE; cloud-seeding experiments of; in desert rainmaking project; hurricane-seeding experiments of; as Langmuir's assistant; at Senate weather control hearings; supercooling research of\n\nSchenectady, N.Y.; cloud-seeding experiments in; Junior League of; KV's move to\n\nSchenectady Cerebral Palsy Fund\n\nSchenectady County, N.Y.\n\nSchenectady Gazette\n\nSchenectady Railway Company\n\nSchenectady Wintersports Club\n\nSchenectady Works\n\nSchenectady Works News\n\nSchenectady Works Research Lab\n\nSchenectady YMCA\n\nSchnee Eifel (Snow Mountain)\n\nSchoharie Reservoir\n\nScience\n\nscience, art and\n\n\"Science, Common Sense, and Decency\" (Langmuir)\n\nScience Forum (radio program)\n\nScience Newsletter\n\nScientific American\n\nscientists, moral responsibility of\n\nScientists' Movement\n\nScottsdale, Ariz.\n\nScribner\n\nScud, Project\n\nSears & Roebuck\n\nSeattle, Wash.\n\nsemiconductors\n\nSenate, U.S.; weather control hearings of\n\nSenate Bill 222\n\nShakespeare, William\n\nShandaken, N.Y.\n\nSherwood, Robert\n\nShortridge Echo\n\nShortridge High\n\nSiberia\n\nSiegfried Line\n\nSierra Nevada mountains\n\nsilver iodide\n\nsingularity\n\nSkywater, Project\n\nSlutsky, Ben\n\nSmathers, George\n\nsmog\n\nsnow, manufacture of, see cloud seeding\n\nSnow Inc.\n\nsocialism\n\nSocorro, N.Mex.\n\nSokolsky, George\n\nSoldiers' and Sailors' Monument, in Indianapolis\n\nSorel, Georges\n\nSouth Dakota\n\nSoviet Academy of Sciences\n\nSoviet Union; atomic bomb detonated by; atomic bomb program of; Berlin blockade of; Langmuir's trip to\n\nSpanish Armada\n\nSpicy Detective\n\nSS\n\nstable systems\n\nStalin, Joseph\n\nStandish, David\n\nStanford Research Institute\n\nState Department, U.S.\n\nstatistical analysis\n\nStatler Hotel\n\nSteering Committee\n\nSteinbeck, John\n\nSteinmetz, Charles Proteus\n\nSteinmetz Memorial Lecture\n\nStimson, Henry\n\nStockholm\n\nStormfury, Project\n\nStory\n\nStrategic Air Command\n\nstrikes, in postwar era\n\nSuccess, Lake\n\nSuits, Chauncey Guy; at Senate weather control hearings\n\nSullivan County, N.Y.; Board of Supervisors in\n\nSuper bomb, see hydrogen bomb\n\nsupercooling\n\nSwarthmore College\n\nSwarthmore Halcyon\n\nSweden\n\nSyracuse, N.Y.\n\nsystems, stable vs. unstable\n\nSzilard, Leo\n\nTalbot, Curtis\n\nTampa, Fla.\n\nTech Engineering News\n\nTechnique (yearbook)\n\ntechnology; moral implications of; utopian vs. dystopian views of\n\nTeller, Edward\n\ntemperature inversions\n\nTennessee, University of\n\nThanksgiving Storm (1950)\n\nthermonuclear bomb, see hydrogen bomb\n\nThird Fleet\n\nThom, Herbert C. S.\n\nThomas, J. Parnell\n\nThunderclap, Operation\n\nthunderstorms: dendritic prints of; electrical charge in\n\nTiffany (jeweler)\n\nTime\n\ntime, Newtonian vs. Bergsonian\n\nTime Inc.\n\nTojo, Prime Minister\n\nTokyo; firebombing of\n\nTomorrow\n\nTopeka, Kans.\n\ntornadoes\n\nTouart, C. N.\n\nTown Tavern\n\ntrade unionism\n\nTralfamadorians (chars.)\n\ntransistors\n\nTrinity test\n\n\"Trouble at Tuaviti\" (Savage)\n\nTrout, Kilgore (char.)\n\nTroy, N.Y.\n\nTruman, Harry\n\nTudor Hall\n\nTurner, Lana\n\nTwain, Mark\n\nUkraine\n\nUlster County, N.Y.\n\nUN Atomic Energy Commission\n\nUN charter\n\nundersea warfare\n\nUnion College\n\nUnited Electrical Workers\n\nUnited Nations; inaugural conference; Security Council\n\nUnited States\n\nUnited World Federalists\n\nUniversity Office of Inquiry into the Social Aspects of Atomic Energy\n\nunstable systems\n\nUral Mountains\n\nVeblen, Oswald\n\nVE Day\n\nVerdigris River\n\nVermont\n\nVietnam War; cloud seeding in\n\nVJ Day\n\nvon Kleigstadt, Ormand (char.)\n\nVonnegut, Alex; KV's sarcastic letter to\n\nVonnegut, Alice, see Adams, Alice Vonnegut\n\nVonnegut, Bernard; and Advisory Committee on Weather Control; Alplaus home of; at Arthur D. Little; as artist; brilliance of; cancer of; in Chemical Warfare Service; childhoood of; on cloud seeding as cause of floods; cloud-seeding experiments of; commercial rainmakers and; crystal research of; curiosity of; death of; at GE Research Lab; on human impact on weather; ice research of; KV's college and major chosen by; and KV's GE News Bureau job; KV's letter to Uncle Alex kept by; KV's MIT speech about; KV's postwar reunion with; KV's New York Times Magazine tribute to; marriage of Lois and; messy work space of; at Minneapolis AMS meeting; at MIT; North Scituate house of; obsessiveness of; as pacifist; in resignation from GE; at Senate weather control hearings; sense of humor of; on SUNY Albany facility; supercooling research of; thunderstorm research of; as tinkerer; as unhappy with military-related research; vortex thermometer of; war-related research of\n\nVonnegut, Bernard (grandfather)\n\nVonnegut, Edith (KV's daughter); birth of\n\nVonnegut, Edith (mother); death of\n\nVonnegut, Helen\n\nVonnegut, Jane Marie Cox; academic accomplishments of; as believer in KV's writing talent; death of; Dostoyevsky's importance to; KV's courtship of; marital breakup of KV and; in move to Provincetown; in move to Schenectady; at OSS; Osterville house of; pregnancies of; in Provincetown; role in shaping KV's career; Schenectady social life and; Swarthmore and; wedding of KV and\n\nVonnegut, Kit\n\nVonnegut, Kurt, Jr.: as able to learn from criticism; Alplaus house of; Army discharge of; in Battle of the Bulge; Bergsonian vs. Newtonian time in writings of; Burger and; on BV's career and moral choices; BV's postwar reunion with; Chicago apartment of; City News Bureau job of; at Cornell; Dresden firebombing and; enlistment of; family's reunion with; fictional cameos of; Fort Riley posting of; GE as source material for; GE News Bureau job of; GE News Bureau resignation of; household chores contract of; at Iowa Writers' Workshop; Jane courted by; job search of; joke telling by; journalism career as attractive to; Knox and; Littauer and; as losing faith in knowledge and technology; marital breakup of Jane and; master's thesis of; Osterville house of; as pacifist; paintings by; playwriting of; political views of; as POW; in Provincetown; sarcastic letter to Uncle Alex from; seen as science fiction writer; sister's children adopted by; as socialist; as University of Chicago anthropology student; \"Virtuous Physicist\" speech of; wedding of Jane and; writer's block of; writing epiphany of; writing habits of\n\nVonnegut, Kurt, Jr., writings of: \"All the King's Horses\"; \"Armageddon in Retrospect\"; \"Atrocity Story\"; \"Basic Training\"; \"Between Timid and Timbuktu\" (unpublished); \"Bonanza\"; \"Brighten Up!\"; \"The Case of the Phantom Roadhouse\"; Cat's Cradle; \"City\"; \"Coda to My Career as a Writer for Periodicals\"; \"The Commandant's Desk\"; \"Comparison of Elements of Ghost Dance Mythology with That Mythology of a More Tranquil Period, A\"; \"Das Ganz Arm Dolmetscher\"; \"Deer in the Works\"; \"Enterprise\"; \"EPICAC\"; \"The Euphio Question\"; \"The Foster Portfolio\"; Gal\u00e1pagos; God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; \"Happy Birthday, 1951\"; \"Ice-9\" (unpublished); \"Innocents Abroad\"; \"I Shall Not Want\"; Jailbird; \"Jenny\"; \"Little Drops of Water\"; \"Lost Battalion Undergoes a Severe Shelling, The\"; \"Mnemonics\"; \"More Stately Mansions\"; Mother Night; Palm Sunday; \"The Petrified Ants\"; Player Piano; \"Poor Little Rich Town\"; \"Report on the Barnhouse Effect\"; \"Robot Cop\"; \"Ruth\"; The Sirens of Titan; Slaughterhouse-Five; \"Thanasphere\"; Timequake; unpublished early stories; Utopia 14, see Player Piano; \"Virtuous Physicist, The\" (speech); \"Wailing Shall Be in All Streets\"; war as backdrop for; \"We Impress Life Magazine with Our Efficient Role in National Defense\"; Welcome to the Monkey House; \"Well All Right\"; \"White King\"; \"With His Hand on the Throttle\"\n\nVonnegut, Kurt, Sr.\n\nVonnegut, Lois Bowler \"Bow\"; marriage of BV and; pregnancies of\n\nVonnegut, Mark; birth of\n\nVonnegut, Peter\n\nVonnegut, Scott\n\nVonnegut, Terry\n\nVonnegut, Walter\n\nVonnegut family; as pacifists; summer cabin of\n\nvon Neumann, John; death of; IAS computer of; weather modeling and; Wexler and\n\nvon Neumann, Ludwig (char.)\n\nvortex thermometer\n\nWabash River\n\nWaldorf-Astoria\n\nWalker's Pharmacy\n\nWallace, DeWitt\n\nwar, weather and\n\nWar and Peace (Tolstoy)\n\nWar Crimes Commission\n\n\"War in the Atomic Age\" (Brodie)\n\nWashington, D.C.\n\nWashington, Mount\n\nWashington State; nuclear production complex and\n\nWater Supply, Gas, and Electricity, New York City Department of\n\nWaterloo, Battle of\n\nWater Power and Control Commission, New York\n\nWater Resources Development Corporation\n\nweather: as divergent phenomenon; human impact on; periodicities in; physics of; predicted control of; Senate hearings on control of\n\nWeather Bureau, U.S.; New England storm and; Project Cirrus attacked by; and Senate weather control hearings\n\nweather control; Langmuir's grandiose claims about; military applications of; renewed interest in; research spending on; Senate hearing on; UN ban on weaponizing of; Wexler's research on; see also cloud seeding\n\nweather forecasting; computers and; in World War I; in World War II\n\nWeathering the Storm (Petterssen)\n\n\"Weather Made to Order?\" (Orville)\n\nweather modeling, on computers\n\nWeather Modification Inc.\n\n\"Weather\u2014the New Super Weapon\" (Florez)\n\nWeatherwise\n\nWeeks, Edward\n\nWells, H. G.\n\nWelty, Eudora\n\nWest Berlin\n\nwestern United States, commercialized rainmaking in\n\nWestwall\n\nWexler, Harry; death of; GE hurricane experiments and; Project Cirrus attacked by; von Neumann and; weather control research of\n\nWeyl, Hermann\n\nWGY (radio station)\n\nWheeler, William Morton\n\nWhitney, Willis \"Doc\"\n\nWhitney Club\n\nWiener, Norbert; Player Piano criticized by\n\nWillett, Hurd\n\nWillkie, Wendell\n\nWilson, Charlie\n\nWilson, Sloan\n\nWinchell, Walter\n\nWisconsin\n\nWoolaroc Ranch\n\nWorcester, Mass., 1953 tornado in\n\nWorkman, Everly John \"Jack\"; in desert rainmaking project\n\nWorks Library\n\nworld government\n\nWorld Set Free, The (Wells)\n\nWorld War I; anti-German sentiment and\n\nWorld War II; atomic bombs in; D-Day in; GE and; weather forecasting in\n\nWorld War III\n\nWylie, Philip\n\nWyoming\n\nWyoming Water Development Commission\n\nYale Review\n\nYank\n\nYarborough family\n\nYarmolinsky, Adam\n\nYarmolinsky, Jane Vonnegut, see Vonnegut, Jane Marie Cox\n\nYugoslavia\n\nZworykin, Vladimir\n\nBernard and Kurt Vonnegut (at right), at home before Kurt enlisted. Bernard may already have been working for the Army's Chemical Warfare Service lab at MIT when this was taken. (Vonnegut family collection)\n\nThe wizards of \"the House of Magic\": GE Research Lab scientists pose at the doors of their offices in 1950. Vincent Schaefer is in front at far left, with Bernie, who began working there in 1946, at the next door back. (GE News Bureau photo)\n\nIrving Langmuir and Bernie look on as Vincent Schaefer leans over to create the experiment that started it all: breathing a cloud into his freezer that he will nucleate with dry ice to cause snow. (GE News Bureau photo)\n\nDry ice seeding produces dramatic cloud modifications. Here, the Project Cirrus airplane flies a gamma pattern, creating an obvious trench with dry ice. Perhaps, Vincent wryly noted later, they should have seeded clouds in the shape of the GE logo. (U.S. Army Signal Corps photo)\n\nGE insulated itself from liability concerns with a wall of military brass. For the press release announcing the joint GE-military weather control program, Bernie uses a toy popgun to seed the cloud in the freezer for an admiral and a general. (GE News Bureau photo)\n\nThe Vonneguts called the family rowboat the Beralikur, a combination of the names Bernie, Alice, and Kurt: the three siblings only grew closer as they aged. (Vonnegut family collection)\n\nJust like a real newspaper, minus the objectivity: the GE News Bureau as it looked when Kurt began work there as a \"junior writer\" in 1947, drafting press releases and articles for in-house magazines (GE News Bureau photo)\n\nA Project Cirrus B-17 being loaded with dry ice for an \"assault on the clouds\" (GE News Bureau photo)\n\n\"Fire makes rain\" was the GE News Bureau's caption for a photo of Bernie with his silver iodide generator. Even as the world thrilled to dry ice seeding, Bernie knew he had found something better: seeding clouds with silver iodide smoke. (GE News Bureau photo)\n\nThe Weather Bureau and the Institute for Advanced Study had a better way to take control of the weather: with computers. Here, members of the institute's Meteorology Project pose with the Army's ENIAC, then the world's most powerful computer, in 1950. At far left, Harry Wexler listens to John von Neumann. The Weather Bureau's chief, Francis Reichelderfer, is second from right. (Photo courtesy of MIT Museum)\n\nAboard a B-17, Bernie oversees the seeding of clouds with silver iodide. Irving Langmuir's attention was finally captured when silver iodide seeding in New Mexico was followed by a devastating thunderstorm and flood. (Bernard Vonnegut papers, State University of New York at Albany)\n\nKurt with his son, Mark, and a painting he made in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1950 as he gloomily contemplated the onset of another war, this time in Korea (Vonnegut family collection)\n\nAs Bernie's invention was heedlessly taken up by amateurs, he tried to figure out if it could be causing harm. In his map, the gray portions show where rainmakers were feverishly seeding clouds in 1951, as floods devastated the plains states. (Bernard Vonnegut papers, State University of New York at Albany)\n\nSeeking advice on how to testify at upcoming Senate hearings, a New Mexico senator and the publisher of the Santa Fe New Mexican visited the GE Research Lab. Diplomatically, the photograph shows only the publisher, between Irving Langmuir (at left) and Bernie. At right, the lab's director, Guy Suits, looks on as Vincent Schaefer seeds the freezer's cloud. (GE News Bureau photo)\n\nThe siblings Vonnegut\u2014Kurt, Bernie, and Alice\u2014with spouses and kids, reuniting in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1951. Kurt's wife, Jane, is at center, holding their daughter, Edith. (Vonnegut family collection)\n\nThe cover of Collier's was typical of the triumphant tone the media took when discussing weather control in the 1940s and 1950s: man finally stood at the brink of mastering nature. (Photo courtesy of the Estate of Frederick Siebel)\nA Note About the Author\n\nGinger Strand is the author of three previous books, including Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate. She has written for a wide variety of publications, including Harper's Magazine, This Land, The Believer, Tin House, The New York Times, and Orion Magazine, where she is a contributing editor. You can sign up for email updates here.\n\nAlso by Ginger Strand\n\nFICTION\n\nFlight\n\nNONFICTION\n\nKiller on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate\n\nInventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies\nThank you for buying this\n\nFarrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.\n\nTo receive special offers, bonus content,\n\nand info on new releases and other great reads,\n\nsign up for our newsletters.\n\nOr visit us online at\n\nus.macmillan.com\/newslettersignup\n\nFor email updates on the author, click here.\nContents\n\nTitle Page\n\nCopyright Notice\n\nEpigraph\n\n 1. Autumn Fog\n\n 2. Precipitating Events\n\n 3. Head in the Clouds\n\n 4. Bolt of Lightning\n\n 5. Eye of the Storm\n\n 6. Watersheds\n\n 7. Rainmakers\n\n 8. Out of the Blue\n\n 9. Cold Fronts\n\n10. Shifting Winds\n\nEpilogue: Rainbow's End\n\nNotes\n\nBibliography\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nIndex\n\nPhotographs\n\nA Note About the Author\n\nAlso by Ginger Strand\n\nCopyright\nFarrar, Straus and Giroux\n\n18 West 18th Street, New York 10011\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2015 by Ginger Strand\n\nAll rights reserved\n\nFirst edition, 2015\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nStrand, Ginger Gail.\n\nThe Brothers Vonnegut: science and fiction in the House of Magic \/ Ginger Strand. \u2014 First edition.\n\np. cm.\n\nIncludes bibliographical references and index.\n\nISBN 978-0-374-11701-6 (hardback) \u2014 ISBN 978-0-374-71154-2 (e-book)\n\n1. Vonnegut, Kurt. 2. Vonnegut, Bernard. 3. Novelists, American\u201420th century\u2014Biography. 4. Scientists\u2014United States\u2014Biography. 5. Weather control\u2014United States. 6. Literature and science\u2014United States\u2014History\u201420th century. I. Title.\n\nPS3572.O5 Z858 2015\n\n813'.54\u2014dc23\n\n[B]\n\n2015010126\n\nOur e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.\n\nwww.fsgbooks.com\n\nwww.twitter.com\/fsgbooks \u2022 www.facebook.com\/fsgbooks\n\n## Contents\n\n  1. Title Page\n  2. Copyright Notice\n  3. Epigraph\n  4. 1. Autumn Fog\n  5. 2. Precipitating Events\n  6. 3. Head in the Clouds\n  7. 4. Bolt of Lightning\n  8. 5. Eye of the Storm\n  9. 6. Watersheds\n  10. 7. Rainmakers\n  11. 8. Out of the Blue\n  12. 9. Cold Fronts\n  13. 10. Shifting Winds\n  14. Epilogue: Rainbow's End\n  15. Notes\n  16. Bibliography\n  17. Acknowledgments\n  18. Index\n  19. Photographs\n  20. A Note About the Author\n  21. Also by Ginger Strand\n  22. Newsletter Sign-up\n  23. Copyright\n\n## Guide\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Table of Contents\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nRoost Books\n\nAn imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc.\n\n4720 Walnut Street\n\nBoulder, Colorado 80301\n\nroostbooks.com\n\n\u00a9 2019 by Jennifer Ward\n\nIllustrations \u00a9 2019 by Alexander Vidal\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.\n\nEbook design adapted from printed book design by Daniel Urban-Brown\n\nCover art by Alexander Vidal | Cover design by Daniel Urban-Brown\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nNames: Ward, Jennifer, 1963\u2013 author. | Vidal, Alexander, illustrator.\n\nTitle: I love birds!: 52 ways to wonder, wander, and explore birds with kids \/ Jennifer Ward; illustrations by Alexander Vidal.\n\nDescription: Boulder, Colorado: Roost Books, 2019. | Audience: Ages 4 to 8. | Includes bibliographical references.\n\nIdentifiers: LCCN 2018011422 | ISBN 9781611804157 (paperback: alk. paper)\n\neISBN 9780834842168\n\nSubjects: LCSH: Bird watching. | Family recreation. | Outdoor recreation.\n\nClassification: LCC QL677.5 .W335 2019 | DDC 598.072\/34\u2014dc23\n\nLC record available at <https:\/\/lccn.loc.gov\/2018011422>\n\nv5.4\n\na\n**CONTENTS**\n\nIntroduction\n\n**SPRING**\n\n1.  Look Up, Look Down, Look All Around\n\n2.  Billions of Birds\n\n3.  A Feast for First Arrivals\n\n4.  The Dawn Chorus\n\n5.  Home Tweet Home\n\n6.  Feathery Field Trip\n\n7.  Splashy Tweet Retreat\n\n8.  A Rustic Roost\n\n9.  Birds in Motion\n\n10.  Draw that Bird!\n\n11.  Zoom In\n\n12.  Feathered Firsts\n\n13.  Fantastic Feeders\n\n**SUMMER**\n\n14.  Getting to Know You\n\n15.  The Perfect Patch\n\n16.  Raindrop Cafe\n\n17.  A Haven for Hummingbirds\n\n18.  Bountiful Birdscape\n\n19.  Wing It!\n\n20.  Hats Off to Hummingbirds!\n\n21.  Seed Sorting\n\n22.  Yard Mapping\n\n23.  Feathery Photography\n\n24.  Heavenly Hawks\n\n25.  Chicka-dee-dee-dee\n\n26.  Beak by Beak\n\n**FALL**\n\n27.  Color Count\n\n28.  Moonlight Migration\n\n29.  A Handful of Hummers\n\n30.  Lovely Leaf Litter\n\n31.  Handy Nests\n\n32.  A Pumpkin-Perfect Feast\n\n33.  Pressed Leaf Feather Art\n\n34.  Speech Bubbles between Birds\n\n35.  We're Going on an Owl Hunt\n\n36.  Bird Brains\n\n37.  Name That Bird\n\n38.  Chilling with Feathers\n\n39.  A Nest of My Own\n\n**WINTER**\n\n40.  Naked Nests\n\n41.  Flappy Hour and the Great Backyard Bird Count\n\n42.  Winter Thicket\n\n43.  Telltale Toes\n\n44.  Winter Wreath Feeder\n\n45.  Deck the Trees with Boughs So Jolly\n\n46.  Bird Haiku\n\n47.  Snowy Snowman Snack\n\n48.  Window to the World\n\n49.  A Bird in the Hand\n\n50.  Surf, Sand, I Spy a Bird Band!\n\n51.  New Year's Bird\n\n52.  New Year's Bird Resolutions\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nResources and Recommended Reading\n\nAmerican Bird Association Code of Ethics\n\nAbout the Author\n\nE-mail Sign-up\n\n# **INTRODUCTION**\n\n**A S A YOUNG CHILD** I recall lying in bed, tucked in silence and stillness. The light was dim and dusky, filling every nook and cranny in my room; I can still see this so vividly. Then, out of nowhere, one single birdcall pierced the quiet, separating night from morning. This call was joined by another call. And then more calls, the sounds building in crescendo, overlapping, high, low, melodic, and nonstop. The very air brimmed with song that is the _dawn chorus._ It was the first time I had ever experienced it, and even as a child I knew it was something magnificent. Experiencing it made me feel wondrous. It made me feel alive, special, and, most importantly, connected to the big, wide, wonderful world around me. To this day I continue to listen for it.\n\nIn 2008, my book _I Love Dirt!_ was published. At that time, it was a call to parents, grandparents, educators, and caregivers to help recover one of the greatest joys in childhood: spending time outdoors in nature. We were in the midst of a true \"nature deficit,\" a term coined by author and journalist Richard Louv. Children and adults alike living with overly busy schedules, engaged with screen time from sunup to sundown, seeking places where they could stay plugged in near electrical outlets, schools eliminating recess, and the like. Thanks to Richard Louv and many others, today a glorious movement is taking place\u2014a wise awareness that spending time in nature is beneficial to our health and well-being. Research also supports the detrimental effects of living without nature.\n\nIt is a joyful thing to watch our children discover the world around them, and birds certainly enhance this experience. As a matter of fact, engaging with a simple bird feeder is one of the most common ways people may interact with wild animals. Birds can be found everywhere, high, low, wherever we go. As children discover the wonder, beauty, science, and souls of birds, we are given a priceless gift\u2014experiencing the world through their eyes.\n\nThis book was born from one of my dearest passions: birds. Like _I Love Dirt!_ , it offers fifty-two open-ended activities that will give the outdoors back to your children. In just five minutes, you can turn your child's world around, open their senses, and connect them to nature. _I Love Birds!_ encourages your child to think, wonder, wander, explore, create, nurture, and have an amazing time with the avian wildlife that coexist with us day to day, month by month, and season by season.\n\nAnywhere a bird might be spotted provides an opportunity for discovery. They bring the gift of nature to us wherever we may be. Be it a city sidewalk, an urban park, through a window, from a wheelchair, in a backyard, or even while lying in bed waiting for the dawn chorus\u2014birds are waiting to be enjoyed and discovered! Time in nature is free of cost\u2014as are the activities in this book\u2014but the rewards that come with exploring birds will stay with your children for the rest of their lives, benefiting them and the planet they share with birds. Now get out there and soar!\n\nThank you for sharing _I Love Birds!_ with the wee chicks in your life. In this book you'll find a host of creative and engaging ways to better understand these winged wonders. The activities are categorized by the habits most birders practice:\n\n**  Observe: To know birds, you must observe birds. These activities offer ways to see, hear, and better understand birds and bird behavior.**\n\n**  Take Note: Use this book (or get a trusty notebook) and write down the things you notice about birds and draw the birds you observe.**\n\n**  Take Action: Become a better bird advocate by doing simple projects that support the birds in your area.**\n\nReady to fly? Let's do this!\n\n# **LOOK UP , LOOK DOWN, LOOK ALL AROUND**\n\n**B IRDS ARE EVERYWHERE.** They can be found flying through the sky, foraging high in treetops, filling the air with calls and songs, perching on power lines, scavenging on the ground, scaling tree trunks, racing surf on a shoreline, or bobbing on the surface of water, just to name a few places.\n\nConnecting with birds is as simple as stepping outside and opening our eyes and ears to their presence. As we do so, we're connecting with wild animals right outside our back door! Yet, how often do we really observe birds and take note of them? Today, with technology at our fingertips 24-7, it's so easy for us to willingly ignore our surroundings. Set an intention to connect to the nature that surrounds you and your child, and let birds be your guide as you do.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nFind a spot outdoors where you and your child can relax. It can be a patch of grass, a sidewalk, a balcony, or a deck\u2014anywhere, as long as you're comfortable and outside. Feel the air on your skin and face. Feel your feet on the ground below you. Observe all of the details around you: the color of the sky, the temperature, and even small weeds sprouting up in unusual places. Enjoy the stillness of nature and the calm it brings.\n\nFirst, just listen. Absorb all the sounds around you. There may be traffic sounds, mechanical sounds, and wind-in-the-trees sounds. Through it all, listen for bird sounds: tweets, calls, chirps. Flapping wings, rap-rap-raps, and tap-tap-taps. Songs and coos. Seek out the bird sounds you hear and attempt to locate where the sounds are coming from. Often, we may hear a bird but never see it (or imagine we've seen it). Spotting them can sometimes be tricky!\n\nSeek out birds that you can see. How many birds can you spot with your eyes? We may not always need to look up to find a bird. They may be at eye level or on the ground. Binoculars aren't necessary to observe birds. Of course, with practice, binoculars work well for bird watching, but there's much bird-life to see with the naked eye, such as a bird's shape, size, color, location, and behavior. As you listen for birds, ask these questions:\n\n**  How many different sounds, songs, or calls can you hear?**\n\n**  How many birds can you find up high?**\n\n**  How many birds can you find on the ground, down low?**\n\n**  Can you hear a birdcall or song? How many different calls or songs?**\n\n**  Can you find a large bird?**\n\n**  Can you find a small bird?**\n\n**  Can you find a colorful bird?**\n\n**  Can you find a bird that's eating?**\n\n**  Can you find a bird that's running or hopping on the ground?**\n\n**  Can you find a bird that's flying?**\n\nEnjoy connecting to nature and the birds that call it home, where you will experience calm and a sense of wonder in everything avian.\n\n  **_Promotes relaxation, attentiveness, and observation skills_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How many birds are there on the planet?**\n\n**A: Species vary by region, but overall there are approximately 10,400 species of birds on the planet.**\n\n# **BILLIONS OF BIRDS**\n\n**C OME SPRING,** billions of birds wing their way, often thousands of miles, from their southern winter grounds to their northern breeding grounds. As a result, April and May are very busy sky traffic periods on our planet. Nothing marks spring like the return of migratory birds!\n\nYou may awaken one morning to find high treetops and low shrubs bustling with birdsong and bird movement, birds busy hopping from limb to limb, activity that wasn't noticeable the day prior. This is because migratory songbirds traveled all night, and now they've stopped to rest and refuel. Some species will rest in your area for a few days and then continue their journey northward. Other species will arrive in your area and stay put for nesting and breeding through the summer. The strongest males arrive first, scouting out the best breeding areas. Once the females arrive, they choose the males with the ideal habitats for raising young.\n\nMake a specific effort with your child to spend time outdoors in April and May to experience spring's bird migration, especially when weather conditions shift winds from south to north, as migratory birds take advantage of tailwinds. Then, simply look to the leaves! In addition to your _resident_ birds\u2014birds that remain in your area all year long\u2014observe very carefully. Can you spy a species you've not noticed before? Search high in the treetops, among leaves and new growth, where colorful warblers may be hunting for spiders and insects. Look among shrubs and hedges and on the ground below them. Notice bird sounds: Is there a song or call that is unfamiliar or new? If so, chances are it is a migrant, weary and hungry. Perhaps it is just passing through and stopping to rest, and will continue northward. Or, perhaps it is a species that will summer and nest in your area with you.\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nWith your child, document the dates and details of migrants and first arrivals in your area during spring's migration. Using the details of your notes, reference a field guide to birds in your area to help identify species and become familiar with your region's species.\n\n**MY FOTS (FIRST OF THE SEASON)**  \n---\n\nDate:\n\nLocation:\n\nSize:\n\nDescriptive notes:\n\nSketch:\n\n  **_Promotes awareness, understanding of the natural world, and observation skills_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Why do birds migrate?**\n\n**A: Birds migrate to survive. They travel to places that will sustain them with food and allow them to raise their young.**\n\n# **A FEAST FOR FIRST ARRIVALS**\n\n**A PPROXIMATELY 40 PERCENT** of our world's bird species migrate each spring and fall. As spring arrives, so do these weary travelers back to northern regions\u2014and they arrive exhausted and hungry, many having flown hundreds or thousands of miles, often nonstop, using up the reserves of stored body fat. Migration is an extremely challenging and dangerous time for birds. They encounter harsh weather and a lack of adequate habitat to rest and refuel along their journey, among a host of other challenging elements.\n\nAs migrants arrive or stop to rest, most will be seeking protein in the source of bugs, but migration season is the perfect time to offer some additional food as well. Many migratory species, such as orioles and tanagers, will appreciate apple slices, grape jelly, and orange halves.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nExplain to your child that many birds are passing through your area, having traveled very long distances, and that they are extremely tired and hungry. Use a map to show the distance traveled by migrating species in your area, such as orioles. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology website or any bird field guide for your region will show the ranges of bird species by season, indicating where certain species breed during summer months and where they winter, and their migration routes in between.\n\nThen, create a fresh offering of fruits and sustenance for these traveling birds, which they will greatly appreciate. You and your child will also be rewarded as you observe ravenous species stopping by to enjoy your offering.\n\nFirst, simply slice an orange in half. Then, poke a small hole on the outside half of each orange, through the skin. Finally, place each orange section on the upward-facing tip of a shepherd's hook where your feeder(s) hang or on the tip of a tree's branch, or rest it on top of a firm bush or shrub. Birds will love this fresh fruit treat! Change the oranges every few days, keeping the citrus offering fresh. (A variation on this sweet treat is to scoop out most of the orange fruit, mix this fruit with grape jelly, and place the mixture back into the halved orange.)\n\nSliced and diced apples or fresh apple cores with seeds are also delicious treats that spring birds will enjoy. Simply place pieces on a tray where birds may land to access them. Change the apple pieces every few days to keep the offerings fresh.\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**Although dark skies protect night flying migrators from predation, lighted windows at night kill and injure billions of migratory birds each year when birds unknowingly fly into them, attracted by the light. Visit Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) Canada to learn more about ways to prevent window strikes.**\n\n  **_Promotes stewardship and empathy_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How far do migrating birds travel?**\n\n**A: It varies by species, but here are some interesting migration findings: the Arctic Tern holds the record for longest migration distance, approximately 25,000 miles, pole to pole (almost 50,000 miles roundtrip each year); the Bar-Tailed Godwit flies almost 7,000 miles without stopping (it holds the record for longest nonstop flight); the Blackpoll Warbler flies 2,300 miles nonstop for eighty-six hours; the tiny Ruby-Throated Hummingbird migrates a distance of 5,000 round-trip miles each year, and the Rufous Hummingbird makes the longest migratory journey of any bird in the world, per its body size compared to distance covered, traveling almost 8,000 miles round-trip each year from Alaska to Mexico.**\n\n# **THE DAWN CHORUS**\n\n**_G \u00d6KOTTA_** is a Swedish word that translates to _waking up at dawn to hear the first birdsong of the day._ In America, we call this musical avian phenomenon _the dawn chorus._ Spring and summer are perfect times to experience this magical, remarkable sound, as this is the time that birds wake up and establish their territories and sing to attract mates.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nCheck to determine when sunrise will take place. Then, set your alarm so you and your child wake up at least fifteen minutes prior to sunrise. Once you awaken, make a cup of tea, hot cocoa, or coffee, and grab a blanket to snuggle up with your child if the air outside is chilly. Together, sit outside in the dark. Be mindful as you sit: Feel the air on your face. Listen to how loud the stillness and quiet-dark of a new day may sound. Enjoy the calmness and serenity of the planet, of everything around you. There's nowhere to rush to, just you and your child, sitting in the moment. Listening. Waiting, in the silent, sleepy world.\n\nSoon, the call of just one bird will pierce the air and stillness.\n\nFirst one call. Followed by another. And then another and another. Behold as sounds and calls coming from each and every direction fill the air. As the day lightens and the world awakens, the chorus will fade. Throughout the day, you and your child may make note of daily birdcalls, sounds, and songs. They will be present but nothing like that of the dawn chorus.\n\n  **_Promotes wonder, relaxation, and awareness_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Why do birds sound so loud in the morning?**\n\n**A: Cooler temperatures and still air in the early morning allow bird calls to travel and be heard more effectively.**\n\n# **HOME TWEET HOME**\n\n**N ESTS ARE ASTOUNDING** architectural and engineering feats\u2014homes for birds that defy elements of weather while supporting and protecting very fragile eggs, and often at elevated heights. What's even more astonishing is the fact that these structures are deftly engineered and created by animals (birds) that lack fingers and opposable thumbs.\n\nCome spring, the avian world is all about nesting as birds prepare to incubate eggs and raise chicks\u2014the sole purpose of nesting. Birds get busy gathering materials for their homes: animal fur (and even dog hair!), twigs, natural fibers, grasses, dried leaves, moss, lichen, and most anything that is soft and stringy.\n\nUnfortunately, birds also gather nesting materials that prove harmful to them, such as fishing line and other litter, which they may become tangled in. A combination of human litter and loss of habitat for birds causes this problem and also poses the largest threat to wild bird species, as nesting grounds, food sources, and natural habitats that support nesting are increasingly being developed and\/or polluted by humans.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nCreating a nest helper ball is a wonderful way to offer birds safe and earth-friendly materials to utilize, while also providing you and your child a rich opportunity to observe bird-nesting behavior.\n\nExplain to your child that just as he has a special bed to snuggle into at night and a cozy home to live in, birds raising families require a home, too. These homes are called nests, and they come in many shapes and sizes. Nests will be a safe and secure place for a mother bird to lay her eggs, where she, and often her mate\u2014depending on the species\u2014will incubate the eggs and care for the chicks until they _fledge_ , or leave the nest. Providing materials for nesting birds will help them with their nest building. This nest helper ball is a great way to do it.\n\n**Easily bendable floral wire (the thicker the better)**\n\n**Wire cutters**\n\n**Nesting materials**\n\n**  A variety of fibers such as jute (4 inches or less in length, as birds can get tangled in longer lengths)**\n\n**  Cotton string**\n\n**  Scraps of yarn, in neutral colors (to keep the nest hidden from predators)**\n\n**  Bits of cotton**\n\n**  Dried grasses**\n\n**  Natural raffia**\n\n**  Dried leaves**\n\n  1. Cut off an 8- to 12-inch section of floral wire.\n\n  2. Bend the floral wire around and around, to create a hollow orb approximately 3 or 4 inches in diameter.\n\n  3. Gently stuff the center of the wire ball with a variety of nesting materials.\n\n  4. Attach a string to the ball, for hanging.\n\n  5. Hang your nest helper ball to a tree branch or anywhere a bird may access it. Watch and enjoy as birds help themselves, plucking and grabbing and dashing off with their nesting material. As materials are depleted, refill the ball.\n\n  **_Promotes creativity, stewardship, and conservation_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Are all bird nests alike?**\n\n**A: Birds make the most variety of homes, or nests, than any other wild animal in the world. Just a few types of bird nests include:**\n\n**  Woven nests (male weaver birds create an intricate, woven nest)**\n\n**  Sack nests (orioles weave a sack nest far out on a limb, high off the ground)**\n\n**  Cup-shaped nests (hummingbirds make the smallest cup nest, using grasses, lichen, and spider's web)**\n\n**  Cavity nests (woodpeckers carve a cavity nest inside a tree's trunk)**\n\n**  Floating nests (grebes make a floating nest on water, anchoring it to rooted water plants)**\n\n**  Ground nests (Killdeer nest directly on the ground)**\n\n**  Stick nests (doves and eagles create nests using sticks)**\n\n**  Mound nests (flamingos create a nest on the ground out of mud)**\n\n# **FEATHERY FIELD TRIP**\n\n**J UST WHO'S IN** your neighborhood anyway? Aren't you curious? Certain birds remain in your area year-round, as residents. Others are seasonal, spending a window of time in your area for wintering or breeding. Others pass through, stopping by briefly during their migration. It's remarkable to realize that each and every day holds a chance for a new discovery where birds are concerned, right in your own backyard and neighborhood!\n\nWonder about the birds in your area with your child, and make it an adventure to discover them together. As you begin to see and hear the birds in your neighborhood, you may find that the species in one area, such as in your backyard, are different than the species that inhabit your front yard or your neighbor's house or the house a block away.\n\nTake a walk with your child, with the sole purpose of listening and watching for birds in your yard and around your neighborhood. Make it a field trip!\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nBring along a notebook and pen. Then, ask the following questions:\n\n**  Do you see the same species of birds in the front yard and the backyard?**\n\n**  Do you see the same species of birds down the street?**\n\n**  Do morning species differ from evening species?**\n\nWith your child, create a list of all the birds you have seen in your backyard and neighborhood. Include the following details:\n\nDate:\n\nTime:\n\nSpecies (my best guess):\n\nBehavior (feeding, hopping, perching, singing, etc.):\n\nLocation (high\/low, ground, sky, tree, etc.):\n\nSound or calls heard:\n\n  **_Promotes curiosity, observation, and awareness of surroundings and wildlife_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: I see a lot of birds during the day, but where do these birds go at night?**\n\n**A: Birds that are active during the day,** **_diurnal_** **birds, sleep during the night. Some sleep in tree cavities or nooks and crevices, which shelter them from weather. Others sleep in birdhouses or in dense shrubs. Some sleep perched in trees. And some gather to sleep, or** **_roost_ ,** **in large flocks, such as blackbirds. Birds tuck their bills into their shoulders or backs, where the air is warmed by their body temperature. They fluff and puff their feathers to keep their bodies insulated when temperatures are cold, too.**\n\n# **SPLASHY TWEET RETREAT**\n\n**W ATER SOURCES** are important to all living things, and birds are no exception. Birds require water year-round for survival. They will both drink and bathe in the water source you provide. Birds are attracted to drips, ponds, puddles, plants and rocks that \"pool,\" and sprays and mists\u2014really any water source will be a welcome delight for them!\n\nYou can attract birds and assist in their well-being by creating and offering a simple birdbath. Once you do, it will offer great joy for you and your child as you observe birds while they drink and bathe. Sometimes birds may even wait in line for a turn at the water you provide, or you may notice several birds or several different species drinking simultaneously.\n\nThere is nothing is more joyful than watching a bird take a bath, either, as they immerse their heads and bodies under water, rolling, fluffing, and shaking water everywhere. It is bird bliss!\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nExplain to your child how fortunate we are to have water sources in our homes: faucets for drinking water and bathing. But what about wildlife? What about the birds in our yard? They need to drink water and take baths, too, just like we do. Take action and offer a water source for your bird neighbors. Then, feel good knowing you're helping to sustain a habitat necessary for wild birds and their health and survival. It will be fun to experience birds at your water source, too. Here are some tips for creating a splashy tweet retreat:\n\n**  You don't need to buy a birdbath. Any shallow pan will work as a water source for birds. It should not be very deep, 2 to 3 inches is plenty. Stone, ceramic, or plastic trays, such as those used for flowerpots, are an ideal depth. A ceramic dog bowl will work well, too.**\n\n**  Water must always be fresh. Dump, wipe, and refill with fresh water at least every other day.**\n\n**  Birds enjoy visiting water sources that are on a pedestal or on the ground. Create your splashy retreat near a shrub or potted plant so birds have a safe place to retreat for drying off. If possible, place it near a window where you may observe birds while you're inside as they bathe and drink outside.**\n\n**  Place a large rock or several pebbles in the center of your birdbath, protruding out from the water's surface. Or, place a small tree branch across the birdbath's surface. The birds will perch upon the branch or rocks. This also helps birds judge the depth of the water.**\n\n  **_Promotes stewardship, curiosity, and an appreciation for avian wildlife_**\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**As you begin observing birds at your birdbath, you'll notice they don't all drink the same way. Some species dip their beaks in and sip, while others dip their beaks in the water, then raise up their beaks to swallow the water they've captured. How many different drinking behaviors can you spy?**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Do all birds take baths?**\n\n**A: Feathers are one characteristic unique to birds, and bathing is a very important part of feather maintenance for them. But birds don't bathe in just water. Birds may also bathe in the sun, stretching out their wings and allowing the ultraviolet rays to disinfect their feathers. You may also notice birds bathing in dust and sand, moving and rolling around as if in water. Dirt baths also help maintain a healthy plumage, cleaning feathers and helping to balance oil levels.**\n\n# **A RUSTIC ROOST**\n\n**Y OU'LL OFTEN SEE** colorful and embellished birdhouses available for purchase, but think about it: with the exception of bowerbirds, how often do we see colorful bird-made nests in the wild? Do birds want colorful houses? There's a reason female birds are often more drab in color than their male counterparts: to camouflage them. Being camouflaged helps to protect female birds from predators while sitting patiently and stationary upon the nest during egg incubation and chick rearing. The last thing a mother bird needs while incubating eggs and caring for her chicks is unwanted attention.\n\nIn the wild, bird nests are also often camouflaged so that they blend in with their natural surroundings. They're designed with natural elements and meld seamlessly with the trees, shrubs, or landscapes where they were created. A bird nest is a vulnerable space: danger prowls at every turn in the form of predators, such as hungry snakes, mammals, and even other birds.\n\nSupplying a birdhouse for nesting birds is an engaging and fun way to observe birds in the wild as a family unit. It provides an opportunity to watch a mother and father bird come and go as they fill it with found and gathered nesting materials, search for food, and feed their young. And if you're lucky, you may even experience the miraculous journey as the chicks fledge from their nest. In addition to these intrinsic joys, it also offers a habitat for birds during nesting season.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nDesign a rustic, natural birdhouse with your child\u2014one that is simple, subtle, functional, and beautiful. Create a house that will harmonize with nature while also providing shelter for the next generation of a wild bird family.\n\n**1 standard, simple wooden birdhouse from your local bird or garden store**\n\n**Natural materials for decorating**\n\n**  Twigs**\n\n**  Bark**\n\n**  Pine cones**\n\n**  Driftwood**\n\n**  Leaves**\n\n**  Small branches**\n\n**  Moss**\n\n**  Small pebbles**\n\n**Glue gun and glue sticks**\n\nEmbellish your standard birdhouse with natural materials, using a glue gun or glue sticks to attach as few or as many items as you'd like. There's no right or wrong way to design a rustic birdhouse. The idea is simple, and the design is 100 percent yours and your child's.\n\nOnce finished, hang your rustic roost outdoors from a porch eave or on a pole with a predator baffle, which will protect it from predators such as hungry raccoons or snakes. Your birdhouse will not only blend beautifully with the environment, but it will also provide shelter and comfort to a feathered family. At the end of each nesting season (fall and winter), dispose of any nesting materials from inside the birdhouse to help keep it clean and ready for spring nesting once again.\n\n  **_Promotes creativity, empathy, and stewardship_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: What should I do if I find a baby bird on the ground?**\n\n**A: If you find a baby bird with feathers on the ground and he appears helpless, he has likely fledged (left the nest) and is trying to figure out how to use his wings and feet to fly and land, not unlike a toddler taking his first steps. This \"first time out of nest\" process may take a day or two, and 99.9 percent of the time, his mom and dad are nearby, keeping an eye on the situation and feeding him. Resist the urge to intervene. If you find a naked nestling on the ground, it may have fallen from its nest due to a storm or a predator may have pulled it out. Look around for its nest, and if located, place it back in the nest. If you can't locate a nest, contact a bird rehabber in your area.**\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**Bird babies fall into two categories:** **_precocial_** **and** **_altricial._** **Precocial birds open their eyes soon after hatching and quickly leave the nest, following the mother around for food (think chickens, ducks, and shorebirds). Altricial chicks have two stages of development:** **_nestling_** **and** **_fledgling._** **They are born blind, featherless, and helpless and remain in their nest where parents keep them warm, fed, and sheltered until they are ready to** **_fledge_ ,** **or leave the nest. Bird parents must also constantly forage for food to feed their chicks. Nest time is a very busy time for bird parents!**\n\n# **BIRDS IN MOTION**\n\n**S PRING IS SUCH** a welcome season, with fresh, green growth and longer days following winter's chilly and gray days where it's often a challenge to play outdoors. Come spring, sunshine and warmer temperatures beckon. It's the perfect time to get outside and stretch your wings, at long last.\n\nTake your wee chick under your wing and get outdoors. While you're out there, make it a challenge to spy on birds, observing the many ways they move and enjoy spring weather. Birds are just as excited about springtime as humans: there are bugs to be caught for breakfast, lunch, and dinner\u2014and snacks in between, finally! There are mates to attract and nest materials to gather. Birds are getting busy! You'll also see that they move in many different ways.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nHow many different ways do birds move? Can you find these behaviors?\n\n**  A bird flapping its wings**\n\n**  A bird soaring**\n\n**  A bird hopping**\n\n**  A bird walking**\n\n**  A bird pecking**\n\n**  A bird waddling**\n\n**  A bird perching**\n\n**  A bird singing or calling**\n\n**  A bird running**\n\n**  A bird gathering nesting materials**\n\n**  A bird pulling on a worm**\n\nTurn your observations into a game of Simon Says. Use bird behaviors as commands:\n\n# **SIMON SAYS...**\n\n\"Hop\" like a sparrow\n\n\"Flap your wings\" like a wren\n\n\"Soar\" like a hawk\n\n\"Waddle\" like a duck\n\n\"Perch\" like a songbird\n\n\"Walk\" like a crow\n\n\"Run\" like a thrasher\n\n\"Gather\" like a robin\n\n\"Strut\" like a pigeon\n\nThe playtime will be invigorating. You may even enjoy this game indoors during inclement weather.\n\n  _Encourages observation skills, verbal skills, exercise, and well-being_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Do all birds fly?**\n\n**A: Not all birds can fly. For example, emus, kiwis, ostriches, and penguins are birds that do not fly. There are approximately forty species of birds that do not fly, but none of them live in North America.**\n\n# **DRAW THAT BIRD!**\n\n**U SING A FIELD GUIDE** with your child for bird identification purposes is a wonderful method to properly ID birds you encounter. However, sometimes it's tricky to identify a bird out in the wild. After all, the bird will not sit and patiently wait while you flip through your guide book. Birds are busy. They have places to go and things to do.\n\nAn alternative method to help you and your child easily identify birds you encounter is to practice sketching them as you watch them in their environment. With your sketch and notes in hand, you may later, at your leisure, reference a field guide to compare your field sketches and notes to various species, ultimately and hopefully identifying the birds you noted. It's a fun challenge to learn bird names and to properly ID them. An important element is to not take the process too seriously. Have fun with it, keeping in mind that even bird experts wind up scratching their heads in wonder with bird ID at times, too!\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nYou don't need to be an artist to sketch the birds you see! Practice and have fun. Keep your drawings loose and simple as you follow these steps:\n\n  1. Create a roundish head.\n\n  2. Create an oval body.\n\n  3. Sketch the general length and angle of the tail.\n\n  4. Sketch the general shape and size of the beak.\n\nOnce you've sketched your bird, make notes to describe specific details you observed: the bird's behavior (was it hopping, running, flying, calling, feeding\/foraging?), its location, sounds you heard, and other visual details, such as the bird's size (small, medium, or large) and specific markings and patterns that stood out on the bird's body (white eye stripe above eye, white wing bars on wings, dark stripe through eye, dark bars on tail, speckles on chest or belly).\n\nBefore too long, you may be able to identify a bird simply by its silhouette!\n\n**  Small silhouette (i.e., Anna's Hummingbird, American Goldfinch)**\n\n**  Medium silhouette (i.e., Wood Thrush, European Starling)**\n\n**  Large silhouette (i.e., Pileated Woodpecker, Great Horned Owl)**\n\n  **_Promotes creativity, scientific knowledge, and observation skills_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Where does all of the information we have about birds come from?**\n\n**A: Scientists study animal behavior, and the field of ornithology is the specific scientific study of birds. Information about birds comes from many sources: ornithologists, naturalists, birders, photographers, and people just like you and me, who take the time to observe and learn about birds and then share their findings.**\n\n# **ZOOM IN**\n\n**_F IELD MARKS_** are patterns, designs, spots, stripes, and colors on birds that humans use to distinguish one bird species from another. Birds use them to identify their own bird communities, too! Take your sketching to the next level by adding the field marks to your bird sketches.\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nNext time you're out sketching birds, pay particular attention to their field marks. Here are some things to look out for.\n\n# **HEAD FIELD MARKS**\n\nCrown stripe (White-Throated Sparrow)\u2014a stripe across the top of the bird's head or crown\n\nEyebrow stripe (Carolina Wren)\u2014a stripe above the eye\n\nEyeline stripe (Chipping Sparrow)\u2014a line through the eye\n\nThroat patch (White-Throated Sparrow)\u2014distinctive coloring on a bird's throat\n\nEyering (Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher)\u2014a distinct ring around the bird's eye\n\n# **WING FIELD MARKS**\n\nWingbars (Northern Mockingbird)\u2014thin, white or pale-colored stripes across the wing\n\nWing patches (male Red-winged Blackbird)\u2014blocks of color on the wing\n\n# **TAIL FIELD MARKS**\n\nLong tail\u2014Brown Thrasher\n\nShort tail\u2014White-Breasted Nuthatch\n\nForked tail\u2014Eastern Phoebe, Purple Martin\n\nTail with rounded ends\u2014Gray Catbird\n\nTail with square ends\u2014Eastern Kingbird\n\nUpward-pointing tail\u2014Carolina Wren\n\nDownward-pointing tail\u2014Northern Cardinal\n\nSpots, stripes, or a coloration different from the bird's body\u2014Spotted Towhee\n\n# **BEAK FIELD MARKS**\n\nCone-shaped beaks (northern cardinal, American goldfinch)\u2014strong, cone-shaped beaks ideal for cracking open seeds\n\nLong beaks (egrets, herons)\u2014long and pointed for spearing fish and frogs\n\nPetite beaks (warblers)\u2014pointy and narrow for grabbing bugs off of leaves\n\nFlat beaks (flycatchers)\u2014flat and wide at the base for catching bugs in mid air\n\nSpatulate beaks (spoonbills)\u2014spoon-like for moving through mud and water to catch fish and crustaceans\n\nHook beaks (hawks)\u2014for flesh tearing\n\nChisel beaks (woodpeckers)\u2014for boring holes in wood and to search crevices for bugs\n\nPrying beaks (crossbills)\u2014specific for prying apart pine cone scales to get at pine cone seeds\n\nProbing beaks (hummingbirds)\u2014for drinking deep into tube-shaped flowers and catching small bugs.\n\n  _Promotes attention to detail, observation, creativity, and scientific knowledge_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Do all birds have feathers?**\n\n**A: Yes, all birds have feathers. They are the only living animal on our planet with feathers. That makes them pretty special, don't you think?**\n\n# **FEATHERED FIRSTS**\n\n**I T IS ALWAYS EXCITING** to notice a bird species you've never seen before. It's a feeling not unlike, perhaps, spying a unicorn in the woods or a mermaid out at sea\u2014there's something mysterious and unknown that you've never seen before, and then suddenly, you see it. Even more wonderful is that spotting a new bird species may happen anywhere: in your own yard, on your way to school, through a car or bus window, while walking or bike riding, in your community, or during family travels!\n\nAs you and your child practice close observation of your outside environment, you'll certainly notice _resident_ bird species\u2014those that live in your area year-round. Many will be familiar and common. But every now and again, you will spy a species and wonder, _what is that bird? I've never seen it before!_ It becomes a feathered first, and the fun begins as you and your child attempt to identify it.\n\nYou may also discover a common species with unusual markings, such as a _leucistic_ bird\u2014a bird with predominantly white feathers where the standard brown, blue, red, or yellow plumage should appear.\n\nDuring migration seasons, you may discover a variety of species passing through or many new species that may even stick around for the season. On occasion, a bird species that is very far away from its usual habitat may appear in your area as a vagrant, or accidental, visitor. This happens for a variety of reasons. A storm might force a flying bird off of its regular migratory route, and the exhausted bird may need to rest far from its range. Juvenile birds making their first migration may miss their destination, overshooting or undershooting where they're supposed to be. And those who study birds believe that some birds may even be wanderers. Just as some humans have a tendency to wander, birds may do the same\u2014perhaps in search of better food sources and habitat.\n\nIt's always exciting to see a new and unusual species, and it's always a thrill to see a \"first\"!\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nDocument the bird species you and your child see for the first time ever in your lives. Many birders keep track of each bird species they've seen for the first time and have positively identified, and these bird species are called _lifers\u2014_ meaning a bird that you properly identify and see for the first time in your life.\n\nOnce you begin noting all of the new-to-you bird species, you will be surprised at how many birds you actually encounter. Note each new species everywhere you go: at home, away from home, during travels\u2014anywhere!\n\nNever-before-seen species feel like a special gift from nature, and with each newfound treasure comes the experience of elation and intrinsic joy.\n\n**LIFER LIST**  \n---\n\nToday, for the first time ever, I saw a:\n\n**Species:**\n\n**Location:**\n\n**Date:** | **Species:**\n\n**Location:**\n\n**Date:**\n\n**Species:**\n\n**Location:**\n\n**Date:** | **Species:**\n\n**Location:**\n\n**Date:**\n\n**Species:**\n\n**Location:**\n\n**Date:** | **Species:**\n\n**Location:**\n\n**Date:**\n\n**Species:**\n\n**Location:**\n\n**Date:** | **Species:**\n\n**Location:**\n\n**Date:**\n\n  **_Stimulates anticipation, excitement, goal-setting, and wonder_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Why do people make lists of the different birds they see?**\n\n**A: Nature is very complex and diverse. Making lists and categories of the living things we encounter in nature helps us to better organize and understand them.**\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**A \"Big Year\" is an informal competition among birders to see who can identify, by sight or sound, the largest number of bird species in one calendar year. In 2016, Arjan Dwarshuis broke the world record for most bird species seen in one year (6,852 species), breaking the previous record set by Noah Strycker in 2015 (6,042 species). Strycker traveled across 41 countries and visited all seven continents for his Big Year quest. For more information about this competition, visit the American Birding Association website,ABA.org.**\n\n# **FANTASTIC FEEDERS**\n\n**M AINTAINING BIRD FEEDERS** provides you and your child with the opportunity to easily share your lives with the lives of birds, and right through the comfort of your home's window\u2014a joyful and rewarding experience, indeed!\n\nFind joy in every aspect of maintaining your bird feeders: the thoughtful planning of how and where you'll place the feeders in your yard; the maintenance of your feeders as you keep them clean and keep birds healthy; the reward of providing for hungry birds; and the thrill of observing and making birds part of your family's day-to-day life experience. Each experience with bird feeding is a gift from nature, and the bonus is that nature is brought into your home through your windows.\n\nExperiencing bird feeders may take as little time or as long as you'd like\u2014from just a few moments through a window as your family enjoys breakfast to a day-long experience as you and your child make time to observe, enjoy, and wonder out your windows anytime you chance to glance out.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nWhen establishing and maintaining feeders, consider an organized plan as to what food you will offer birds, what type of feeder you need, and where you will place it. For example, bird feeders come in many shapes and sizes to support a variety of food sources, and you can hang them from shepherd's hooks, poles, tree branches (although here they'll be prone to squirrels and other animals), deck railings, and windows. Here are things to keep in mind when setting up your feeder:\n\n**  Consider placing foods enjoyed by smaller birds, such as finches, in an area farther away from foods enjoyed by larger, more assertive birds, such as jays and woodpeckers.**\n\n**  Implement a baffle on bird feeder poles to keep squirrels, raccoons, and other hungry, non-bird animals out of feeders. You'll find baffles wherever bird feeders are sold.**\n\n**  Place your feeders where they will be safe from window collisions. Windows reflect foliage and sky, and many birds fly into them believing that's just what they are\u2014open space. Feeders are safest when placed closest to windows\u2014within 3 feet\u2014or when at least 30 feet from a window.**\n\n**  Place feeders near trees or shrubs, so birds may take refuge and rest when necessary, but don't place them within 10 feet, which may provide jumping off points for squirrels.**\n\n**  Place hummingbird feeders in shady or partially shaded areas. This prevents the sugar-water solution from fermenting in the sun.**\n\n**  Designate a dry, airtight place to store your bird food, such as a lidded tub.**\n\n**  Regularly clean your feeders, especially after rain, which can cause seed to mildew. To clean, just scrub with a solution of 8 parts water and 1 part vinegar, rinsing very well and drying after each scrubbing.**\n\n**  Certain bird species enjoy feeding on the ground, below feeders. Keep this area tidy, raking away soiled and old seed debris to maintain a healthy environment for feeding.**\n\nNote: From time to time, you might notice a finch at your feeder with red, swollen eyes. Unfortunately, this is a sign of an infection that may spread to other finches through a contaminated feeder. If this occurs, take your feeder(s) down, clean them, and keep them down for a week to prevent the spread of the infection. You may report signs of finch eye diseases (mycoplasmal conjunctivitis) at Project FeederWatch, through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. With your feedback, scientists may track the spread of this disease, which is not contagious to humans but is to other finches.\n\n# **TYPES OF FEEDERS**\n\nFinch feeder\u2014sock feeder, mesh feeder, or tube feeder to hold Nyjer seed\n\nHopper feeders\u2014for a variety of seeds, nuts, and fruits\n\nNectar\/jelly feeders\u2014for hummingbirds and orioles\n\nPlatform feeders\u2014for a variety of seeds, nuts, and fruit\n\nStackable cylinder feeder\u2014for stacking seed, fruit, and nut cakes\n\nSuet\/fat feeders\u2014as the name implies, for suets and fats (cool weather only)\u2014designs with \"tails,\" or long tips at the base, support the natural feeding habits of woodpeckers, providing support for their tails\n\nTube feeders\u2014for smaller seeds\n\n# **TYPES OF BIRD FOODS**\n\nA diverse mix of seeds with other food options will invite the greatest variety of birds. Here are some ideas:\n\n**  Apples and oranges will be enjoyed by buntings, cardinals, catbirds, chickadees, mockingbirds, orioles, tanagers, and waxwings.**\n\n**  Black oil sunflower seeds will offer the most versatility with bird feeding, as they are enjoyed by most birds.**\n\n**  Dried berries and raisins will be enjoyed by bluebirds, mockingbirds, orioles, robins, and waxwings. Soak them in water overnight prior to providing them.**\n\n**  Mealworms will be enjoyed by bluebirds, robins, and wrens.**\n\n**  Nectar (4 parts water to 1 part sugar) will be enjoyed by hummingbirds.**\n\n**  Nyjer will be enjoyed by finches.**\n\n**  Peanuts (raw, unsalted, shelled, or in the shell) will be enjoyed by blue jays, nuthatches, titmice, and woodpeckers.**\n\n**  Shelled corn will be enjoyed by Northern Cardinals, doves and blackbirds.**\n\n**  Suet (during cold weather) will be enjoyed by bluebirds, buntings, cardinals, chickadees, creepers, goldfinches, grosbeaks, nuthatches, tanagers, titmice, warblers, woodpeckers, and wrens.**\n\n  **_Fosters stewardship, responsibility, and an opportunity to learn more about birds_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Why do we see just the same types of birds at our bird feeders over and over again?**\n\n**A: Many common birds visit bird feeders. This is a great thing, because when we become truly familiar with the ordinary, it provides us an opportunity to notice the extraordinary: we may then begin to notice a bird's unique personality and behavior. And we become skilled and ready to notice when a mysterious species happens by.**\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**The House Finch originated in the western United States and Mexico. However, in 1940 a small number of them were turned loose on Long Island, New York, following failed attempts to sell these \"Hollywood finches\" as pets in cages. Since that release, they have reproduced and their numbers have spread across the United States and southern Canada.**\n\n# **GETTING TO KNOW YOU**\n\nI **T TAKES TIME** to get to know birds, just as it takes time to get to know people. Once you start to really pay attention\u2014to notice and _encounter_ birds\u2014you'll see that certain species have very distinct personalities. Explain to your child that just as people have different personalities or behaviors\u2014some people are shy, some people are bold, some people are silly\u2014birds have different personalities, too.\n\nBlue jays tend to be bold and boisterous. Wrens are the cats of the bird world, ever-curious about every little thing, inquisitive, cheery, and tenacious. Leave a window, garage door, or house door open? You can bet a wren will explore the open space. One pair built their nest inside my sister's kitchen. Remarkably, she kindly left her back door open for a month so the parents could come and go as needed to find food (bugs) and feed their nestlings, which hatched and fledged and were soon shooed back outdoors. That's what happens when you leave a door open in the spring with wrens around. Lesson learned.\n\nAnd personalities even vary among specific species: one White-Breasted Nuthatch may be passive, while another may be aggressive. One blue jay may be courageous, while another is more timid. Birds strive to obtain the very same things we do: food, shelter, and a safe place to raise their families. We coexist, birds and people. Yet, when we have intimate encounters with birds, it gives us insight into the workings of the world and humbles us.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nGet to know the inner lives of birds. Become familiar with their behavior. Make time for little pauses in your day-to-day doings with your child so you may observe and experience birds around you, and these little pauses will provide a huge reward as you glimpse into their inner lives. Look for these personality traits and behaviors in birds:\n\n**  A bird that exhibits curiosity (exploring)**\n\n**  A bird that exhibits affection (courtship behavior, mutual preening, sharing food, caring for young)**\n\n**  A bird that exhibits fear (quick flight and escape, or freezing in place with wide eyes)**\n\n**  A bird that exhibits aggression or assertiveness (posturing to chase away another bird; hissing at, lunging at, or diving at another bird)**\n\n**  A bird that shares with another bird (sharing food or sharing space at a feeder)**\n\n**  A bird that warns of danger (alarm or distress call)**\n\n**  A bird interacting with another bird (chattering, mutual preening, or simple camaraderie of flying and feeding together)**\n\n**  A bird that appears sad, lost, or ill (looking for a lost mate or chick, making a cry hoping for a response, appearing listless and droopy)**\n\n**  A bird that is sleepy or tired (resting with eyes closed, bill tucked into feathers)**\n\n**  A bird that is relaxed (often making purring sounds; may sun itself, wings out and relaxed, feeling safe and non-threatened)**\n\n**  A bird that communicates with another bird (calling to share news of food)**\n\n**  A bird that is playful (toying with leaves to make sense of its surroundings)**\n\nAs you observe, before long, you will be fully aware of each individual bird and its distinctive and unique personality. You will know these birds and count them among your friends and, perhaps, even fall in love with one or two (or three or four).\n\nAs you become more familiar with the birds that you observe and the behavior of each, ask your child if he has a favorite bird, and why? Record or document your child's response. Share your favorite bird with your child, too, explaining what traits drew this bird toward your heart.\n\n  _Promotes empathy, observation skills, and understanding_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Do birds have feelings?**\n\n**A: Scientists (ornithologists) and others who study bird behavior believe that birds do indeed experience emotions. They feel fear, relaxation, curiosity, and excitement. Their range of emotions continues to be studied and questioned. As you watch birds and their behavior, what do you think?**\n\n# **THE PERFECT PATCH**\n\nF **ORGING A CONNECTION** to the natural world around us is vital to our mental and physical well-being. When we immerse ourselves in nature, we form an intrinsic stewardship and interconnectedness to plants, animals, and this big, beautiful world. What a gift to give our children! We become in tune with the network of energy between all living things: birds, bugs, seeds, plants, and ecosystems.\n\nOne meaningful and unique way to immerse yourself in nature and the birds who call it home begins with having a \"patch\"\u2014a specific place, all your own, where you may \"bird\" each day to take notes and count the variety of species found in that specific patch. Every bird enthusiast should have a special birding patch, a place you can visit regularly, a place you may get to know better than anyone, a place to unplug, tune in, and enjoy immensely. A place that is completely yours\u2014shared with birds, of course!\n\nYour patch might be a specific space or area in your backyard, or any place you can visit with your child by foot or bike, such as a green area near your school's playground, a bus stop, or a city park. Any natural space or locale that might entice birds to visit will make a good patch for you and your child.\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nOnce you and your child have claimed a patch, begin visiting and spending time there regularly. Bring a pencil or pen for field notes and dress comfortably. While at your patch, quietly observe. Carefully listen. What do you hear? What do you see? How do you feel? Most birds are active during the early morning and in the evening. Does this make a difference with the bird activity at _your_ patch?\n\nNow that you and your child have a patch all your own\u2014and you may claim more than one patch in more than one place\u2014make notes and sketches to document the birds you encounter there.\n\nPatch location:\n\nDate: Time: Weather:\n\nHow many birds did you see?\n\nHow many different kinds of birds did you see?\n\nHow many bird sounds did you hear?\n\nSketches:\n\n  _Promotes environmental awareness, relaxation, observation, and auditory skills_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Some birds look exactly the same, but one is bright and one is dull. Why is that?**\n\n**A: Sometimes the male and female in a species look different from one another, a term called** **_sexual dimorphism._** **Often, the male is more colorful than the female. A male's bright color, or plumage, may help communicate to a female he'd like to attract that he is healthy. A female's dull coloring, or plumage, helps her to blend in as she incubates eggs on the nest.**\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**GISS is an acronym for general impression, size, shape. The more time you spend with birds noting GISS, the sooner you'll be able to identify species by a mere silhouette, shape, flight pattern, or behavior pattern.**\n\n# **RAINDROP CAFE**\n\nR **AINY DAYS BECKON EXPLORATION!** Everything is washed, fresh, clean, and dewy. The air smells moist and alive with new scents. Water drops pool and glisten. Puddles form. Just as rain is often a welcome gift for our gardens, landscapes, and water sources, birds celebrate rain, as well. They rely solely on nature for the water they need to survive.\n\nHead outdoors with your child following a rainstorm, specifically to observe birds as they relish in all the needed moisture that nature has just given them. Find a spot where you can observe birds in action, such as on a deck or porch. If it's too rainy to be outside, you can also observe birds through a window.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nCan you find these rainy-day bird behaviors?\n\n**  A bird sipping from a shallow puddle on a deck, porch, or sidewalk**\n\n**  A bird drinking from a puddle on the ground**\n\n**  A bird drinking water droplets from a leaf**\n\n**  A bird bathing in a puddle**\n\n**  A bird bathing in water droplets on a leaf (hummingbirds love to do this!)**\n\n  **_Promotes awareness, understanding, and empathy_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Where do birds go while it's raining?**\n\n**A: Although birds are pretty waterproof, birds avoid flying during big rainstorms, and do their best to hunker down and perch out of the rain under foliage. This is because storms make it difficult for flight to take place.**\n\n# **A HAVEN FOR HUMMINGBIRDS**\n\nT **HERE MAY NOT BE** a more welcome bird anywhere in the world than the hummingbird. Wee wisps of air, buzzing wings, sparkling eyes, and a brilliant rainbow of iridescent feathers\u2014they fill us with wonder and delight as they capture our hearts.\n\nHummingbirds can hover, fly backward or forward, and dazzle us, not only in their appearance but also with their precise aerial acrobatic capabilities. Approximately one dozen hummingbird species summer in the United States, with the most common being the Ruby-Throated, the Black-Chinned, the Anna's, and the Rufous. On the Pacific Coast, Gulf Coast, and in the Southwest, lucky you, hummingbird season is year-round!\n\nAs migrators, their arrival each spring is highly anticipated. And their departure, come fall, can often leave us feeling a bit sad as we worry over their long journey south. Many migrate thousands of miles each spring and fall. Can you imagine such a huge journey for such a tiny bird through the elements it may encounter: storms, predation, avoiding impact on human structures, navigating correctly, the Ruby-Throated flying over the Gulf nonstop with nowhere to rest, and the like?\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nYou and your child may create a safe haven for these wondrous jewels right in your own backyard, to welcome them home come spring. Once they locate the shelter and food sources you've provided, they will remember this haven and return to it year after year during each spring migration!\n\n1. Integrate colorful, nectar-rich plants, either in pots or planted in the ground. Hummingbirds enjoy nectaring from tube-shaped flowers. Check with a local nursery or field guide for your region to find native plants that hummingbirds love, such as:\n\n**  Varieties of beebalm ( _Monarda fistulosa, M. citriodora, M. didyma, M. punctata_ )**\n\n**  Trumpet honeysuckle ( _Lonicera sempervirens_ )**\n\n**  Cardinal flower ( _Lobelia cardinalis_ )**\n\n**  Sage ( _Salvia_ species)**\n\n2. Place hummingbird nectar feeders in your yard or on your porch or patio, perhaps even adjacent to the flowers you've planted for them. Select areas that are shaded, or at least not in direct sunlight, so the nectar won't get too hot and ferment\/spoil. Don't place more than one hummingbird feeder in the same area, as hummingbirds become territorial once they've secured a food source. You'll notice, once a food source is secured, one hummingbird will perch and watch over this food source, guarding it from other hummingbirds. Hummingbird feeders can be decorative, but be sure to select a feeder that:\n\n**  Is easy to clean**\n\n**  Will not drip**\n\n**  Is easy to fill**\n\n**  Has an ant mote\u2014a reservoir that may be filled with water to keep hungry ants at bay (ant motes may also be purchased separately)**\n\n3. Fill your feeder with homemade nectar (see the recipe below). Take your hummingbird feeder down and clean it at least twice a week, using warm water and a spoonful of white vinegar, rinsing very thoroughly with each cleaning. Use a clean toothbrush to scrub your feeder's sipping portals where mildew may grow. Use a bottlebrush to clean the interior reservoir. With each cleaning, replenish the feeder with fresh nectar, as sugar-water nectar ferments and spoils in the heat after a few days. This is part of the fun, the joy, and the process of providing for and caring for hummingbirds!\n\n# **HUMMINGBIRD NECTAR RECIPE**\n\nMix 1 cup of sugar with 4 cups of water (or 1 part sugar to 4 parts water for a smaller or larger portion). That's it! Here are some tips:\n\n**  Warm all or some of the water on the stove before adding the sugar. Stir the sugar in until it dissolves.**\n\n**  Do not use honey, brown sugar, artificial sweeteners, or red dye.**\n\n**  It is absolutely _not_ necessary to add food coloring to hummingbird nectar. Not only is it unnecessary, it's not healthy for hummingbirds. Humans don't care for artificial coloring in their food sources. Why supply these wee birds with concentrated, artificial color?**\n\n**  Allow the nectar to cool before placing it in the feeder.**\n\n**  Store unused nectar in a lidded glass jar in the refrigerator for up to one week. A large mason jar works well, or a clean glass milk jug works, too.**\n\n**  If you live in a region where species only breed for the summer, keep your hummingbird feeders fresh, filled, and available through October. Weary migrants may rely on your feeder as they travel through, even though they're few and far between in late fall.**\n\n  **_Encourages stewardship and responsibility while fostering wonder and joy_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Do hummingbirds only drink sugar water?**\n\n**A: Hummingbirds need protein and eat small bugs, such as gnats, which they catch in mid-air. Bugs, along with sugar water and nectar from flowers, provide them with the energy they need to survive through each day.**\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**Hummingbirds must eat every ten to fifteen minutes and visit between one thousand and two thousand flowers a day. At night, hummingbirds go into a state of torpor, or deep sleep, where their metabolic rate is slowed by as much as 95 percent, so as to not consume too much energy while sleeping.**\n\n# **BOUNTIFUL BIRDSCAPE**\n\nD **ISCUSS WITH YOUR CHILD** the essential elements your family needs to be comfortable, safe, and healthy: a home that offers shelter and protection, food, and water. Explain that birds require the same things to survive in the wild.\n\nTogether, explore your outdoor space and determine if it is a welcoming place that birds may inhabit and feel safe and protected in. Like all wild animals, birds require food, shelter, water, and a place to raise their young. These four components help make a happy, healthy bird habitat.\n\nIt's easy to create a birdscape: a welcoming and healthy habitat for birds. The birds will be rewarded with a safe, nourishing haven, and you and your child will be rewarded with their presence and knowing you've made improvements to the environment.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nCreating a birdscape helps implement an ecosystem that supports the health and livelihood of many living things, which, in turn, supports birds. To feed the birds is to also feed the bugs! Most North American birds\u201496 percent of them (excluding seabirds)\u2014feed their young insects and arachnids. There must be a chain of life present in a healthy birdscape; the more diverse, the better.\n\n1. Start small. Work with tiny patches outside your home to integrate native plant species into existing garden areas. Even pots with native plants on decks, porches, terraces, and patios will be beneficial.\n\n2. Integrate native bushes and trees that provide berries. Not only are the berries an important food source for wildlife, but their flowers provide a vital food source for nectar-feeding insects, while their structure provides shelter and nesting spaces for a host of wildlife. Consider these species if native to your area:\n\n**  Alternate-leaf dogwood**\n\n**  Arrowwood**\n\n**  Blueberry**\n\n**  Chokeberry**\n\n**  Deerberry**\n\n**  Bilberry**\n\n**  Elderberry**\n\n**  Hawthorn**\n\n**  Spicebush**\n\n**  Virginia creeper**\n\n**  Winterberry**\n\n3. Feed the butterflies, bees, and moths with native plants, and you also create a haven for toads, spiders, and other hoppy, creepy crawlies, which birds will love. Plants native to your area may include:\n\n**  Beebalm**\n\n**  Black-eyed Susan**\n\n**  Cardinal flower**\n\n**  Goldenrod**\n\n**  Joe-pye weed (requires a lot of space)**\n\n**  Milkweed**\n\n**  Sage**\n\n4. Avoid use of fertilizers and pesticides. Birds need bugs, as do toads and other wildlife. Allow birds and their wild friends to be your natural exterminators.\n\n5. Implement a water feature: a birdbath, bubbler, or fountain.\n\n6. Include evergreens, either planted in the ground or as shrubs in pots. Evergreens, such as junipers, provide birds with protective shelter year-round.\n\nBit by bit, piece by piece, as you and your child enhance your outdoor space with native plants, you will be inviting a host of wildlife, including your bird friends. Take joy in your efforts as you experience a growing diversity of wildlife right in your own backyard.\n\n  **_Facilitates stewardship, outdoor exercise, and living in harmony with the environment_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: What are native plants?**\n\n**A: Native plants are plants that occur naturally in our area, having existed in the natural landscape for many, many years. They are part of our region's ecosystem; they depend on the wildlife in our area, and the wildlife depend on them, too.**\n\n# **WING IT!**\n\nW **HEN WE THINK OF BIRDS ,** we can't help but think of flight. And when we think of flight, wings come to mind, of course! Birds are masters of the sky, indeed.\n\nFlight patterns vary by species, as do the shapes, styles, and markings of bird wings. Each type of wing has evolved with a specific function to aid in a species' survival. Explore flight and bird physiology with your child, and your child will certainly soar to new heights with wonder and amazement regarding these winged wonders.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nTake a moment to watch a bird in flight with your child, perhaps outdoors or through a window. Explain to your child that our arms are similar to a bird's wings. We both have an upper arm bone that connects to a shoulder. We both have elbows. We both have a forearm. And we both have wrists that connect our forearms to our hands\u2014although a bird's hand is a bit different than ours. A bird's upper arm and forearm make up the section of wing close to its body, its inner wing. The remainder of the wing, the outer portion from the wing's center to the wing's tip, makes up the hand section.\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**Turkey vultures and albatross can soar for hours without ever flapping their wings.**\n\nSome birds (like eagles and hawks) soar with passive, soaring wings. Some birds (the Laysan Albatross, for example) have active soaring wings\u2014these are long and narrow and use wind currents, which allows them to soar for a long time. Some birds (swifts and terns) have high-speed wings, which are long and thin and make these birds very fast. Some birds (cardinals or the American Robin, for example) have elliptical wings, which are perfect for fast take off and short, quick bursts of speed, but the speed is not maintained. Some wings are tiny and very fast\u2014hovering wings\u2014such as those found on a hummingbird.\n\n**BIRD SPECIES** | **WING BEATS PER 10 SECONDS**  \n---|---  \nAmerican Crow | 20 wing beats  \nPigeon | 30 wing beats  \nChickadee | 70 wing beats  \nHummingbird | 700 wing beats\n\nEncourage your child to hold his arms out like bird wings. Invite him to flap his \"wings\" like a bird would, and practice flapping until his arms get tired. Then, using a timer\u2014even just counting out loud will work\u2014take it a step further and record how many wing flaps your child can make within a ten-second time span. Finally, compare his results to the birds listed on the previous page.\n\nIt's quite remarkable to think about the strength and stamina many birds exhibit with their wings! To wrap up this exercise, relax by reading an engaging children's book aloud together, such as _Animals in Flight_ , by Steve Jenkins.\n\n  **_Facilitates exercise, empathy, and appreciation_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Are wings used just for flying?**\n\n**A: All birds have wings, and most birds (excluding penguins and emus, among others) use them to fly. Birds may also use their wings to attract a mate, shelter chicks to keep them warm and protected, serve as a decoy to appear injured (to lure a predator away from a nest or chicks), and to cover captured prey, as an owl may do.**\n\n# **HATS OFF TO HUMMINGBIRDS!**\n\nS **UMMER IS LEAFY** and sunny and rich with plants, bugs, and birds\u2014especially hummingbirds! They seem to be everywhere, flitting through gardens and visiting hummingbird feeders placed out for them. They're a joy to observe in action. So tiny, so quick, so delicate and full of detail. There are many fabulous things about hummingbirds\u2014their remarkable migration journey each spring and fall, the female's cup-shaped nest-building integrated with spider's web, their ability to hover, and also the fact that they're a species that isn't too shy when humans are present.\n\nWith summer and hummingbirds in the mix, it is the perfect time to create a hummingbird hat feeder with your child and enjoy the thrill of having these jeweled wonders feed right from atop your head!\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nFeeding hummingbirds atop your head requires a bit of patience and sitting still\u2014a fun challenge for your wee ones.\n\n4 to 8 colorful silk flowers (from bargain store or craft store)\n\nScissors\n\nCraft glue or glue gun\/glue gun sticks\n\n2 to 5 individual handheld nectar ports or \"nectar dots\" (one-hole feeder source)\n\nBaseball cap or straw hat\n\nHummingbird Nectar (this page)\n\n1. Remove the stems from the silk flowers using scissors or by pulling each stem off.\n\n2. Glue the nectar ports onto the rim of the hat, spacing them evenly around the brim.\n\n3. Glue the flower heads onto the hat, arranging them around and near the hummingbird feeder ports, careful to leave each port visible.\n\n4. Once the materials have set securely to the hat, fill each hummingbird feeder port with homemade hummingbird nectar. Be careful when holding the hat once the reservoirs are filled so as not to spill contents.\n\n5. Place the hat on your head and sit outside, adjacent to where you normally keep your hummingbird feeder. Take your original hummingbird feeder down (temporarily), so hummingbirds will be encouraged to drink from their new food source\u2014the hat on your head!\n\nOnce the hat is atop your child's head, encourage your child to sit still and patiently. As the hummingbirds begin to feed from the hat, you will hear their wings \"hum\" as they approach and perhaps even feel a slight breeze from their rapidly beating wings. Your child's first instinct may be to jerk away, but coach him into stillness. If your child feels hesitant about having birds feed from the hat feeder on his head, wear it first and allow him to observe this fabulous and fun experience.\n\n  **_Facilitates creativity, patience, and feeling amazed_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How do the hummingbirds know there is food on the hat?**\n\n**A: Birds have amazing eyesight, much better than human eyesight. Hummingbirds use their eyes to locate colorful flowers that provide them with the nectar they need for energy. They have adapted to using their eyes to locate hummingbird feeders placed out by humans, too.**\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**The female hummingbird builds the smallest bird nest in the world. She gathers and weaves spider's web into the design, which helps hold the nest together and allows it to expand as her chicks grow.**\n\n# **SEED SORTING**\n\nB **IRDS EAT** a variety of foods, such as bugs, berries, and meat\/fish, to name a few. And, of course, nuts and seeds are associated with birds. There are a variety of birdseed options available on the commercial market for purchase to fill feeders, not to mention you may even grow your own birdseed by planting seed-producing flowers that birds enjoy munching on, such as helianthus (sunflowers), echinacea (coneflowers), and rudbeckia (black-eyed Susans), among many others. So, who loves to eat what in your backyard?\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nPerform an experiment with your child. Obtain a variety of seeds for birds, such as black oil sunflower seed, nyjer or finch seed, and safflower seed. Look at the different seeds, noting the shapes and sizes. Ask your child to contemplate which seed will be most popular with the birds you feed, or what birds might favor a particular seed, and why. Write down your predictions.\n\nThen, fill your feeder with just one type of seed. Take note of the birds that eat that particular seed over the course of one to two days. After two days, switch seed types, and observe once more. Do the same birds or same types of birds visit the feeder? Is the feeder visited more frequently or less frequently than with the previous seed? After a few days, switch to a third seed type and watch for activity, noting bird traffic, types of birds, and their preferences. Ultimately, is there one type of food that most birds seem to prefer? Were your predictions correct?\n\nIf you have several similar feeders, you may place one type of seed in each feeder and place each feeder adjacent to one another. Take note to see which feeder is the most popular and which species eats the particular seeds you've placed out.\n\n  **_Encourages a sense of wonder, hypothesizing, and analyzing_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: If we stop feeding the birds, will they starve?**\n\n**A: Most bird-feeder birds eat insects and arachnids (with the exception of the American Goldfinch, which is 100 percent vegetarian), so they won't starve if we stop feeding them. However, it's very important when we do feed them to keep our feeders clean. Old, moldy food and dirty feeders can make birds sick. In addition, resident birds\u2014birds that remain in a region year-round\u2014appreciate seeds, berries, nuts, and other sources of protein placed out for them during the winter months when naturally occurring food sources are scarce.**\n\n# **YARD MAPPING**\n\nC **REATE A YARD MAP WITH** your child, documenting your landscape and the birds and wildlife that frequent it. If you don't have a yard, no worries! You can map any space: your deck, a patio, a balcony, a porch, or a nearby green space, such as a park or public area.\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nTake a walk with your child through the space you will map. Walk slowly and quietly, observing and listening. As you observe, make note of your landscape, as well as the wildlife you encounter. Where is it shady? Where is it sunny? What plants live where? Where are human dwellings situated?\n\nObserve the trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers. Notice their forms and their locations. On a blank piece of paper, create a map of the space, using loose drawings to designate shrubs, trees, flowers, water sources, dwellings (human and wild), bird feeders, open spaces, and more. It's your map, so be creative and document the things you and your child see!\n\nDon't fret over perfection with your sketches. Use general shapes: circles of different sizes\u2014smaller for bushes and shrubs, larger for trees; flower shapes to depict flowers; squares or rectangles to depict dwelling spaces, such as a home or deck or patio. If you hear birds somewhere, mark the location by drawing a musical note.\n\nAs you walk through your yard, use your map to note where birds and wildlife are found. Explore during different times of the day, and while doing so, pay attention to the bird activity at each time. How does activity vary from morning to afternoon? From afternoon to evening? On rainy days compared to sunny days? On windy days compared to still days? Is one area on your map more populated with wildlife (bees, butterflies, birds, squirrels) than other areas? Do you hear more birds in one area than in others?\n\nTo become part of a community of people creating sustainable landscapes for their yards, join Habitat Network, sponsored by the Nature Conservancy and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. You can access map-building tools, create a digital yard map, learn about habitat, and talk and share with members of the community. Visit yardmap.org\n\n  **_Encourages spatial visualization and organization, creativity, and observation_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Why do some birds eat off the ground, while others eat high in the trees and other places?**\n\n**A: There wouldn't be enough food for everyone if all birds ate from the ground or if all birds ate bugs from the leaves of trees. All living animals, birds included, evolve to adapt to their environment so they have a better chance at surviving.**\n\n# **FEATHERY PHOTOGRAPHY**\n\nB **IRDS ARE BEAUTIFUL ,** and there's an artsy sense of pleasure that comes with noting their form and composition in nature. More than just a pretty picture, viewing birds through a camera lens allows you and your child to capture details and behaviors that are often missed with the naked eye. Photos also give us a still image we can study, allowing us to scrutinize all the amazing details for as little or as long as we'd like.\n\nPhotographing birds will provide you and your child the opportunity to visually catalog the birds you've experienced throughout months, seasons, and years. These photos can serve as a visual photo diary of wonderful times and memories spent together in nature.\n\nPhotos can also help us to identify a mystery species. With a photo on file, you and your child may take your time examining reference books, comparing your images to those in books, not unlike doing a puzzle or playing a game. It's fun!\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nBird photography can be tricky, as birds have excellent eyesight and hearing, are ever wary of their surroundings, and are always on the move. However, great photos are possible with patience, practice, creativity, and planning before and during shoots. Here are some tips and techniques to get you and your child started.\n\n**  Seek out lighting with the sun at your back but projecting on the bird(s).**\n\n**  Do not wear bright clothes; birds have excellent vision and spook easily. Try to blend in.**\n\n**  Do not make sudden movements; if you need to raise your arms to capture a shot or make any movements, do so slowly.**\n\n**  A backyard with a bird feeder is the _perfect_ place to practice, and here's a secret tip: attaching a natural tree branch to your feeder gives birds a place to perch as they await their turn to eat and gives you a natural setting for your photo.**\n\n**  Capture the eye; focus your camera on the bird's eye that is closest to you.**\n\n**  Shoot at high shutter speeds; this will help prevent blurred images, as birds tend to fly, hop, and constantly move about.**\n\n**  Enjoy and embrace the learning process; learn how to delete images that do not work; read photographer blogs that offer insight on camera equipment and techniques.**\n\n  **_Encourages learning new skills and facilitates patience and creativity_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Do birds see colors in the world as we do?**\n\n**A: Bird vision is highly developed. They can even see parts of the ultraviolet spectrum invisible to human sight.**\n\n# **HEAVENLY HAWKS**\n\nS **UMMER IS THE PERFECT TIME** to grab a blanket, find a soft patch of grass, and lie back with your child, daydreaming, cloud gazing, and spying the occasional hawk. You'll find these heavenly flyers high, high, high, up in the sky.\n\n\"Hawk\" is a general term that describes the entire group of diurnal (active during the day) raptors. Raptors are birds of prey and include owls, vultures, and hawks (falcons, eagles, kites, buteos, accipiters, harriers, and osprey). Some hawk species migrate each spring and fall, and many find a mate and stay with that mate for life. Because hawks are diurnal, daytime is the ideal time to watch them in action.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nFind a spot where you and your child may lie down and relax, ideally with the sun behind you, making certain the sun isn't directly in your eyes. (Never look directly into the sun, as this could severely damage your eyesight.)\n\nOnce you're situated, relax and take in the bounty of blue above. Scan the skies with your child. Who can spy the first hawk soaring high above? What other birds do you see flying across the sky? How are their flight styles different?\n\nWhen you spy a hawk, note the shape, or silhouette, of its body. Just for fun, estimate how far away, how high up, it may be. Is it circling as it soars? Another place to find hawks is atop telephone poles near open fields, where they often perch waiting to catch sight of a meal, below.\n\nOften, hawks are identified by their flying silhouettes:\n\n**  Accipiters (Cooper's Hawk, Sharp-Shinned Hawk)\u2014short, rounded wings and a long tail**\n\n**  Buteos (Red-Tailed Hawk, Red-Shouldered Hawk, Swainson's Hawk)\u2014long, rounded wings and a wide, fanned tail**\n\n**  Falcons (American Kestrel, Merlin)\u2014short, pointed wings and a short tail**\n\n**  Kites (Swallow-Tailed Kite, Black-Shouldered Kite)\u2014long, pointed wings and a long tail**\n\nFor fun, you might sketch the shape, or silhouette, of the hawks you observe flying above. Or just relax and watch them as they soar. Suggest to your child that she imagine soaring with them. Imagine their view, what they see below.\n\n  **_Promotes imagination and relaxation_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How do hawks soar without flapping their wings?**\n\n**A: Warm air heated by the sun rises up from the ground and into the sky. This rising, warm air is called a thermal. Hawks use these updrafts, or thermals, to give them lift. They stay within these thermals by flying slowly in circles.**\n\n# **CHICKA -DEE-DEE-DEE**\n\nO **UR EYES ALLOW** us to see what's directly in front of us, but our ears can hear everything around us. That's a benefit when seeking out birds!\n\nAll birds vocalize, and each species has a unique voice to call its own: they call, chatter, chip, peep, tweet, whistle, hoot, caw, and sing. They call to send out warnings to loved ones, and they sing to defend territory and to attract a mate. They strive to make their presence known, and because of this, birding by ear is a musical and fun endeavor.\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**It was always believed that when a bird sings, it was a male bird responsible for the song. However, female birds sing, too. Next time you spot a singing bird, make note to see if you can tell: is it male or a female?**\n\nYou and your child may bird by ear anywhere, including your own patio, deck, or backyard. Beginning in your backyard allows you to listen for birds you may already be familiar with\u2014and it's a wonderful thing to hear a bird and know which species created the sound. However, birding by ear need not be about attempting to identify each and every song or call made; it's also rewarding to simply listen to the nature of birds that surrounds us.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nSit outside with your child and close your eyes. Listen for birds. Bird sounds are referred to as songs and calls. Birds emit songs to attract a mate or defend territory. Calls, which are shorter than songs, communicate a warning or a bird's location. Try to hear as many bird songs and calls as possible:\n\n**  Do you hear a long song?**\n\n**  Do you hear a short song?**\n\n**  Does the song change in pitch?**\n\n**  Does the sound resemble or include a warble, screech, chirp, or whistle?**\n\n**  How many beats or syllables does the song have?**\n\n**  Is there repetition?**\n\n**  Is the song repeated by the same bird, or answered by another from a different location?**\n\n**  Does the volume change?**\n\n**  Do you hear calls? Is there a response to the call from another bird of the same species?**\n\nAs you become more skilled with birding by ear, consider making notes on what you hear. Take it a step further and attempt to identify what you hear.\n\n# **BIRDCALL MNEMONICS**\n\nOften, mnemonics are used to identify birdcalls and songs, as their sounds resemble words in the human vocabulary, such as:\n\n** _Birdie! Birdie! Birdie!\u2014_ Northern Cardinal**\n\n** _Cheeseburger-cheeseburger_ (very fast, faint, and soft, like a whisper)\u2014Ruby-Throated Hummingbird**\n\n** _Chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee\u2014_ Carolina Chickadee**\n\n** _Drink your tea\u2014_ Eastern Towhee**\n\n** _Fee-bee_ \u2014Eastern Phoebe**\n\n** _Feeder! Feeder! Feeder!\u2014_ Tufted Titmouse**\n\n** _Oh, Canada, Canada, Canada\u2014_ White-Throated Sparrow**\n\n** _Sweet-sweet-sweet; little more sweet!_ \u2014Yellow Warbler**\n\n** _Who cooks for you?\u2014_ Barred Owl**\n\n** _You're pretty, you're pretty, you're pretty!\u2014_ Carolina Wren**\n\nAs you bird by ear, you and your child may create your own mnemonics for the sounds you hear!\n\n  **_Stimulates the senses and strengthens listening skills_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How do birds learn to sing?**\n\n**A: Songbird nestlings learn to sing while in the nest. They listen to the adults around them and then practice replicating the songs they hear.**\n\n# **BEAK BY BEAK**\n\nB **IRDS ARE BIRDS** \u2014but they certainly can look very different from one another. Each bird species varies in size, form, and plumage, not to mention their beaks. Beaks come in many different sizes and shapes, and each is specialized in form and function for the bird that \"wears\" it.\n\nBeaks help birds capture the food they need. Some birds eat bugs, some birds eat small mammals, some birds eat fish, some birds eat seeds, and others eat fruit and berries. Some birds hunt for food while in mid-air, some birds hunt for food in the water. Some birds gather from trees, flowers, or shrubs; others hunt and gather on the ground. The types of food that birds eat (and how they hunt for that food) are as varied as their beaks:\n\n**  Long and chisel-like beaks are perfect for rap-tap-tapping into a tree's trunk to find bugs.**\n\n**  Narrow and pointy beaks, like a pair of tweezers, are perfect for snatching and grabbing delicious bugs\u2014well, delicious to the bird, anyway!**\n\n**  Hooked beaks are perfect for grabbing and tearing.**\n\n**  Spoon- or shovel-like beaks are perfect for scooping fish and other meals from water.**\n\n**  Sturdy and strong beaks are perfect for cracking nuts and seeds.**\n\n**  Long\u2014very long\u2014beaks are perfect for dipping deep into nectar-rich flowers.**\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nExplore how bird beaks work in the wild. First you'll need some \"beaks\" to manipulate and some \"food\" to practice with.\n\n# **BEAKS**\n\n1 pair of tweezers (grabbing and pulling beak\u2014robin)\n\n1 straw (sipping beak\u2014hummingbird)\n\n1 spoon (wading bird beak\u2014stork)\n\n1 clothespin (picking up and cracking open beak\u2014cardinal)\n\n1 toothpick\u2014round works best, as it's stronger than flat (piercing beak\u2014wren)\n\n# **FOOD**\n\nRubber bands or gummy worms (worms)\n\nNuts and popped popcorn (nuts and seeds)\n\nCookie sprinkles (ants)\n\nCup of fruit juice (hummingbird nectar)\n\nA few grapes and\/or raisins (juicy bugs)\n\nA dish of water sprinkled with a dried seasoning, such as basil flakes (small fish; algae)\n\nInvite your child to practice using the variety of beaks to eat the pretend bird foods. Experiment! Which type of beak works best for each type of food? Explain that a bird's beak helps it capture the foods available in the environment where it lives.\n\n  **_Promotes awareness and understanding_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Are beaks used only for capturing food?**\n\n**A: A bird's beak is primarily used for capturing food, but think about this: a bird doesn't have hands, fingers, or an opposable thumb as we do. So a bird uses its beak to do many other things, too. Beaks can pick up objects and gather nesting materials. Birds use their beaks to groom feathers, a behavior called** **_preening_** **. Beaks are used as a defense against other birds or predators. Birds even use their beaks to build nests\u2014can you imagine using your mouth to build your house?**\n\n# **COLOR COUNT**\n\nA **S DAYS SHORTEN AND** become cooler and the colors outdoors change from greens to gold, the world we know shifts to the fall season. But there is more than fall foliage to marvel at when venturing out in autumn. Bird plumage also changes in the fall.\n\nBirds are some of Earth's most colorful animals. But come fall, birds big and small, dull and dramatic, offer even more to see. The variety of plumage includes mature adults (molting or not), immature hatch-year offspring, and migrators passing through\u2014each with its own dress code for the season. This can make bird identification even trickier than usual!\n\nFor example, in the fall, mature male hummingbirds sport their full-color _gorgets\u2014_ the colorful feathers that cover their throats. Hatch-year, immature male hummingbirds may sport just a sprinkling of colorful feathers on their gorgets, which makes it fun and easy to personally identify them as they frequent your feeder or garden: _there's the immature male with just three colorful gorget feathers; there's the immature male with just one colorful gorget feather; there's an immature male with no gorget feathers, or is that a female? I'm not certain...._ And the cheery, male American Goldfinch, with mating season over, will molt into winter plumage and turn a pale olive brown, which helps it blend into its winter environment. Come spring, he molts back to his bright yellow plumage, with hopes of attracting a mate.\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nFlock outdoors and seek out as many varieties of plumage and colors as you can find. Use this checklist as a guide:\n\n**  A mature male hummingbird (full-color gorget on throat)**\n\n**  A mature female hummingbird (no color on throat)**\n\n**  An immature male hummingbird (just a few colorful feathers on gorget)**\n\n**  A bird with blue in its plumage**\n\n**  A bird with red in its plumage**\n\n**  A bird with yellow in its plumage**\n\n**  A bird with orange in its plumage**\n\n**  A small bird with brown in its plumage**\n\n**  A medium-size bird with brown plumage**\n\n**  A black and white bird**\n\n**  A bird with white in its plumage**\n\n**  A bird with gray in its plumage**\n\n**  A bird with white wing bars**\n\n**  A bird with spots in its plumage**\n\n**  A bird with speckles in its plumage**\n\n**  A bird with distinctive black markings**\n\n**  A bird with bands across its tail**\n\n**  A bird with a crown stripe on its head**\n\n**  A bird with an eye stripe (line through a bird's eye)**\n\n**  A bird with an eyebrow stripe (line over the eye)**\n\n**  A bird with a black throat patch**\n\n**  A bird with a white throat patch**\n\n**  A molting bird (mixed colors; dull plumage mixed with brighter plumage; feathers missing)**\n\n**  A bald bird (often found on cardinals or blue jays in the fall)**\n\nAdd your own findings here:\n\n  **_Promotes awareness of the environment and observation skills_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Why do birds come in so many different colors, patterns, and designs?**\n\n**A: Every detail in a bird's plumage serves a purpose. Birds use their colors primarily to attract mates. The markings and patterns on birds also help them blend in with their habitat, protecting them from predators or helping them sneak up on prey.**\n\n# **MOONLIGHT MIGRATION**\n\nL **EAVES ARE SWIRLING** and twirling; pumpkins, hay bales, and cooler temperatures are present\u2014fall is such a beautiful transition between summer and winter. It also marks another sensational transition: Each fall, billions of birds make their journey from northern, summer breeding grounds to southern winter grounds, where food sources are more plentiful. It's time for the annual fall migration.\n\nSome of these birds are seasoned migrators, having made the journey before. Some of these birds are first-year hatch birds, having just left their nest over the summer\u2014remarkably, they know where to go even though they are making the journey for the first time. Even the wee hummingbird that hatched over the summer will migrate, traveling alone, hundreds or thousands of miles, depending on the species. Songbirds migrate in the black of night, when there's less risk of predation.\n\nEach fall also brings a Harvest Moon, a time when Earth's full Moon is closest to the fall equinox, and this marks an opportune time to go outdoors, commune with nature, and take in the mystery and wonder that is bird migration. The Moon provides a magical backdrop for watching birds migrate!\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nCheck your calendar to note when the Harvest Moon will take place, and at what time the Moon will rise. Plan ahead so you and your family will be ready for the timing. Invite friends to join you, too!\n\nGather together and head outdoors with a blanket for bundling up, chairs to sit in, warm beverages, binoculars, or a small telescope with 30x magnification. Simply direct your lens to the Moon. Before long, an occasional dark silhouette will be visible fluttering across the backdrop of the bright, silvery disc.\n\nMigrators begin their flights right at dusk and continue until 2 or 3 a.m., with altitudes ranging from 1,500 feet to 5,000 feet, sometimes higher. Any full Moon in the late summer and throughout fall is an opportune time to catch this phenomenon.\n\n  **_Promotes relaxation, camaraderie with friends and family, and wonder_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How high up do birds fly when they migrate, and how far do they go?**\n\n**A: Migration is not easy for birds, and the heights and distances they fly vary by species. Mallard ducks fly at heights of 21,000 feet, and White Storks migrate at heights of 16,000 feet. The Bar-Tailed Godwit reaches heights of 20,000 feet and also makes the longest nonstop migration, nearly 7,000 miles without stopping.**\n\n**The highest-flying bird ever recorded is Ruppell's Griffon Vulture, documented at 37,000 feet where it, unfortunately, collided with a plane. The Arctic Tern migrates the longest distance, more than 49,700 miles a year, from its breeding grounds in the Arctic to its winter grounds in the Antarctic.**\n\n# **A HANDFUL OF HUMMERS**\n\nB **IRDS ARE VERY OBSERVANT** of their surroundings, a trait necessary for survival. Even birds that frequent backyards and feeders are skittish, skirting and flying off at the first sight of human presence. However, certain birds, including hummingbirds, have become accustomed\u2014wary but accustomed\u2014to the presence of humans.\n\nDuring fall seasons, hummingbird populations increase. Summer hatch-year fledglings are flying about with their parents in proximity. In addition, migrants from northern regions have begun their journey southward, adding to the population as they stop to visit food sources on the way to their winter grounds. Mature males travel first, followed by mature females, followed by the season's hatch-year juveniles who require more time to build fat stores before departing.\n\nThis population increase provides the perfect opportunity to practice proximity with these flying jewels. Invite a hummingbird to feed directly from your hand. If hummingbird feeders are already established in your yard, feeders will be busy with traffic during early fall, making it simple to get up close and personal with hummingbirds.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nTo feed a hummingbird from your hand, obtain a handheld hummingbird feeder, such as the one made by Audubon, or simply hold the hummingbird feeder you have in your yard in your hand.\n\nTemporarily remove any additional hummingbird feeders in your yard while you strive to feed a hummingbird from your hand, making your handheld nectar source the only source.\n\nMake sure the feeder is filled with fresh nectar (see this page), and place the feeder in the palm of your hand. Choose an area near an existing feeding space, where your hummingbird feeder once hung and your little jewels are familiar with. Then, sit or stand quietly and still with the feeder in your hand and let the magic begin. Hummingbirds may be hesitant at first, but with patience and stillness, they will trust you and the feeding source, and take a dip to lick nectar directly from the feeder you hold in your hand. Marvel as you observe the beautiful detail of their feathers, hear the hum of their wings, and even feel the wispy breeze from their movements.\n\nOpt to not offer an open source of nectar, such as a milk lid or tiny dish with sugar water in it. If the solution should splash or get on the hummingbird's feathers, it may harden on their plumage and cause harm.\n\n  **_Stimulates affinity, wonder, and amazement_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How do hummingbirds hover?**\n\n**A: Unlike most birds, which flap their wings up and down, the hummingbird flaps its wings forward and backward and can rotate its wings. This gives hummingbirds the unique ability to hover in midair, as well as to fly forward, backward, sideways, and straight up. In proportion to their body size, hummingbirds have very large chest muscles to aid in wing strength, and they have very tiny feet that reduce drag\u2014a hummingbird can't stand, walk, run, skip, or hop; it can only perch.**\n\n**DID YOU KNOW?**\n\n**Alexander Skutch, the author of** **_The Life of the Hummingbird_ ,** **spent decades studying hummingbird behavior. After years of observation, he concluded that hummingbirds remember food sources, and perhaps the people who feed them. This is why, during migration, a hummingbird returns to the exact place where a feeder once hung, even if the feeder is no longer there.**\n\n# **LOVELY LEAF LITTER**\n\nW **HEN WE CARE** for others and foster stewardship for other living things, it provides the reward of intrinsic joy. When we model and facilitate stewardship with our children, we provide them with insight that will last throughout their lifetime. Simple projects in our outdoor spaces foster stewardship.\n\nWorking in the yard is heart-smart, too, providing fresh air and exercise. In the fall, rather than blow and rake and tidy every little nook and cranny of your outdoor space, consider leaving the leaves\u2014or some of them, at least\u2014to create a leaf litter sanctuary, which avian wildlife will treasure.\n\nWhen temperatures drop, bugs and food sources for birds drop, too. However, leaf litter provides shelter and refuge for bugs, which in turn provides important and necessary food for birds. The tidier the yard, the more barren it will be of wildlife, bugs and birds alike. It's as simple as that.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nFallen leaves beckon. Get out and stomp and romp through them. Pile them up. Pick them up and look at them. How many different types of leaves have fallen around your yard? Sort and observe them with your child: by size, by shape, and even by color.\n\nWhile out having fun, do you notice any birds scratch-scratching among the leaves? Look near hedges, a wood line, or areas that may be mulched. Create a tasty leaf-haven for wintering birds, using the leaves and sticks that have fallen in your yard. This doesn't mean you must leave leaves everywhere\u2014just provide wee bits of habitat in place for bugs and birds to help get them through the winter. As you tidy your yard:\n\n**  Rake and place leaves and sticks along hedges, under bushes, and in mulched areas. Explain to your child that these are places where bugs may hide for the winter, and where hungry birds may find food.**\n\n**  Rake and place leaves and sticks along fences, under tree bases\u2014particularly evergreens\u2014and even over perennial areas, which will shelter _them_ from winter.**\n\nWhen we get cold, we can layer in clothing or bundle under blankets. Leaves are nature's miracle blanket for the earth. They shelter, they protect, they decompose, and they provide nutrients for many living things. Birds love leaf litter! Look for these leaf-lovers:\n\n**  In the winter, you may spy Carolina Wrens investigating each leaf, White-Throated Sparrows kicking and scratching among the leaves, as well as Dark-Eyed Juncos, Fox Sparrows, Eastern Towhees, and Song Sparrows, just to name a few.**\n\n**  In the spring, you may find Ovenbirds and certain species of warblers foraging on the ground through the leaves.**\n\n  _Encourages stewardship and fosters empathy_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Why do trees lose their leaves?**\n\n**A: Winter trees \"sleep\" in a sense, and losing their leaves is part of their process to help them shut down for the winter. Winter days provide less daylight, and leaves need sunlight to function and make food for trees. Because of this, trees that lose their leaves in the fall (deciduous trees) drop their leaves as the days get cooler and shorter and then sprout new leaves come spring, when the days warm up and daylight lasts longer.**\n\n# **HANDY NESTS**\n\nB **IRDS ARE INCREDIBLE** architects. Not only do they create the most diverse form of homes, or nests, of any animal species in the wild, but they create homes that defy gravity, resist weather season after season, and, most importantly, provide the perfect shelter and protection for their fragile eggs.\n\nNests come in many different shapes and sizes and are made from a variety of materials. They can be found on the ground, high in treetops or on skyscraper ledges, and even floating on water. Some are made of twigs, some are made of mud, some are made with spider's web, some with lichen and moss. Some are even made from bird spit!\n\nIn late fall and winter, you may spy nests among the bare branches of trees. During spring and summer, you might locate a nest based on chatter from a locale (hungry chicks at feeding time) or as you watch a bird gathering nesting materials as it flies to and fro. If you do encounter a nest, observe it quietly, carefully, and respectfully. Nesting birds need privacy and space. You wouldn't want strangers poking their heads into your home or bedrooms, would you?\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nAfter exploring nests with your child, embark on building your own nest. Gather natural materials from outdoors: small twigs, sticks, grasses, and even mud. Then, use your bare hands to form and shape a cozy nest.\n\nIs it a simple task? Can your nest support an egg? Survive through wind, rain, and other elements of weather? Imagine birds creating these structures using only their beaks and feet. An amazing feat, for certain!\n\nAs a follow-up activity and to learn more about birds and the types of nests they build, read my children's book _Mama Built a Little Nest_ , illustrated by Steve Jenkins. In addition, visit your local nature center where your child may hold and observe a bird's nest up-close. Take a walk and see if you can spy a bird's nest\u2014not easy to do during nesting season, as they're often well hidden. However, some species have the capacity to build their nests in the most unusual of spaces! Check out \"Funky Nests in Funky Places\" at CelebrateUrbanBirds.org. You may even submit your own findings there.\n\n  **_Stimulates understanding, empathy, and appreciation for living things_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Do all birds build nests?**\n\n**A: Most do, but there are a few exceptions. For example, the Brown-Headed Cowbird doesn't build a nest. Instead, she finds a nest built by another species and lays her egg(s) in that nest, then flies off, leaving her eggs in the care of the birds who built the nest.**\n\n# **A PUMPKIN -PERFECT FEAST**\n\nP **UMPKINS ARE SYNONYMOUS** with fall, and thankfully they are ubiquitous at this time of year. Pick out the perfect pumpkin to create a \"place setting\" for the birds, a destination where they may dine on delicious seeds and nuts that provide them with the nutrients they need, while providing you and your little apprentice with a harvest-themed activity. Win-win!\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nVisit your local farmer's market, or any place that offers pumpkins: a farm where you may pick your own, a local store, or perhaps you've grown your own? The makings for this fabulous pumpkin bird feeder are simple.\n\n1 smallish pumpkin\n\nTwine\n\nA few small twigs, approximately 4 to 5 inches long\n\nBirdseed\n\n1. Cut the pumpkin in half, and then scoop out the seeds.\n\n2. Cut two 3-foot sections of twine; hold them side by side and create a tight knot in the center, at the 1\u00bd-foot mark, knotting both pieces together.\n\n3. Place the knotted part of the twine on the bottom of the pumpkin. Gather the four loose ends and securely knot them above the pumpkin.\n\n4. Insert the twigs into the sides of the pumpkin, to serve as perches. Birds love to perch!\n\n5. Fill the pumpkin with birdseed, then hang your pumpkin feeder from a shepherd's hook or sturdy tree limb, or place it on a deck rail. Just don't put it on the ground where feeding birds might be susceptible to predation by cats or other predators.\n\n6. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the curious and hungry birds who discover this treat and come to feast.\n\n  _Promotes stewardship and intrinsic reward_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How much do birds eat a day?**\n\n**A: A little chickadee may eat 35 percent of its body weight each day; the smaller the bird, the more it needs to eat relative to its body size. All birds must consume extra calories when temperatures are cold.**\n\n# **PRESSED LEAF FEATHER ART**\n\nB **IRD PLUMAGE IS AMAZING!** Dots, stripes, feathery details, speckles, and spots. Feathers really are a work of art. Become inspired to transfer visions of feather design to your own feathers: pressed leaves!\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nThis is an amazing art project that you and your child may frame, scatter upon tabletops as d\u00e9cor, or give to special people in your lives.\n\nFallen leaves, gathered from nature (collect pliable leaves that are not dry or too brittle)\n\nOpaque markers in various colors (black, blue, brown, ivory, purple, red, turquoise, yellow), available from any craft section\/store\n\nFadeless paper (from craft store), for mounting leaves upon (optional)\n\nFrame with glass (optional)\n\nCraft glue, for mounting feathers on paper when framing (optional)\n\n1. Press leaves within books and magazines for one or two days.\n\n2. Once the leaves are pressed and dried, create simple designs on them, using bird plumage and feathers as your inspiration. Here are some ideas:\n\n**  Create small, cream-colored spots across an entire leaf; then fill each spot with a small black dot, as you might see on the belly of a Northern Flicker.**\n\n**  Draw tiny \"u\" shapes and lines across a leaf, resembling overlapping scales, and then fill in each \"u\" shape with tiny lines that flow from top to bottom, just as you'd see up close on hummingbird feathers.**\n\n**  Draw small circles on a leaf, and then create small dots around each circle, similar to the dots found around a bird's eye.**\n\n**  Seek out images of feathers in books or online, and replicate them on your leaves.**\n\n**  Play with colors and design elements, letting nature and birds guide you in your choices. Draw the lines and details on these feathers.**\n\n**  Refer back to sketches you've made of birds, noting details in the plumage.**\n\nMost importantly, be creative and have fun!\n\n3. Place your pressed leaves as decorations on holiday table settings, or arrange them on fadeless paper in a design (star burst, array, single leaf\/feather) and frame them.\n\n  **_Encourages observation, fine motor skills, and creativity_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: What are feathers?**\n\n**A: Feathers are a very complicated micro structure of birds. They are so complicated and intricate in detail that scientists devote their lives to studying them: how they work, what they're made of, how they're structured, how they develop and evolve, and how they function. Feathers are unique to birds and are fascinating.**\n\n# **SPEECH BUBBLES BETWEEN BIRDS**\n\nA **S YOU OBSERVE** birds in the wild, do you ever wonder what they're saying? They sing. They call. They chitter. They chatter. Sometimes their calls sound cheerful. Sometimes their calls sound excited. Sometimes their calls are loud and alarmed. Sometimes their calls and songs sound extremely purposeful. Often their songs are melodic and dreamy. Just what do you think they're saying, anyway?\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nOne can't help wonder what birds are communicating to one another, but we do know they are communicating with purpose, just as humans communicate through dialogue, emails, text messages, and even through behavior and appearances.\n\nThink about what birds might be conveying when they interact, and then have some creative fun as you ponder \"bird talk.\" Peruse old magazines for images of birds, cutting out any birds you find. Glue each bird image onto paper, drawing a speech bubble above each bird's head. Then, let your child fill in the speech bubbles himself, or take dictation. Be creative. You don't need to be factual. Just have fun!\n\n  **_Encourages creativity, imagination, and fun_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How do birds talk to one another?**\n\n**A: Birds talk using sounds\u2014songs, calls, chirps, quacks, and drums\u2014and the sounds they make are used to stay in touch with each other, attract a mate, contact a parent or mate, scare off predators, warn other birds about danger, signal a food source, or defend a territory, just to name a few reasons birds \"talk.\"**\n\n# **WE'RE GOING ON AN OWL HUNT**\n\nB **ARE TREE BRANCHES** and fall weather provide an ideal setting for spotting birds, and owls are no exception. Their silhouettes may be spotted anywhere you can find large trees, but it can be tricky to actually see them. Their plumage helps them to camouflage seamlessly with tree trunks, not to mention most species are nocturnal, or active at night. Don't let this dissuade you and your child from an owl adventure. Prowl for an owl. You may get lucky and catch sight of one or, at the very least, hear their haunting hoots and calls.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nEven though many owls are nocturnal, you need not venture out in the dark of night to find one. Dawn and dusk are great times to seek them out. They are active at these times, exploring their world, hunting for a meal, or calling to attract a mate or claim a territory. In early fall, you might spot owl nestlings out and about, testing and flapping their wings and testing their toes, climbing on trees.\n\nGoogle owl species, and listen to their recorded sounds online for reference. Then, head to a locale where trees are abundant: perhaps your yard, a park, or a local nature center. Pack a blanket for sitting upon and a pair of binoculars, then plant yourselves down to relax, wait, watch, and listen. Owl prowling takes patience. But most importantly, you're making the effort and spending time in nature.\n\n  **_Encourages exploration, curiosity, and relaxation_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Are all owls nocturnal?**\n\n**A: Of the approximately 222 owl species in the world, most are nocturnal, hunting at night, but not all. For example, the Barred Owl is active during the daytime.**\n\n# **BIRD BRAINS**\n\nB **IRDS HAVE A LOT** more going on in their wee heads than we give them credit for. (Just because they have small heads does not mean they have small brains.) They are smart! To the casual eye, they fly around, perch, seek mates, and forage for food. What a narrow view, though, in the scope of reality in a bird's world.\n\nFor example, some birds are tool users. New Caledonian Crows have been known to make and use hook tools, the only species other than humans to do so.\n\nA young girl named Gabi Mann in Seattle began setting out nuts and dog food for the American Crows in her yard. They began bringing her gifts\u2014toys and trinkets, pebbles, found jewelry, objects, and treasures\u2014in exchange for the treats she left for them.\n\nEach autumn, that little chickadee you see out and about is actually gathering hundreds and hundreds of seeds, hiding them in hundreds of places over 10 square miles\u2014nooks and crannies within a tree's bark, under a roof eave, in a hole on the ground, in a crack on the sidewalk, within a tree's stump\u2014and then is able to recall each and every hiding place come winter when food is scarce. And it does this easily, because each fall, the part of the chickadee's brain responsible for memory and spatial organization (the hippocampus) expands by 30 percent, providing it the spatial and memory capabilities of a brainy superhero. Come spring, when food is more plentiful and stashing seed sources isn't as vital for survival, the chickadee's hippocampus shrinks back to its normal size. These are just a few examples of the wiring in a bird's brain.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nDiscuss with your child the many casual and common bird behaviors you observe: Foraging and feeding. Calling and signing. Wonder together: might more be going on than meets the eye? Explain to your child that chickadees have the capability to hide food in hundreds of places and then recall each hiding place when they need to access that food during the scarce times of winter.\n\nBe like a chickadee! Provide your child with twenty-five pennies. Invite her to hide them throughout your house, anywhere she chooses, while you make note of each hiding space. Then, a few days later, invite your child to find all twenty-five hidden pennies. This is similar to a chickadee hiding seeds to serve as a food source through the winter.\n\nNow it's your turn. Hide twenty-five pennies throughout your home\u2014if your child is able, have her document each spot\u2014then, a few days later, relocate each penny you hid. Challenge yourselves and increase the number of pennies you hide.\n\n  **_Encourages awareness, empathy, curiosity, and understanding_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: So, birds are really smart?**\n\n**A: Ounce for ounce, birds have significantly more neurons in their brains than mammals and primates. (Vanderbilt University,** **_Science Daily_ ,** **June 2016)**\n\n# **NAME THAT BIRD**\n\nW **HEN WE OBSERVE** and talk about birds, or any wild animal, they are often referred to as \"it,\" as in \"it\" landed on the branch, \"it\" built a nest in that tree, or \"it's\" at the feeder.\n\nHowever, seeing wild animals as individuals, and not just \"its,\" can often prove better for the animal's welfare, while also facilitating empathy and forging a deeper connectedness for humans. After all, birds do not just exist\u2014they live with inner lives, purpose, personalities, and emotions, just as we do.\n\nChat with your child about the names we give others. Parents name their children. People name their pets. We even give names to our stuffed animals and favorite toys. Scientists give names to birds, both scientific and common, to help order, organize, and classify them\u2014necessary with over 10,000 species! Why not give names to the birds we learn to know and love?\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nGive the birds you know names. They deserve to be named (and not just scientifically). After all, they share your home with you, as frequent or regular visitors to your feeders and habitat. Or maybe you notice a particular bird at a park. Certainly, as you become aware of the presence of birds, many become familiar to you, day in and day out, and display certain characteristics and personalities that will make naming them fun.\n\nAny day is a perfect day to name a bird. Perhaps one day you notice a new species at your bird feeder, and she visits again and again. What should her name be? Or maybe you notice a guaranteed regular in your yard\u2014a bird you see every single day, no matter what? What name shall he go by?\n\nMy bird friends include:\n\nName:\n\nSpecies (my best guess):\n\nWhy I chose this name:\n\n  **_Encourages empathy and a connectedness to other living things_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Are there any famous wild animals that have names?**\n\n**A: Many noted wild animals have been given names. Martha\u2014a pigeon named after Martha Washington\u2014is just one example. She was the very last passenger pigeon of her species, which is now extinct. In the late 1860s, passenger pigeons flourished in the wild by the billions, their flocks large enough to block the sunlight as they flew by. But in just a short matter of time, they became extinct due to over-hunting by humans and habitat loss. Martha was captured and kept at the Cincinnati Zoo with other passenger pigeons, where hopes of revitalizing her species proved unsuccessful. She died alone on September 1, 1914. Her remains are kept to this day at the Smithsonian Museum. Because she was given a name, it certainly makes her life and her life's story more real and relevant to us, don't you think?**\n\n# **CHILLING WITH FEATHERS**\n\nI **N COOLER WEATHER ,** we often find ourselves bundled and layered, warding off the chill. Mammals in the wild may grow a \"winter coat\" to aid with warmth, while reptiles, amphibians, and bugs may burrow and nestle themselves out of sight until temperatures climb. But not birds. Birds weather the weather, thanks to their insulating feathers, which trap heat against their bare skin and keep them warm.\n\nFeathers are not just for keeping a bird warm, and they're not just for flying, either. There's remarkable form and function to feathers. Here are other ways birds use their feathers:\n\n**  Feathers may help a bird blend in, or camouflage, with its environment, protecting it from predators, or allowing it to be the predator, unnoticed.**\n\n**  Feathers communicate. A peacock may fan his tail to get the attention of females, a bird may \"posture\" and puff up to appear larger to scare off another bird, a crest on a head may be lowered or raised to communicate how a bird is feeling.**\n\n**  Feather color may also help male birds attract female birds.**\n\n**  The feathers on an owl's head help it hear by guiding sound to the ears.**\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nTake an autumn walk and look for feathers on the ground. Seek them out beneath trees, below feeders, or really anywhere, because birds are everywhere. Once you and your child spot one, pick it up and observe it closely, noting all of its details. Make a loose sketch of the feather. After close observation, place the feather back where you found it (collecting feathers is illegal).\n\nWith your sketches in hand, can you and your child identify parts of the feather? Each feather has a barb, a shaft, and a quill. Google \"feather anatomy,\" or reference a bird book to study feathers in depth. The children's book _Feathers: Not Just for Flying_ is a great resource!\n\nCan you identify the type of feather you sketched?\n\nThere are seven types of feathers on birds:\n\n**  Bristle feathers are found around the beak and may be sensory while also protecting the face. These feathers are tiny and not ones you would find on the ground. However, you can spot them on birds you see up close, and on photographs of bird faces.**\n\n**  Contour feathers cover most of a bird's body and give the bird its shape and colors.**\n\n**  Down feathers are fluffy and close to the body for insulating and trapping heat.**\n\n**  Filoplume feathers are stiff bristle feathers around a bird's eyes and mouth\u2014again, as observed when viewing a bird's face up close or on a photograph of a bird's face.**\n\n**  Semiplume feathers, a bit larger than down feathers, are also fluffy and insulating.**\n\n**  Tail feathers are used for balance and steering.**\n\n**  Wing feathers are specialized for flight; they aid with lift and moving a bird forward.**\n\n  **_Encourages curiosity, scientific knowledge, and observation skills_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: We shower and bathe. How do birds keep their feathers clean?**\n\n**A: Feather maintenance is important! Birds preen, using their beaks to go over every feather daily. They have a preen gland to help coat their feathers. They molt every single feather at least once a year. They bathe in water and even in dust!**\n\n# **A NEST OF MY OWN**\n\nE **VERYONE NEEDS** a place to chill and relax, a quiet place without interruptions. Even kids. _Especially_ kids. It's healthy to provide our children with space where they can reflect, daydream, think, read, imagine, wonder, and simply be alone. Quiet time. No television. No electronics or other stimulation\u2014a place to truly unplug and feel safe and calm.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nFind a spot indoors where you and your child may build a \"nest,\" a cozy space just for thinking, reading, and relaxing\u2014a nest your child may call her own. It might be a corner of a room, a sunny spot near a window, or even upon a sofa or cozy chair.\n\nOnce your child has selected the spot for her nest, provide a blanket or two and form them into a circular shape, similar to a nest but large enough for your child to sit in. Ask your child what else she may like in her nest to make it cozy: a pillow or two, a stuffed animal, or maybe some favorite books (some fabulous books about birds are recommended on this page). Create the perfect nest, a nest just for your child to retreat into. Let your child know her nest is just for her to use whenever she feels the need.\n\n  **_Promotes relaxation, calm, and wonder_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Birds use nests, too\u2014but do they use them everyday, all the time, all year?**\n\n**A: Birds only use their nests during nesting season for laying eggs and raising their young.**\n\n# **NAKED NESTS**\n\n**T HE WINTER TREE** landscape is striking. As trees go bare, scenes that were kept secret by the thick foliage of spring, summer, and fall are revealed. We are greeted with new views and once-hidden gems: bird nests.\n\nWinter trees offer beauty in their form and silhouettes against the sky, appearing both delicate and strong. Spend time observing the trees of winter and you'll notice a variety of nests\u2014nests that were once snuggled tight and hidden safely within the trees' dense, leafy branches\u2014are now visible to the naked eye. The diversity we observe with bird behavior is nothing compared to the diversity we find with their architectural nest-making skills!\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nTake a winter tree walk, and seek out naked nests. Once you begin seeking them out, you'll see that they are visible in all sorts of places: within a tree's v-nook, perched high in a treetop among delicate twigs, within big trees, small trees, old trees, and young trees. Nests may be found everywhere during a winter walk.\n\nTake note of the variety of nests you might see: large, stick-stacked nests, round cup-shaped nests, hanging pendulum nests. Pay attention to their sizes and shapes, in addition to the materials used. Look closely, if you can, observing each and every little detail. Can you see lichen and moss attached to the outside of one? Wonder about the bird that created each nest you find. It's tricky to positively identify each nest you see without its architect present, but knowing what bird species nest in your region, the location of the nest, and the type of nest can sometimes put a name to a nest.\n\nSpend a day outdoors and sketch the nests you notice among the winter trees and their branches. If it's a sunny day, sit on the ground and notice how bright the winter sun is, as well. Without the absence of leaves and the shade they provide, the ground around trees becomes brighter, too.\n\n  **_Stimulates curiosity and wonder_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Do all birds nest in trees?**\n\n**A: Many birds do nest in trees, but not all birds do. Some species nest on the ground, in caves, in chimneys, upon buildings (even skyscraper ledges!), and even on top of water, just to name a few places.**\n\n# **FLAPPY HOUR AND THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT**\n\n**T HE GREAT BACKYARD** Bird Count (GBBC), facilitated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Audubon Society, takes place each year around the globe for four days in mid-February. It's a fabulous, feathery, fun way for bird watchers of all ages to observe the birds in their area, count what they see, report their findings as citizen scientists, and help create a real-time snapshot of bird populations\u2014data which is instrumental to ornithologists and those who study birds.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nPartake in the next GBBC! Bird counting during the GBBC may be done for as little as fifteen minutes a day or off and on throughout a day. Simply tally the numbers and types of birds you see on one or more days during the count period. You may count birds at your home, at a local park, at school\u2014actually anywhere. If you see a bird in a parking lot, count it. Just document the date, time, species, and place. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has regional, printable checklists to use for tallying, as well as instructions and guides for creating a successful count. To get started, visit gbbc.birdcount.org.\n\nTake the GBBC one flight further and host a flappy hour with friends and family! When we share our knowledge, passion, and enthusiasm about birds with other people, we expand the number of people who will know the joy that comes with watching birds. If each person inspired just one other person, the number of people who learn to appreciate the importance and beauty of birds doubles.\n\nTo host a flappy hour, gather materials for you and your guests:\n\n**  Bird ID checklists for tallying (printable from the GBBC site)**\n\n**  Bird ID reference books featuring birds in your region**\n\n**  A pair or two of binoculars (or invite guests to bring their own)**\n\n# **OFFER A CHALLENGE**\n\nHave a contest with friends and family during your GBBC flappy hour. Prize categories might include:\n\n**  First to tally the smallest bird**\n\n**  First to tally the largest bird**\n\n**  First to tally a bird (by sight or by ear)**\n\n**  Most birds tallied**\n\n**  Most species tallied**\n\n  **_Enhances observation skills and bird knowledge, and provides an opportunity to participate as a citizen scientist_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: What is citizen science?**\n\n**A: Citizen science is research conducted by people in the general public. By sharing their observations with real scientists, it provides a broader picture of the subject being studied and provides a wider range of data for scientists to analyze.**\n\n**SOAR HIGHER**  \n---\n\n**There are a variety of ways to practice being a citizen scientist. In addition to the GBBC, opportunities through the Audubon Society, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and the Nature Conservancy include:**\n\n**  Bird Studies Canada projects**\n\n**  Celebrate Urban Birds**\n\n**  Christmas Bird Count**\n\n**  eBird**\n\n**  Global Big Day**\n\n**  Habitat Network**\n\n**  Hummingbirds at Home**\n\n**  NestWatch**\n\n**  Project FeederWatch**\n\n# **WINTER THICKET**\n\n**B IRDS HAVE** different needs in the winter compared to summer, when temperatures are comfortable, nesting materials are available, and food and water are abundant\u2014hence the reason so many bird species migrate. For resident birds who remain in the same region year-round, wintertime is a certain challenge. Water becomes frozen, food sources scarce, and temperatures chill down to the bone.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nCreate a thicket especially for winter wildlife to help them through winter's short days and long, cold nights. Although winter is not an opportune time to plant in the ground, you can provide sheltering landscape materials in the form of dense, evergreen shrubs in pots on your deck, patio, or throughout your yard. Come next spring, you can plan ahead and plant native, densely branched deciduous shrubs and berry-producing shrubs that will be a welcome sight for birds come winter. If you have evergreens in your landscape, leave the lower boughs and branches in place to keep them full, inviting, and cozy.\n\nLeave an area with long grasses, instead of trimming everything down. This spot will provide a cozy retreat for birds when the weather is extreme.\n\nNext, provide a brush pile of sticks, branches, and dried leaves in a quiet corner or near your yard's edge or along a fence, creating additional shelter opportunities for birds. Pile the branches loosely, with some edges poking out from the top so birds may perch and scan the area to make sure it's safe. Finally, install a \"winter roost box\"\u2014a birdhouse birds may utilize in winter to escape cold temperatures and winds.\n\n  **_Provides stewardship opportunities_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Birds' feathers help keep their bodies warm, but their feet do not have feathers. How do they keep their feet from freezing?**\n\n**A: Bird feet do get very, very cold when temperatures are freezing. However, their feet are made up mostly of bone and tendon and have very little muscle and nerve tissue, which means they have very little fluid in them. This physiology helps prevent frostbite. Birds also alternate standing on one foot at a time, keeping the other foot tucked up into their bodies for warmth. Birds also have a \"countercurrent heat exchange system\" with their arteries and the veins in their legs to help warm the blood that is cooled by chilly weather.**\n\n# **TELLTALE TOES**\n\n**W HEN SNOW** blankets the world around us, it feels as if the whole world stands still. However, for wild animals\u2014including birds\u2014it's business as usual. There's food to forage for, and their foraging often tells a magical tale in the form of the tracks left behind.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nJust who is out and about in the snow? Don't you want to know? Explore your snowy landscape and get to the bottom of the mystery. Seek evidence of tracks and tails. Look around trees, across open areas, near bodies of water, beneath feeders, bushes, and shrubs. Check near wood and brush piles. How many different types of tracks can you find? Use these clues:\n\n**  Are the tracks arranged in pairs with each footprint right next to the other? If so, the bird was hopping. Cardinals, chickadees, juncos, and wrens are hoppers.**\n\n**  Are the steps staggered, one print a bit ahead of the other? This shows a bird who skipped along, such as an American Robin.**\n\n**  Are there prints spaced out from one another? If so, this bird was walking. Starlings are walkers.**\n\n**  Are the tracks found together, with multiple types along the same path?**\n\n**  Where did they start and where do they lead? How do they vary in size and shape?**\n\nHave some fun and make your own tracks! Hop like a chickadee, skip like a robin, and walk like a starling. What other tracks can you make?\n\n  **_Stimulates exercise, observation, and environmental awareness_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Are all bird feet alike?**\n\n**A: All birds have four toes: three toes in the front and one toe in the back (ideal for gripping and perching)\u2014but their feet come in different sizes and shapes, depending on the species. For example, a wading bird (think heron) has a very broad foot with long, narrow toes to give it stability as it walks in wet, mushy areas. Crows and starlings have much larger feet than the feet you'll find on a finch or a junco. Ducks, swans, and geese have webbing between their toes.**\n\n**One variation to the \"three toes in the front and one toe in the back\" makeup can be found on owls, parrots, roadrunners, and woodpeckers. They, too, have four toes\u2014but two toes are in the front and two toes are in the back, perfect for scaling and climbing surfaces. This toe formation is called** **_zygodactyl._** **And all four toes on swifts face forward. Because of this, they don't perch but hang from their toes instead!**\n\n# **WINTER WREATH FEEDER**\n\n**M AKE WINTER**\u2014a time when food sources are scarce and survival is ultra-challenging\u2014all about creating an outdoor space that supports and sustains birds. A winter wreath feeder puts a creative spin on the traditional wreath, and this one will hang sideways!\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nThis feeder is not only fun to make; it will also be a beautiful object that offers sustenance to hungry winter birds.\n\nJute or twine\n\nScissors\n\n1 grapevine wreath (available at most craft sections\/stores)\n\nAluminum pie tin or splatter guard (available from dollar stores)\n\nFloral wire\n\nFresh pine greenery, trimmed from evergreens in your yard or from garden center shops\n\nDried bird millet (gathered from grassy fields or available where pet food is sold for birds)\n\nBird Butter (recipe follows)\n\nNatural pine cones (gathered from nature, or store bought\u2014unscented\/no glitter)\n\n1 orange, cut into 4 wedges\n\nApple slices\n\nBirdseed\n\n  1. Cut three strips of jute or twine, each 3 feet long.\n\n  2. Your wreath will be suspended from three points: 12 o'clock, 4 o'clock, and 8 o'clock. Run each section of twine through the grapevine wreath at these three separate points, knotting all six loose ends together at the top. You may also choose to knot the twine to the grapevine at these three points, and then gather loose ends at the top, knotting them together once more.\n\n  3. Poke very small holes into the pie tin, small enough for moisture to drip through but not large enough to allow seed to spill through. Poke two or three small holes in the edges, as well.\n\n  4. Place the pie tin in the center of the wreath. Using floral wire, attach the tin to the wreath through the holes poked into the tin's edges.\n\n  5. Add extra greenery pickings of your choice to the perimeter of the wreath by simply slipping the tips into open spaces of the grapevine.\n\n  6. Add sprigs of millet to the perimeter of the wreath.\n\n  7. Spread the bird butter into the pine cones' crevices.\n\n  8. Using floral wire, attach the bird butter\u2013filled pine cones to the perimeter of the wreath, among the greenery and millet sprigs.\n\n  9. Using floral wire, pierce the orange and apple wedges, securing them to the perimeter of the wreath.\n\n  10. Fill the pie tin with birdseed.\n\n  11. Hang the feeder from a tree branch or shepherd's hook, and watch the birds enjoy the fruits of your labor!\n\n# **HOW TO MAKE BIRD BUTTER**\n\nThis recipe is a modified version from the Audubon Society (Audubon.org\/news\/make-your-own-suet). Note: suet recipes are not recommended when outdoor temperatures are over 50 degrees Fahrenheit, as the fats spoil in heat. You can substitute palm oil\u2013free shortening for the peanut butter or mix it with the peanut butter.\n\n  1. Mix 1 part peanut butter with 5 parts cornmeal.\n\n  2. Toss about 1 cup of wild birdseed into the mix.\n\n  3. Blend the ingredients together with a large spoon.\n\n  **_Promotes creativity and an appreciation for other living things_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Can birds smell the food we put out for them?**\n\n**A: It was long believed that birds had a very poor sense of smell. However, scientists and researchers, such as Gabrielle Nevitt, a professor at the University of California, Davis, are proving past theories wrong. Studies are showing that birds smell all sorts of things. There's still so much to learn about birds!**\n\n# **DECK THE TREES WITH BOUGHS SO JOLLY**\n\n**C OME THE HOLIDAYS,** keep little hands and little minds busy as they help deck the halls\u2014outdoors. Find a tree or shrub outside that you can embellish and decorate with a variety of treats birds will love.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nThere are many foods and ways to create a holiday tree treat for the birds. Explore your outdoor area with your child, and select a tree or shrub that is easily accessible for hanging items upon. If possible, the tree should be visible through a window in your home. Here are just a few treats perfect for your tree:\n\n**  Using natural pine cones with open edges, coat each with suet or peanut butter, then roll them in birdseed. Use a chenille stick or strip of yarn to create a hanger by simply wrapping either around the wide end of the pine cone.**\n\n**  Use natural fiber or string and non-sugared Cheerios to create a garland. Avoid using thin threads or fishing line, which may become a tangle hazard for birds. (This is a great fine-motor skill activity for wee fingers, too!)**\n\n**  Pierce twigs or wooden skewers through orange slices.**\n\n**  After snacking on an apple, save the core for birds\u2014they'll enjoy the seeds! Attach a piece of string or a chenille stick as a hanger.**\n\n**  Purchase small, ready-to-hang seedcake ornaments from your local seed store.**\n\n**  Purchase suet baskets and suet cakes from your local store (available anywhere bird seed is sold) for hanging.**\n\nOnce you've created and gathered treats for your tree, head outside and deck the boughs! Then, sit back and watch who takes interest in the tasty snacks you've provided.\n\n  **_Stimulates creativity and intrinsic reward_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How do birds find bird feeders and food?**\n\n**A: Sight is the most important way birds find their food.**\n\n# **BIRD HAIKU**\n\n**B IRDS HAVE INSPIRED** humans for centuries in the forms of art, science, and engineering. Birds continue to inspire us to this day, keeping scientists curious, artists engaged, and people of all ages in awe, merely enjoying their day-to-day presence.\n\nWriting, as an art form, can be a very challenging skill for children to master. It's subjective, and children often fear they'll make a mistake with spelling or grammar, which can block their creative process. However, if children embrace the creative part of writing and don't let the mechanics hinder their thoughts, they'll be well on their way to having fun with writing and mastering the skill. One simple, manageable\u2014and beautiful\u2014form of writing you may practice with your child is haiku poetry.\n\nHaiku is a form of Japanese poetry that uses just a few words to create a sensory experience and vivid imagery in the reader's mind. Traditionally, haiku is written in three lines. The first line has five syllables, the second line has seven syllables, and the final line has five syllables: five-seven-five.\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nDiscuss with your child the bird experiences you have had together: bird behavior you've seen, species you've encountered, how birds move. Think of words that describe what birds do, like hopping, flapping, flying, feeding, picking, pecking, pulling, tugging, chirping (or, depending on the syllables needed for your poem: hop, flap, fly, feed pick, peck, pull, tug, chirp). Together, brainstorm meaningful words about nature and birds: trees, breeze, clouds, bugs, hawks, nests, bird feeders, types of weather, bird species, etc.\n\nUsing birds and nature as your muses, create a haiku with your child featuring anything avian. You might choose to write about a beautiful feather you've seen, bird flight, bird behavior, a specific species, a bird that captured your interest, or a specific experience you and your child have had with birds. Your child may practice writing the haiku on their own or dictate words to you. Collaborate!\n\nHere's a sample:\n\n_Sunrise brings daylight._ (five beats \/ five syllables)\n\n_A hungry bird looks for food_ (seven beats \/ seven syllables)\n\n_and then sees a worm._ (five beats \/ five syllables)\n\n_Bird feeder with seed_ , (five beats \/ syllables)\n\n_one bird, two birds, three birds, four._ (seven beats \/ syllables)\n\n_Time to fill again._ (five beats \/ syllables)\n\nNow, you try! Words do not need to rhyme. Just play with words and have fun with the process. It's a bit like a puzzle, getting the syllable count to fit each line.\n\n  **_Encourages creativity, applied knowledge, and writing practice_**\n\n(five beats \/ syllables)\n\n(seven beats \/ syllables)\n\n(five beats \/ syllables)\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How long have people been depicting birds in their art?**\n\n**A: The oldest art form featuring a bird is painted on cave walls of the Lascaux Cave in France, dating from 15,000 to 10,000 B.C. It features a bird-headed man.**\n\n# **SNOWY SNOWMAN SNACK**\n\n**A SERENITY HUSHES** over the earth when snow rests upon it, a quiet stillness as each unique flake blankets the ground. We know that wintertime can pose a challenge for birds as food sources disappear: water sources freeze, bugs are out of sight, and plant food sources dwindle. When snow falls, finding food becomes even more challenging for birds.\n\nIf you live in a region that experiences snowfall, take advantage of this white bounty and build a snowman with your child specifically for the birds. Making your snowman will not only provide a much-needed break from being cooped up indoors, but your feathered friends will greatly appreciate this wintry feast.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nBuild your classic snowman of three rolled, stacked balls. Once formed, embellish him with things birds will love to eat.\n\nSuet or peanut butter\n\nPine cones\n\nBirdseed\n\nSticks\n\n1 orange, sliced in half\n\n1 carrot\n\n1 apple, sliced into wedges\n\nRaisins\n\nFlower pot tray (the kind placed beneath flower pots)\n\nPeanuts in the shell\n\nGet as creative as you'd like when making your snowman bird feeder, but here are a few ideas to get you and your child started:\n\n  1. Smear suet on and into pine cones, roll the suet-covered pine cones in birdseed, and then place these around the snowman's neck as a scarf.\n\n  2. Place two sticks or branches on either side of the snowman, to serve as arm perches. Sticks may also be placed on the snowman's head, as \"hair perches.\"\n\n  3. Press each orange half into the face for the eyes.\n\n  4. Press a carrot into the face for the nose, which will serve as a perch to access the oranges, or use a pine cone covered in peanut butter, instead.\n\n  5. Place apple wedges on the face, creating a smile or mouth.\n\n  6. Insert raisins around the apples as teeth.\n\n  7. Place the flower pot tray on the snowman's head as a hat, and fill it with birdseed, peanuts in the shell, or water.\n\n  8. Finally, sprinkle some birdseed around the base of your snowman, for the ground feeders.\n\n  **_Encourages exercise, creative play, and stewardship for living things_**\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: How do some birds stay where it's cold, not migrating to warmer places as other birds do?**\n\n**A: Birds that remain in cold weather and that do not migrate have adapted to their environment. Adaptation means fitting in to survive. Birds that \"overwinter\" have adapted by switching food sources from plentiful insects in the summer to seeds and fruits on native plants in the winter.**\n\n# **WINDOW TO THE WORLD**\n\n**W INTER DAYS** can sometimes feel drab and dull, with cloud cover making skies and landscapes appear as one monochromatic color scheme. However, on days like this, birds brighten and pop in the landscape. Winter also provides additional viewing opportunities for birds among naked branches; come spring and summer, those same branches will fill with foliage and hide birds.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nPick a particularly gray day to hunker down with your little chick near a window for a scavenger hunt. Make him comfy with snacks and a beverage. Explain that you're going to embark on an adventure through the wintry window to seek out as many items on the scavenger hunt list as possible. You may create your own list of items to find, depending on your region, but here are some ideas to get you started:\n\n**  A bird tucking one foot up into its body, to keep its feet warm**\n\n**  bird hunkered down low on top of its feet, in an effort to keep its feet warm**\n\n**  A bird puffed up, keeping warm**\n\n**  A busy bird (what is it doing?)**\n\n**  A perching bird**\n\n**  A red-colored bird**\n\n**  A bird with black in its plumage**\n\n**  A black-and-white bird**\n\n**  A brown-colored bird**\n\n**  A tan-colored bird**\n\n**  A black-colored bird**\n\n**  A blue-colored bird**\n\n**  A gray bird**\n\n**  A hopping bird**\n\n**  A bird scratching at the ground**\n\n**  A bird feeding from a feeder**\n\n**  A male bird with bright plumage**\n\n**  A female bird with dull plumage**\n\n**  A flock of birds**\n\n**  A hopping bird**\n\n**  A flock of geese flying overhead**\n\n**  A bird with a crest on its head**\n\n**  A bird with a long, pointy, bug-eating beak**\n\n**  A bird with a triangular, seed-eating beak**\n\n**  A bird with white wing bars**\n\n**  A bird in a tree**\n\n**  A bird species you can only find during the winter**\n\n**  A hawk flying overhead**\n\n**  A bird wiping its beak on a branch**\n\n**  A pecking bird**\n\n  _Encourages observation skills and persistence_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: I noticed a woodpecker with the side of his head up against a tree trunk. It looked as if he were trying to hug the tree. What was he doing?**\n\n**A: Woodpeckers may place an ear up against a tree's trunk to listen for bug activity, to help them find a meal.**\n\n# **A BIRD IN THE HAND**\n\n**I MAGINE BEING** so close to birds that you can see every detail of their tiniest feathers with your naked eye as you watch them crack seeds open with their beaks\u2014right on your very hand.\n\nSometimes we need an excuse to get out in the winter, and this adventurous activity is perfect for a day that's not too nippy\u2014an opportunity to bask in fresh air and experience wild birds in all their glory. The primary goal is to get birds to land on your hand to eat seed you've placed there. Birds are so wary of our presence, and this sounds difficult, but it's not. (This activity is inspired by Jim Carpenter, founder of Wild Birds Unlimited, and his book, _The Joy of Bird Feeding_.)\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nFirst, make certain you have active, feeding birds at your feeder.\n\nNext, place a patio chair with arms near your feeder with a \"dummy\" sitting upright in it\u2014the dummy being an empty jacket. Place a pillow inside the jacket to give it substance and help it stay erect in the chair. Place a hat over the jacket collar opening. Any type of hat will work: a woolen cap or a baseball cap. Place a glove at the arm opening of the jacket, palm upright, resting on the chair's arm, propping it near the feeder, and then place bird food (seeds and nuts) in the palm of the glove.\n\nWait an hour or two for the birds to become accustomed to gathering seed from both the gloved hand and their feeder. Eventually, remove all the birdseed from your bird feeder, but keep seeds and nuts in the gloved hand. Soon, the birds will discover that the feeder is empty and will continue eating out of the gloved hand, instead.\n\nKeep the gloved hand full of seeds and nuts. After another hour or two, put on the jacket (or one similar to what the \"dummy\" is wearing), the hat, and the glove, and take the dummy's place in the chair. Fill _your_ gloved hand with seeds and nuts, and rest it on the chair's arm. Allow your child to watch from a window, as you remain calm and quiet and still. Soon, the birds will be eating out of your hand.\n\nIf the weather permits, you may experiment with taking the glove off and placing food directly into your hand for the birds to eat. It's important to keep still, though. Once a bird lands on your hand, you may be inclined to jump or flinch or react\u2014it may tickle or feel startling\u2014but remain still and enjoy the wonder and awe right before your very eyes. Then, invite your child to trade places with you, taking turns so he may enjoy this remarkable experience.\n\n  _Practices the art of patience and perseverance; promotes wonder and awe_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Can't the birds tell the difference between the dummy and a real person?**\n\n**A: Yes and no. Birds are smart and have excellent hearing and eyesight. Once they determine\u2014through observation, listening, familiarity, and practice\u2014that the dummy holds no threat to them, they determine it's a safe feeding source. As we take the place of the dummy and behave the same (still and motionless), birds ascertain that we are a safe feeding source, as well. However, any sudden movement on our part will have them taking flight.**\n\n# **SURF , SAND, I SPY A BIRD BAND!**\n\n**W INTER IS A POPULAR TIME** to escape to sunny, warm beaches\u2014or perhaps you live near a beach year-round. Regardless of how you manage to spend time with your wee ones among surf and sand, next time you're there, make note of others who are enjoying the beach, too: shorebirds!\n\nObserving shorebirds is a rewarding and relaxing way to spend time at the beach. It can also prove to be rewarding for the birds, should you chose to participate as a citizen scientist. As you pack your beach bag, include a field guide to shorebirds in the region where you are, along with a pencil and notepad and a pair of binoculars or a camera with a zoom lens. Then, be on the lookout for banded birds on the beach.\n\nShorebirds and water birds are relatively long-legged. As you observe them on the beach, you may notice a colorful band around one or both of their legs. Bird banding is an extremely valuable tool in the study and conservation of bird species. Bands may be metal or plastic and often will be marked with a code of letters and numbers unique to each bird. These \"codes\" will tell biologists where and when that particular bird hatched. Bands also help biologists track bird movement, migration, and mortality\u2014a fascinating glimpse into a bird's life and history!\n\nSpotting and reporting a banded bird is a wonderful way to be a citizen scientist, and biologists rely and very much appreciate when we take time to spot, note, and share a sighted band with them.\n\n# **TAKE ACTION**\n\nUsing your camera or binoculars, quietly and calmly sit nearby an area where shorebirds are resting or feeding, careful not to flush them into flight. Many shorebirds have migrated hundreds or even thousands of miles to the beach where you see them; it's important to allow them their space without disturbing them. Once situated near birds on the beach, quietly spy and look out for bands on legs. This can be a fun and challenging activity for your child!\n\nBe sure to note the following:\n\n**  The location of the band. Is the band above or below the ankle (the ankle is the joint in the middle of a bird's leg)?**\n\n**  The color of the band**\n\n**  The color of the writing on the band**\n\n**  The code, if you can see it; write it down, if you can, or document it with your camera**\n\n**  The date and location of your observation**\n\nOnce noted, report the band, even if it's just the color and location. Every little bit of information provided to biologists will prove insightful.\n\nYou can report banded birds using the following resources:\n\n**  Patuxent Wildlife Research Center Bird Banding Laboratory, the United States Geological Survey: www.pwrc.usgs.gov\/BBL\/bblretrv**\n\n**  Banded Birds.Org: bandedbirds.org**\n\n**  Audubon Atlantic Flyway: nc.audubon.org**\n\n  _Encourages environmental awareness, citizen scientist involvement, persistence, and observation skills_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Why do many shorebirds rest in flocks on the beach, all facing the same direction?**\n\n**A: Shorebirds flock for a number of reasons. When resting, a flock provides safety in numbers, including more eyes and ears to spot danger. Resting birds on the beach face the wind for a number of reasons, too. First, this helps their feathers remain neat and smooth against their bodies. Secondly, facing the wind helps them to be ready for flight. Should they need to take off suddenly, all they need to do is open their wings, and the wind will help to give them lift.**\n\n# **NEW YEAR'S BIRD**\n\n**H APPY NEW YEAR!** As you and your child embark on the first day of the new year, make it a point to wonder together what might be the very first bird you see on this New Year's Day.\n\n# **OBSERVE**\n\nFirst, make a guess as to what bird you might see. Then, wait and watch.\n\nAs you spy your first bird of the new year, rejoice! Then, give thanks for the many blessings nature gives us\u2014and it's all free and right outside our doors and windows, just waiting for exploration.\n\nMake spotting the first bird of the new year an annual tradition for your family, something to eagerly anticipate and celebrate. Wonder...what might be the first bird species you see the next morning, and the morning after that. Consider keeping track and noting any pattern to the species that you encounter for the first time each morning or day.\n\n  _Promotes enthusiasm, wonder, and excitement_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Will the first bird we saw on New Year's Day be the same species we see for the first time each New Year's Day?**\n\n**A: The only way to find out is to observe, year after year, on each New Year's Day!**\n\n# **NEW YEAR'S BIRD RESOLUTIONS**\n\n**T HE START OF A NEW YEAR** is always a hopeful time, with fresh ideas and new beginnings\u2014and of course, resolutions to guide us along and kick-start the future. We can apply the same philosophy to our lives with birds in the year ahead, so why not make some New Year's bird resolutions with your child as part of next year's plan?\n\n# **TAKE NOTE**\n\nWith your child, discuss and reflect back on your life with birds. Then, envision how you'd like to experience birds in your lives in the future.\n\n**  Maybe there's a species of bird you've yet to see, hear, or identify?**\n\n**  Maybe you'd like to better identify birds by their calls?**\n\n**  Maybe you'd like to attract additional bird species to your backyard, increasing your yard's diversity?**\n\n**  Maybe you'd like to travel to seek out bird species that aren't specific to your region?**\n\n**  What about those elusive, tricky-to-identify warblers? Maybe this is the year to seek them out and practice identifying them?**\n\n**  Maybe you'd like to volunteer at a wild bird rehab facility? Or give back to birds in some other manner?**\n\n**  Maybe you'd like to foster stewardship for future generations and introduce a friend or other family members to the lives of birds?**\n\n**  Maybe you'd like to join a bird club? Or better yet, form one!**\n\n**  Maybe you'd like to read more books about birds to learn more about them?**\n\n**  Maybe you'd like to connect with other birders in your community, networking and birding together?**\n\nCreate your New Year's bird resolutions with your child. Then, reflect upon them and revisit them throughout the year. But most importantly, enjoy your love of birding and have fun together as you become ambassadors of joy with birds!\n\n  _Encourages goal setting and promotes excitement for things to come_\n\n**HELP ME UNDERSTAND**  \n---  \n  |\n\n**Q: Does New Year's Day take place on the same day around the world?**\n\n**A: New Year's Day takes place on different dates of the year, depending on the country celebrating the New Year. However, regardless of date or locale, each New Year is one of celebration.**\n**ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**\n\n**I AM NOT AN ORNITHOLOGIST.** I am merely someone who finds extreme joy in everything avian. Birds have become the sun in my universe; thus, my family and I orbit around their existence wherever we go. For this I am grateful for birds, of course, and bestow a heartfelt and loving thanks to my husband Charlie, who somehow manages to point out bird species I always miss. Loving thanks also to my daughter, Kelly, my sisters, Kristen and Debbie, and my main peep, Christina Kaman\u2014for their patience, understanding, knowledge, and shared enthusiasm as we venture out in nature together.\n\nI couldn't have published this book without the time and knowledge shared by the St. Louis Audubon Society. I am indebted to the folks there who poured over these pages to check my writing for ornithological accuracy. A special shout-out and thanks to Mitch Leachman and Pat Lueders. May I add, I take the sole responsibility for any scientific inaccuracies that may occur in the pages of this book.\n\nEternal gratitude to my parents, Paul and Charlene Sultan, for sharing the wonders of nature with me throughout my childhood and filling my world with books that opened and expanded my horizon even more. I love you both so much and am so grateful.\n\nDeep appreciation to the wind beneath my wings: my agent, Stefanie Von Borstel, for her never-ending cheerleading with my projects; my editor, Jenn Urban-Brown, for her vision and patience with this book; and the team at Shambhala Publications\/Roost for bringing this book to fruition\u2014thank you!\n\nGreat respect and thanks to the many folks who have provided me with insight into the lives of birds, help with the writing process, and who share the joy of environmental stewardship\u2014adventurers, artists, authors, book folk, educators, environmentalists, friends, naturalists, photographers, scientists, stewards\u2014the world is more rich with your presence: Linze Aya, Ruth Beeker, Brooke Bessesen, Judy Boise, Loree Griffin Burns, Todd Christopher, Laurie Coffey, Susan Dierker, Cynthia Jenson-Elliott, Scott Evers, Denise Fleming, Candy Fowler, Greg Fowler, Lisa Fowler, Kate Garchinsky, Susie Ghahremani, Maria Gianferrari, Cindy Gray, Steve Gray, Steve Jenkins, Bart King, Lisa King, Teri Kingston, Suzy Leopold, Richard Louv, Sharon Lovejoy, Stephanie L. McAndrews, Alice McGinty, Kate Messner, David Mizejewski, Heather Montgomery, Robert Mulvihill, Diane Schneider Munster, Terry Pierce, Laurence Pringle, Sarah Schwartzman Palermo, Ann Pettigrew, Hob Osterlund, Russell Reed, April Pulley Sayre, Liz Garton Scanlon, Randi Miller Sonenshine, Sharon Sorensen, Melissa Stewart, Debbie Sultan, Kristen Sultan, Jing Jing Tsong, Deborah Vath, Kelly Ward, Tamra Wight, Sallie Wolf, and Julie (Never-Walk-by-a-Weed-without Pulling-It) Zickefoose.\n**RESOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING**\n\n**BOOKS AND MAGAZINES FOR ADULTS**\n\nAckerman, Jennifer. _The Genius of Birds._ Penguin Press, 2016.\n\nAlderfer, Jonathan. _National Geographic Backyard Guide to the Birds of North America._ National Geographic, 2011.\n\n_Birds and Blooms_ Magazine\n\n_BirdWatching_ Magazine\n\nCarpenter, Jim. _The Joy of Bird Feeding: The Essential Guide to Attracting and Feeding Our Backyard Birds._ Scott & Nix, Inc., 2017.\n\nErickson, Laura. _101 Ways to Help Birds._ Stackpole Books, 2006.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Sharing the Wonder of Birds with Kids._ University of Minnesota Press, 1997.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _The Bird Watching Answer Book: Everything You Need to Know to Enjoy Birds in Your Backyard and Beyond._ Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 2009.\n\nHeinrich, Bernd. _One Wild Bird at a Time: Portraits of Individual Lives._ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.\n\nKaufman, Kenn. _Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder._ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006.\n\n_Living Bird Magazine_\n\nLouv, Richard. _The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age._ Algonquin Books, 2012.\n\nMizejewski, David. _National Wildlife Federation: Attracting Birds, Butterflies and Backyard Wildlife._ Creative Homeowner, 2004.\n\nOsterlund, Hob. _Holy Moli: Albatross and Other Ancestors._ Oregon State University Press 2016.\n\nSafina, Carl. _Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel._ Picador; Reprint Edition, 2016.\n\nSayre, April Pulley. _Touch a Butterfly: Wildlife Gardening for Kids\u2014Simple Ways to Attract Birds._\n\nSampson, Scott D. _How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature._ Mariner Books, 2016.\n\nSorenson, Sharon. _Birds in the Yard Month by Month._ Stackpole Books, 2013.\n\nStiteler, Sharon. _1001 Secrets Every Birder Should Know: Tips and Trivia for the Backyard and Beyond_. Running Press, 2013.\n\nStokes, Donald. _Stokes Beginner's Guide to Birds: Eastern Region (Stokes Field Guide Series)_. Little Brown and Company, 1996.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _The Hummingbird Book: The Complete Guide to Attracting, Identifying, and Enjoying Hummingbirds._ Little Brown and Company, 1989.\n\nStryker, Noah. _The Thing With Feathers_ : _The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human._ Riverhead Books, 2015.\n\nTallamy, Douglas W. _Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants_. Timber Press, 2007.\n\nYoung, Jon. _What The Robin Knows_ : _How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World_. Mariner Books, 2013.\n\nZickefoose, Julie. _Baby Birds: An Artist Looks Into the Nest._ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Natural Gardening for Birds: Create a Bird-Friendly Habitat in Your Backyard._ Skyhorse Publishing, July 2016.\n\n**FABULOUS BIRD BOOKS FOR CHILDREN**\n\nAston, Dianna. _An Egg is Quiet._ Chronicle Books, 2014.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. A Nest is Noisy._ Chronicle Books, 2017.\n\nBaker, Jeannie. _Circle._ Candlewick, 2016.\n\nBierregaard, Rob. _Belle's Journey: An Osprey Takes Flight._ Charlesbridge, 2018.\n\nCate, Annette Leblanc. _Look Up! Bird-watching in Your Own Backyard._ Candlewick, 2013.\n\nChristelow, Eileen. _Robins! How They Grow Up._ Clarion Books, 2017.\n\nCollard, Sneed. _Beaks!_ Charlesbridge, 2002.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Woodpeckers._ Bucking Horse Books, 2018.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Firebirds._ Bucking Horse Books, 2015.\n\nDavies, Jacqueline. _The Boy Who Drew Birds._ HMH Books for Young Readers, 2004.\n\nDeacon, Alexis. _I Am Henry Finch._ Candlewick, 2015.\n\nDierker, Susan. _Albatross of Kauai: The Story of Kaloakulua._ Done by Dogs Publishing, 2014.\n\nEhlert, Lois. _Feathers for Lunch._ HMH Books for Young Readers, 1996.\n\nElliott, David. _On the Wing._ Candlewick, 2014.\n\nErickson, Laura. _Am I Like You?_ Cornell Lab Publishing Group, 2016.\n\nFleming, Denise. _This is the Nest That Robin Built._ Beach Lane, 2018.\n\nFlorian, Douglas. _On the Wing: Bird Poems and Paintings._ HMH Books for Young Readers, 2000.\n\nFranco, Betsy. _Birdsongs._ Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2007.\n\nFried, Caren-Loebel. _A Perfect Day for an Albatross._ Cornell Lab Publishing Group, 2017.\n\nFrost, Helen. _Sweep Up the Sun._ Candlewick, 2015.\n\nGeorge, Jean Craighead. _The Eagles Are Back._ Dial Books, 2013.\n\nGianferrari, Maria. _Hawk Rising._ Roaring Brook Press, 2018.\n\nGibbons, Gail. _Owls._ Holiday House, 2006.\n\nGraham, Bob. _How to Heal a Broken Wing_. Candlewick, 2017.\n\nGray, Rita. _Have You Heard the Nesting Bird?_ HMH Books for Young Readers, 2017.\n\nGray, Steve. _The Ravenous Raven._ Grand Canyon Association, 2015.\n\nGrolleau, Fabien. _Audubon: On the Wings of the World._ Nobrow Press, 2017.\n\nHenkes, Kevin. _Birds._ Greenwillow Books, 2009.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Egg._ Greenwillow Books, 2017.\n\nHestermen, Katie. _A Round of Robins_. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2018.\n\nHiaasen, Carl. _Hoot_. Yearling, 2005.\n\nHoose, Phillip. _Moonbird._ Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _The Race to Save the Lord God Bird._ Square Fish, 2016.\n\nIdle, Molly. _Flora and the Flamingo._ Chronicle Books, 2013.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Flora and the Peacocks._ Chronicle Books, 2016.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Flora and the Penguin._ Chronicle Books, 2014.\n\nJenkins, Martin. _Bird Builds a Nest._ Candlewick, 2018.\n\nJenkins, Steve. _Animals in Flight._ HMH Books for Young Readers, 2005.\n\nJudge, Lita. _Bird Talk: What Birds Are Saying and Why._ Flash Point, 2012.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Flight School._ Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014.\n\nLarson, Jeannette. _Hummingbirds: Fact and Folklore._ Charlesbridge, 2011.\n\nLewis, Gill. _Wild Wings._ Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2012.\n\nLowry, Lois. _Crow Call._ Scholastic Press, 2009.\n\nLurie, Susan. _Swim, Duck, Swim._ Feiwel & Friends, 2016.\n\nMarkle, Sandra. _A Mother's Journey._ Charlesbridge, 2006.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _The Long, Long Journey: The Godwit's Amazing Migration._ Millbrook, 2013.\n\nMcDermott, Gerald. _Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest._ HMH Books for Young Readers, 2001.\n\nPla, Sally. _The Someday Birds._ Harper Collins, 2018.\n\nProsek, James. _Bird, Butterfly, Eel._ Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2009.\n\nRose, Deborah Lee, et, al. _Beauty and the Beak: How Science, Technology, and a 3D-Printed Beak Rescued a Bald Eagle._ Persnickety Press, 2017.\n\nRosen, Michael. _The Cuckoo's Haiku._ Candlewick, 2009.\n\nRuddell, Deborah. _Today at the Bluebird Caf\u00e9: A Branchful of Birds._ Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2007.\n\nSayre, April Pulley. _Vulture View._ Henry Holt and Co., 2007.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Warbler Wave._ Beach Lane Books, 2018.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Woodpecker Wham!_ Henry Holt and Co., 2015.\n\nScanlon, Liz Garton. _One Dark Bird._ Beach Lane Books, 2019.\n\nSchulman, Janet. _Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City._ Knopf, 2008.\n\nSidman, Joyce. _Red Sings from Treetops._ HMH Books for Young Readers, 2009.\n\nSill, Cathryn. _About Birds: A Guide for Children._ Peachtree Publishers, 2013.\n\nSinger, Marilyn. _The Company of Crows._ Clarion Books, 2002.\n\nSonenshine, Randi Miller. _This is the Nest that Wren Built._ Candlewick, 2020.\n\nStemple, Heidi E.Y. _Counting Birds: The Idea That Helped Save Our Feathered Friends._ Seagrass Press, 2018.\n\nStewart, Melissa. _A Place for Birds._ Peachtree Publishers, 2015.\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014. _Feathers Not Just for Flying._ Charlesbridge, 2014.\n\nTavares, Matt. _Red and Lulu._ Candlewick, 2017.\n\nTsong, Jing Jing. _Birds in Hawaii._ Beach House Publishing, 2017.\n\nVanDerwater, Amy Ludwig. _Every Day Birds._ Orchard Books, 2016.\n\nWaddell, Martin. _Owl Babies._ Candlewick, 2002.\n\nWard, Jennifer. _How to Find a Bird._ Beach Lane, 2020.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Mama Built a Little Nest._ Beach Lane Books, 2014.\n\nWight, Tamra. _Mystery of the Eagles Nest._ Island Port Press, Inc., 2016.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Mystery on Pine Lake._ Island Port Press, Inc. 2015.\n\nWolf, Sallie. _The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound: A Birder's Observations._ Charlesbridge, 2010.\n\nYolen, Jane. _An Egret's Day._ Wordsong, 2010.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. On Bird Hill._ Cornell Lab Publishing Group, 2016.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. On Duck Pond._ Cornell Lab Publishing Group, 2017.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. Owl Moon._ Philomel Books, 1987.\n\n_\u2014\u2014\u2014. You Nest Here With Me._ Boyds Mills Press, 2015.\n\n**WEBSITES**\n\nAmerican Birding Association: aba.org\n\nAmerican Bird Conservancy: abcbirds.org\n\nAmerican Ornithological Society: americanornithology.org\n\nAudubon\u2014Nectar Sources by Region: audubon.org\/content\/nectar-sources-region\n\nBringing Back the Birds: abcbirds.org\/program\/bringing-back-the-birds\n\nCornell Lab of Ornithology: birds.cornell.edu\n\nEnvironment for the Americas\u2014International Migratory Bird Day: birdday.org\n\nFLAP Canada: flap.org\n\nHummingbirds.net (Lanny Chambers): hummingbirds.net\n\nInternational Bird Rescue: bird-rescue.org\n\nNational Aviary: aviary.org\n\nNational Audubon Society: audubon.org\n\nNational Wildlife Federation: nwf.org\n\nThe Nature Conservancy: nature.org\n\nNorth American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI) \/ International Bird Conservation: nabci-us.org\/international-bird-conservation\n\nProject Owlnet through the National Aviary: aviary.org\/project-owlnet\n\nRoyal Society for the Protection of Birds: rspb.org.uk\n\nSierra Club: sierraclub.org\n\nSmithsonian Migratory Bird Center: nationalzoo.si.edu\/migratory-birds\n\nUnited Nations Environment Program: unep.org\n\nUnited States Natural Resources Conservation Service: nrcs.usda.gov\n\nWildlife Rehabilitators Listed by State: wildliferehabinfo.org\n**AMERICAN BIRD ASSOCIATION CODE OF ETHICS**\n\n**T HE** American Birding Association developed and promotes the following code of birding ethics, which may be freely reproduced for distribution with acknowledgment to the ABA for its development and a link to the ABA website: www.aba.org.\n\n1. Promote the welfare of birds and their environment.\n\n1(a) Support the protection of important bird habitat.\n\n1(b) To avoid stressing birds or exposing them to danger, exercise restraint and caution during observation, photography, sound recording, or filming.\n\nLimit the use of recordings and other methods of attracting birds, and never use such methods in heavily birded areas or for attracting any species that is Threatened, Endangered, of Special Concern, or is rare in your local area.\n\nKeep well back from nests and nesting colonies, roosts, display areas, and important feeding sites. In such sensitive areas, if there is a need for extended observation, photography, filming, or recording, try to use a blind or hide, and take advantage of natural cover.\n\nUse artificial light sparingly for filming or photography, especially for close-ups.\n\n1(c) Before advertising the presence of a rare bird, evaluate the potential for disturbance to the bird, its surroundings, and other people in the area, and proceed only if access can be controlled, disturbance minimized, and permission has been obtained from private landowners. The sites of rare nesting birds should be divulged only to the proper conservation authorities.\n\n1(d) Stay on roads, trails, and paths where they exist; otherwise, keep habitat disturbance to a minimum.\n\n2. Respect the law, and the rights of others.\n\n2(a) Do not enter private property without the owner's explicit permission.\n\n2(b) Follow all laws, rules, and regulations governing use of roads and public areas, both at home and abroad.\n\n2(c) Practice common courtesy in contacts with other people. Your exemplary behavior will generate goodwill with birders and non-birders alike.\n\n3. Ensure that feeders, nest structures, and other artificial bird environments are safe.\n\n3(a) Keep dispensers, water, and food clean and free of decay or disease. It is important to feed birds continually during harsh weather.\n\n3(b) Maintain and clean nest structures regularly.\n\n3(c) If you are attracting birds to an area, ensure the birds are not exposed to predation from cats and other domestic animals or dangers posed by artificial hazards.\n\n4. Group birding, whether organized or impromptu, requires special care.\n\nEach individual in the group, in addition to the obligations spelled out in Items #1 and #2, has responsibilities as a Group Member:\n\n4(a) Respect the interests, rights, and skills of fellow birders, as well as people participating in other legitimate outdoor activities. Freely share your knowledge and experience, except where code 1(c) applies. Be especially helpful to beginning birders.\n\n4(b) If you witness unethical birding behavior, assess the situation and intervene if you think it prudent. When interceding, inform the person(s) of the inappropriate action and attempt, within reason, to have it stopped. If the behavior continues, document it and notify appropriate individuals or organizations.\n\nGroup Leader Responsibilities [amateur and professional trips and tours]:\n\n4(c) Be an exemplary ethical role model for the group. Teach through word and example.\n\n4(d) Keep groups to a size that limits impact on the environment and does not interfere with others using the same area.\n\n4(e) Ensure everyone in the group knows of and practices this code.\n\n4(f) Learn and inform the group of any special circumstances applicable to the areas being visited (e.g., no audio playback allowed).\n\n4(g) Acknowledge that professional tour companies bear a special responsibility to place the welfare of birds and the benefits of public knowledge ahead of the company's commercial interests. Ideally, leaders should keep track of tour sightings, document unusual occurrences, and submit records to appropriate organizations.\n**ABOUT THE AUTHOR**\n\n**J ENNIFER WARD** is the author of more than twenty award-winning books for children\u2014most about nature and many which feature birds\u2014in addition to parenting books that help connect children to nature. Her books have been translated into many languages and have been featured on national television and NPR. She lives with her husband and two dogs, nestled among a canopy of old growth oak forest in Southern Illinois, where she writes full time surrounded by birds and birdsong. Learn more about Jennifer and her books at jenniferwardbooks.com.\nSign up to receive free projects and special offers from Roost Books.\n\nOr visit us online to sign up at roostbooks.com\/eroost.\n\n# Contents\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Title Page\n  3. Copyright\n  4. Contents\n  5. Introduction\n  6. Spring\n    1. 1. Look Up, Look Down, Look All Around\n    2. 2. Billions of Birds\n    3. 3. A Feast for First Arrivals\n    4. 4. The Dawn Chorus\n    5. 5. Home Tweet Home\n    6. 6. Feathery Field Trip\n    7. 7. Splashy Tweet Retreat\n    8. 8. A Rustic Roost\n    9. 9. Birds in Motion\n    10. 10. Draw that Bird!\n    11. 11. Zoom In\n    12. 12. Feathered Firsts\n    13. 13. Fantastic Feeders\n  7. Summer\n    1. 14. Getting to Know You\n    2. 15. The Perfect Patch\n    3. 16. Raindrop Cafe\n    4. 17. A Haven for Hummingbirds\n    5. 18. Bountiful Birdscape\n    6. 19. Wing It!\n    7. 20. Hats Off to Hummingbirds!\n    8. 21. Seed Sorting\n    9. 22. Yard Mapping\n    10. 23. Feathery Photography\n    11. 24. Heavenly Hawks\n    12. 25. Chicka-dee-dee-dee\n    13. 26. Beak by Beak\n  8. Fall\n    1. 27. Color Count\n    2. 28. Moonlight Migration\n    3. 29. A Handful of Hummers\n    4. 30. Lovely Leaf Litter\n    5. 31. Handy Nests\n    6. 32. A Pumpkin-Perfect Feast\n    7. 33. Pressed Leaf Feather Art\n    8. 34. Speech Bubbles between Birds\n    9. 35. W're Going on an Owl Hunt\n    10. 36. Bird Brains\n    11. 37. Name That Bird\n    12. 38. Chilling with Feathers\n    13. 39. A Nest of My Own\n  9. Winter\n    1. 40. Naked Nests\n    2. 41. Flappy Hour and the Great Backyard Bird Count\n    3. 42. Winter Thicket\n    4. 43. Telltale Toes\n    5. 44. Winter Wreath Feeder\n    6. 45. Deck the Trees with Boughs So Jolly\n    7. 46. Bird Haiku\n    8. 47. Snowy Snowman Snack\n    9. 48. Window to the World\n    10. 49. A Bird in the Hand\n    11. 50. Surf, Sand, I Spy a Bird Band!\n    12. 51. New Year's Bird\n    13. 52. New Year's Bird Resolutions\n  10. Acknowledgments\n  11. Resources and Recommended Reading\n  12. American Bird Association Code of Ethics\n  13. About the Author\n  14. E-mail Sign-up\n\n# Landmarks\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Cover\n  3. Title Page\n  4. Table of Contents\n  5. Start\n\n# Print Page List\n\n  1. i\n  2. ii\n  3. iii\n  4. iv\n  5. v\n  6. vi\n  7. vii\n  8. viii\n  9. ix\n  10. x\n  11. xi\n  12. xii\n  13. \n  14. \n  15. \n  16. \n  17. \n  18. \n  19. \n  20. \n  21. \n  22. \n  23. \n  24. \n  25. \n  26. \n  27. \n  28. \n  29. \n  30. \n  31. \n  32. \n  33. \n  34. \n  35. \n  36. \n  37. \n  38. \n  39. \n  40. \n  41. \n  42. \n  43. \n  44. \n  45. \n  46. \n  47. \n  48. \n  49. \n  50. \n  51. \n  52. \n  53. \n  54. \n  55. \n  56. \n  57. \n  58. \n  59. \n  60. \n  61. \n  62. \n  63. \n  64. \n  65. \n  66. \n  67. \n  68. \n  69. \n  70. \n  71. \n  72. \n  73. \n  74. \n  75. \n  76. \n  77. \n  78. \n  79. \n  80. \n  81. \n  82. \n  83. \n  84. \n  85. \n  86. \n  87. \n  88. \n  89. \n  90. \n  91. \n  92. \n  93. \n  94. \n  95. \n  96. \n  97. \n  98. \n  99. \n  100. \n  101. \n  102. \n  103. \n  104. \n  105. \n  106. \n  107. \n  108. \n  109. \n  110. \n  111. \n  112. \n  113. \n  114. \n  115. \n  116. \n  117. \n  118. \n  119. \n  120. \n  121. \n  122. \n  123. \n  124. \n  125. \n  126. \n  127. \n  128. \n  129. \n  130. \n  131. \n  132. \n  133. \n  134. \n  135. \n  136. \n  137. \n  138. \n  139. \n  140. \n  141. \n  142. \n  143. \n  144. \n  145. \n  146. \n  147. \n  148. \n  149. \n  150. \n  151. \n  152. \n  153. \n  154. \n  155. \n  156. \n  157. \n  158. \n  159. \n  160. \n  161. \n  162. \n  163. \n  164. \n  165. \n  166. \n  167. \n  168. \n  169. \n  170. \n  171. \n  172. \n  173. \n  174. \n  175. \n  176. \n  177. \n  178. \n  179. \n  180. \n  181. \n  182. \n  183. \n  184. \n  185. \n  186. \n  187. \n  188. \n  189. \n  190. \n  191. \n  192.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}