“I’m sorry,” he said, “could you repeat that?”

The dwarf fixed Carl with what seemed to be a glare, though the lenses over his eyes obscured the true expression.

“Luunchpael Bukzemwynch,” the dwarf grated out.

Carl blinked. He rubbed his temples with his fingers. He rubbed his forehead with his hand. Then, just to make sure, he closed his eyes and rubbed his whole face with both hands, slapped himself on both cheeks, and pinched his nose. Then he opened his eyes. The dwarf was still there.

“Your name is Lunchpail Buxomwench.”

The dwarf said nothing, just stared, then nodded.

“Lunch. Pail. Buxom. Wench,” said Carl, looking straight into the dwarf’s lenses.

The little man was completely still, his face expressionless, his beard unmoved.

“That is my name, overlander,” he said, twisting the last word into an epithet with a quirk of his lips and a quiver of his beard. “Do you have any complaint with it?”

Carl looked at the other man for a moment more, studying the wrinkled features minutely, but his keenly tuned interpersonal skills detected no evidence of disingenuousness. This was no joke.

Carl leaned back in his chair, still keeping an eye on the dwarf. Having eliminated the possibility that the aged little fellow was some exceedingly lifelike gambit in a convoluted practical joke perpetrated by a friend or acquaintance, Carl defaulted to the next explanation which fit his circumstances. He began to assume that he was dreaming.

It made perfect sense, of course. As in a dream, he had no idea how he had come to be in the place he was. And who had ever heard of a dwarf named Lunchpail Buxomwench? The whole scenario was a construction of the dream world, perhaps made, as the oracles might suggest, to bring him greater wisdom. It hadn’t worked yet — or had it? Was the entire context in which he found himself — the dingy tavern, the wine-soaked table, the angry dwarf named Lunchpail — really a message, an impaling of Absolute Truth through the spongy flesh of everyday life? Carl began to search for meaning.

The sign over the door! “Don’t forget your coat.” It surely indicated that he would soon be traveling to a colder clime, perhaps up into the North.

Or the ink-splattered table nearby! An omen that a scribe or other writing-prone person would soon be having a great effect on his life.

And the sleeping barman! Clearly it signified the danger in his present condition, that if he went on without finding a cure he would soon end up like that miserable creature: fat and ugly, friendless and snoring.

And the angry dwarf! The dwarf who — the dwarf who was now in the midst of pounding his closed fist into the table. Carl wondered at it. He stared at the gnarled fingers as the fellow began to speak. They looked like the roots of trees curled into a ball. Perhaps he was going to spend some time as an arborist. In such a career it wouldn’t matter much if he fell asleep from time to time, it wouldn’t matter if –

“Sir!” said the dwarf.

“Yes?” Carl replied, peering into the cave-dweller’s dark lenses and wondering what message they carried.

“I am not possessed of infinite time, and even if I were I would not waste it entertaining folk who seem determined to ignore me. Are you interested in my proposal? Or shall I leave?” The dwarf’s beard quivered.

“Ah,” said Carl. He had known a woman once who’d said that people met in dreams have important things to say, and that it was best to let them talk. So Carl did.

“My apologies, ah, Lunchpail,” he said. “You see, I’m a stranger to this, ah, land.” Carl waved his hands around in circles, indicating that he referred to the entirety of the dream world. “Though your message may be couched in the terms of mystery common to this place I’ll, ahh, I’ll do my best to, ah, figure it out.”

Expressionless glass regarded him coldly. The dream-dwarf seemed unimpressed by Carl’s knowledge of the dream. That woman had also said that opening the mind to the realization that one was dreaming was very important, but Carl didn’t perceive any changes or omens now that he’d done it. He looked around the room, waiting for something strange and dream-like to happen. It didn’t, so he shrugged and went on.

“Please continue, ah, Lunchpail.” He grinned and winked at the dream-dwarf, intimating again that he was in on the secret.

“Everything alright, Carl?” said a familiar voice from the left.

Carl turned his head in this direction and saw his sometime-partner, the warrior Helmar, standing near the table looking between Carl and the dwarf quizzically. The dark-haired adventurer nodded to the dwarf across the table.

“How goes it, Lunchpail?”

Lunchpail grunted. “I know you said this man was the best burglar in the business, but he seems a little — distracted, I think, is the word.”

Helmar suddenly looked a bit worried. He sat down next to Carl, but he spoke to the dwarf.

“Carl’s fine. He’s just, oh, I don’t know, unconventional. Aren’t you, Carl?”

Carl leaned in close to Helmar and whispered: “Helmar, I’m dreaming. You’re a dream person, and that dwarf means something to me. The dream world calls him Lunchpail. What do you think that means?”

Helmar looked Carl in the eye. Then he slapped him across the cheek, none too gently.

“Carl. Stop playing around. Master Buxomwench is a client. This is no time for games.”

So those sharp senses went to work. A tavern or low inn. The common room. A regular enough sight to be seen on waking, though so far he didn’t think there was a correlation between drink and his sleeping episodes. It was just that he spent a lot of time in these places digging up jobs. Or trying to forget that he had trouble getting jobs of any kind these days, on account of the fact that as soon as prospective clients found out what was wrong with him they all turned away and took their money with them.

A tavern then. A dark and dingy one at that, and not too busy. There were a few of the rough-and-tumble sort scattered throughout the place, and behind the bar there was a fat man slumped all over a stool, with his head on his chest and his eyes closed. Ah, a brother of the dreamworld, thought Carl. Then he continued his survey.

He was wearing all his clothes. That was good. People of the unsavory sort had a tendency to forget past friendships or associations and take all his clothes and any other money or equipment he had on his body whenever he had one of his fits. He often found himself lying in an alleyway when he woke. It was a wonder he hadn’t yet found himself lying dead in an alleyway. In any case, the few precious things he had left now were stashed up on a rooftop out of view, rather than on his person. Whenever he found out where he was he would go outside and locate that rooftop by orienting himself in relation to the Tower of Pain. The Tower of Pain was the only landmark in the whole town, and it stood out no matter where you were. Unless he’d somehow made it to another town. Always before his spells had lasted only an hour at most, and usually he was awake again within moments. In fact it wasn’t often that he found himself in a completely unfamiliar place.

In any case, as soon as he discovered what that place was he would go out, locate the Tower, and go and climb up to grab his loot. If his spells were beginning to last longer now it was probably time to get out to the country and retire honestly. He shouldn’t be spending time in dangerous places like this when he could fall asleep at any moment, leaving himself defenseless. Places like this. Right. He continued his orientation.

His eyes took in the number of men and women in the place, the number of weapons they carried. He was nothing if not sharp-eyed, and now he relied on this more than ever. He noted the sign over the door that said: “Don’t forget your coat.” He noted the lack of natural lighting. He noted the ink stains on one of the tables nearby, which indicated the regular presence of some kind of scholar. And finally he noted the dwarf sitting across the table from him with a ferocious scowl on his face.

Carl jumped. If anything the dwarf’s scowl grew deeper, his entire face folding into a myriad of wrinkles. As his mouth twisted his bristly black beard shifted to one side to match. Like most members of his species he was gaunt, hunch-backed, and appeared quite aged, and would probably come up only to Carl’s chest, or thereabouts. His eyes were inscrutable, mostly on account of the smoky glass lenses he wore over them. These, Carl knew, were a special invention of the dwarves to shield their sensitive eyes from the brightness of the daytime firmament.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” said the dwarf. His voice was a crispy rasp, like two small bits of gravel being ground together. This was an oddity for a dwarf. The people were known to be “silver-fingered, golden-tongued,” as the old adage would have it, and Carl had never met a dwarf who went against type in that regard.

The wrinkle-deepening grimace had not lightened, and Carl suspected the dwarf might be a little upset. “Perhaps, if you’re quite done napping, we might continue?” the little man went on. Even though Carl couldn’t see them he could feel those dark subterranean eyes fixing him mercilessly.

“Ah…” said Carl, giving up on his senses and scrabbling desperately through his sleep-fogged mind for a memory that would help him. He scrabbled in vain.

“Yes. Yes of course,” he finished, rather lamely. But he arranged his best cool, business-like expression on his face, and it seemed to work. The dwarf’s beard straightened out a bit.

“Very well then,” he rasped. “As I was saying, my name is Luunchpael Bukzemwynch.”

More children were born in the following years. Suddenly the farm, which throughout Rachel’s entire childhood had been such a quiet, sleepy place, came alive with happy calls, crying, and the babble of the very young. Cousins and brothers of Baram’s came from next-door and helped to expand the farmhouse, raising two new rooms off the back behind the hearth, one for Carlen and one for Rachel and Baram.

The children were a special joy for Carlen. Their presence seemed to ease her loss. She guided them as they grew, teaching them how to do their chores, watching them during their play.

“They are another gift to me,” she said to Rachel one evening, as they sat by the fire. Little Gunter was asleep on the rug in front of the hearth, and his even littler sister Gerta was asleep in her grandmother’s arms. “I have lost much, but looking at these young ones, now, this is my life.”

Rachel and Baram were young and strong, and the farm prospered. Rachel worked even when she was with child, and then a brother or cousin from next-door would come to help when she was near her time. And sooner than seemed possible little Gunter was in charge of the dairy cart. Now Rachel milked the cows each morning and placed the large jug of fresh milk on the cart, and little Gunter drove the goat next door to drop off the milk. At first he went with Rachel, and then Rachel went with him, and then he went on his own, back in time to sit down to the breakfast Carlen managed to prepare for them all while caring for the younger ones.

The first time she watched her son move off down the track on his own, leading the goat they all still called New Goat, Rachel felt a peculiar aching in her heart. It was something about his shape, growing smaller and smaller as he moved farther away down the track in the dim morning light. He had chosen to go by himself in the morning, before full light, rather than in the afternoon. He was an adventuresome boy, and he had chafed at her presence on the walk for six months, insisting he was old enough to make the trek himself. Rachel watched him go. He didn’t look back, though once or twice she thought he stopped and almost turned. Then he was gone round the bend, and she felt her heart would break. The feeling seemed all out of proportion with what she was observing – he would be back before full light, he would be back for breakfast, she had made that little journey herself so many times, since she was so young she couldn’t remember the first – but she couldn’t help it. Tears welled up in her eyes, and the aching in her heart welled too. It was as if he were leaving forever, walking down that empty dirt track. When her eyes cleared she found herself standing at the edgeward boundary, staring off into the distance with the light of the firmament strengthening to her right. It was twisting cold and blue at the beginning of this morning, very active and energetic. She jumped when Baram put his hand on her arm and told her that little Gunter was back, having delivered the milk but forgotten to stop at the stream on his return trip to wash out the empty jug. She shook her head to clear it. She must have stood there near the boundary stones for over an hour while her son made that journey on his short young legs.

Rachel sometimes traveled from farm to farm on the outskirts of town, for day trips to care for the sick and injured. She only very seldom stayed over night, always preferring to come back to her own farm and her own bed. Despite her youth her skill at healing was evident. Gerta had taught her much, and much else she divined through careful observation and even more careful experiment. She never went into town to work her craft, only going in on festival days with the rest. She met the herb man there on those occasions, and they consulted, but were content to leave each other to their territories.

She went to care for Baram’s aged grandmother, but the woman only asked that Rachel hold her hand and tell her some stories of her great-grandchildren. Several hours passed this way, and then Rachel looked up and saw that the woman was dead. She saw strong, solid Bresson cry and sob over his mother’s body. She fetched Baram, Carlen, and her children, and they joined her husband’s relations at the next-door farm for the burial and the death feast.

Soon it was little Gerta’s turn to take the milk each morning. She learned from her brother, who made the tutelage quick. He was eager to move on to what he called “strong work” with his father. He nudged Gerta towards making the trip by herself, sometimes needling her about being afraid. She was fierce, and didn’t wish to be thought cowardly. But the first time she went out by herself she came running back before she was even out of sight. Rachel went with her that first time, and for a week after either Baram or Rachel went, or Gunter (though he protested). And then Rachel brought the jug out into the yard one morning to find the goat hitched and the cart ready, and as soon as the jug was in the cart Gerta was off, waving to Rachel to let her know she wasn’t needed. She remembered to wash the empty jug in the stream on her way back.

The farm grew. More children, one by one. Baram traded for two more cows, and one of his nieces came down from next-door to help with cheesemaking. When Rachel went out to gather herbs, or to tend to the sick, she brought the wheels of cheese in a sack on her back, and traded them to the families she visited. Yet another sleeping room was added to the house, and the main room extended. Cheese was traded, one spring, for several long boards to make a new table with room for everyone.

One by one the youngest children learned from their elders and took over the duty of the milk cart. There was a new farm, an outgrowth of Bresson’s, further along the track, peopled by one of Baram’s older brothers and his entire growing family. So there were two stops on the milk run every morning. Two stops for Ralf, the next child, then Bertram, then Carlen, and three for Mavrin, and four for little Diona as yet more farms sprang up, colonies of Bresson’s brood.

Rachel found herself staring edgeward. She had, for no reason she could remember, climbed up on the fence at the boundary of the farm, leaning forward with her legs braced against the highest rail and her arms free and loose at her sides. She’d pulled her long brown hair out of its braid, and it was flowing free around her in the breeze borne in by a summer evening. Edgeward the firmament was roiling, golds and purples clashing against each other. Sometimes it acted like that, as if battling with itself, and she thought of it as a storm.

She stared out edgeward, and knew that something was coming. The feeling felt familiar, as if she had felt it many times before. It was the feeling of a real storm coming their way, the quiet and the stillness, though the warm breeze had nothing of that feeling and the air felt fresh and lively about her. It was no storm of the weather, not flowing on the winds of the air but on the winds of fate. She stared and stared, but could discern nothing in that direction, just the rolling fields of the farms further out, eventually the darkness of a wood in the distance. She sometimes went to that wood to gather her herbs, and it was nothing but a small extent of young trees, but from here at the edge of her farm it looked sinister as the light of day faded.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there, perched so precariously on the rails of the fence, when Baram walked across the field to join her. He put his elbows on the top rail next to her and stared out as she was staring. Seeing nothing of interest, he looked up at his wife.

“Hello, lass,” he said. It was what he always called her.

She looked down at him. Long and lean, he kept his face shaved. His eyes were open and honest. He was a good partner.

“I’m a lass no longer, husband,” she said, and climbed down from her perch. Leaning back against the fence she looked out across their fields. The small dairy herd was out grazing. She could see someone up on the roof of the new house that Gunter was building. He’d taken his time about it, but that spring he’d married a girl from one of the farms between them and the village, and convinced her to move out here rather than start a family under her family’s roof. “My son will have a son of his own soon.”

“Yes, that’s the way of it,” Baram said, smiling. “And on and on.”

She recalled that when they were young he would have gone on and on, talking on the theme till he ran out of breath. He’d grown quiet at some point during their marriage. She couldn’t say where. Now he was sparing with his words, each one considered, with little wasted breath.

She took his rough hand in hers and squeezed it. There were tears in her eyes and she didn’t know why. He didn’t see, for he too was busy surveying the bustling farm they’d built and grown together.

“There is something coming, husband,” she whispered. She didn’t think he heard. “I can feel it at my back now.”

And she could. As she’d never felt it before. The weight of the thing was monstrous. She’d known it since she was a child, but could never put a name or a face to it. She only knew that when it came it would sweep her up and change her life forever.

“I am afraid,” she said, more loudly. Baram heard, and turned, and saw the tears in her eyes and the look on her face. Though he did not understand – for she’d never spoken of these things to him before – he took her in his long strong arms and held her close. They stood like that, leaning into the fence at the edgeward boundary of their farm, for a long time, as the last light of day faded and the stars came out, with the firmament roiling in a glowing uproar below those glinting points.

Carlen died early the next spring. She lived to see her first great-grandchild, but only just. The babe was named Bresson, and was born to Gunter and his wife Sarah. Rachel sat by her mother for hours in the last days. They spoke of times long gone, when it was just Rachel and her mother and father on the farm. And they spoke of times even further back than that. For the first time in many years Rachel heard the stories about her brothers Bertram and Ralf: their growing up, their brief time as young men. For only the second time in her life Rachel heard how her two older brothers went seeking the witch in the deep forest and lost their lives, one after the other.

“Edgeward,” said Carlen, murmuring. “I watched my sons go edgeward, but I never saw them come back.”

They talked of other things, and after a while it was only Rachel talking. Carlen slept, white, pale, and frail, and she didn’t wake.

At the next dawn they buried her, beside her husband, and her parents, and beside the markers that were all that was left of her two sons. In that earth there was also a child of Rachel’s, a stillborn boy who would have been between Mavrin and Diona in age. Many members of the extended family were there, come from the farm Rachel used to think of as “the next-door” and also from further out, from the new farms. Even Bresson, having passed eighty years in the winter, was there, his beard and hair flowing white, his frame only slightly shrunken by his years, leaning on the arm of one of his great-grandsons. He and Carlen had been all that was left of their generation on the farms, and now he was the last. He spoke the blessing, as was proper, but when his voice failed Rachel took it up, speaking clearly and firmly so that all could hear. Bresson crumpled back into the arms of his kin, leaning heavily on his staff.

The death feast was a sparing one, because the spring festival was only two days away. The mood was festive already, even merry. All of Rachel’s children solemnly mourned the woman who had raised them, but amongst Bresson’s brood there were few who had known her well, and the feeling of spring was already in their hearts. Rachel presided over the feast as was her right as the the eldest living relative of the deceased. But soon after the meal had formally ended, while the children from her husband’s extensive family played in the grass, she went back to the edge of the fontward wood and stood looking down at the graves.

Her parents had both given their bodies back to the earth now. She felt a passing of something from her life. A boundary had been crossed, the most recent of many. First childhood, then girlhood, then apprenticeship, then marriage, then children and herbs and the ever-growing farm. Each of the earlier stages was clearly demarcated in her mind. There were markers at the end of each. Each end was also the beginning of the next age of her life. And as she looked at her parents’ graves, one very old, one very fresh, she felt something she hadn’t felt before. She felt that she stood on the boundary between one part of her life and the next. As if she were hovering between childhood and adulthood, actually standing on the wall between them, and was aware of it as she stood there. What came next? She was farmer, herb master and healer, mother, wife. Wasn’t that the rest of it, till the day she too lay under the earth next to her mother and father and her unborn son?

She ignored the presence of her brothers’ empty graves, kept her eyes away from them, but they seemed to draw her for no reason she knew.

The next day was the day before festival, and there was a heavy anticipation hanging in the air. Rachel felt it looming over her head, and it sent her into a panic somewhere deep inside. On the outside she seemed as calm as ever. She ordered the preparations with a steady hand. But inside she was quailing. Every few minutes she looked out the window, or across the fields, or out of the cowshed, out edgeward. But nothing was there. Nothing came.

Her family swirled around her, loading the wagon with cheese and bread, getting everything ready for the following morning. She oversaw the preparation of the meals for the day – sparing meals, everyone saving room for the feast on the morrow. She was helped by her daughters and her daughter-in-law, though Sarah had the babe Bresson tied in a wrapping of cloth, snuggled to her breast. They cleaned the two houses, all the rooms, they cleaned the cowshed and the new barn.

One more meal. The air in the house was full of the whisperings of the younger children, eager for the festival, and the quieter but still palpable excitement of the children who were in the midst of becoming young men and women. They were thinking of dances on the green around the fire the next night. Some of them were of the age for it. Gerta had her eye on a boy from the village who she pined after in the time between festivals, and dance with exclusively four times a year.

One more evening sitting beside the hearth, even Gunter and his little family come over from the other house to share the excitement of the festival eve. And then Gunter and Sarah and the babe went to their own hearth, and the children went to sleep, some in the main room, some in the room they had shared with their grandmother. The ceiling hung with herbs seemed like a dry forest upside down above their heads as Rachel and Baram sat beside the dwindling fire. Then Baram got up, kissed her on the head, and went to bed.

She followed him moments later, and slept for a little while. She woke to darkness. She went into the main room, poked at the embers of the fire, put on a few sticks. She didn’t look out the window into the night. She went and lay in Carlen’s empty bed for a while. One of the children would take it eventually, but it was empty still, for now. Her children were sleeping around her, breathing softly, but she could not give herself over to that silent oblivion. She lay in her mother’s bed for an hour, two. Then she stood up and went into the main room. It was still dead night. It would be another hour at least before Gunter would be up milking the cows. She strode across the room and opened the window. The firmament was slow, twisting in a dance where each step seemed to take a lifetime. It was gold and green. The stars were bright behind it, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. A late, light snow had fallen during the evening, and it glowed in the light of the firmament.

She closed the window. There was a pack lying by the door. She had filled it the day before during the preparations. It contained cheeses and loaves of bread, some dried beef and pork. A few changes of clothes. A good supply of her herbs, her small kit with kettle, pot, mortar, pestle, knife, all her tools for healing and the other goods she could do. She didn’t remember why she’d packed it that way, as if for a long journey out amongst the farms.

She was dressed, though she didn’t remember when she did it, in one of her traveling dresses of good sturdy wool. She pulled her cloak about her and shouldered the pack. Then she took a walking stick that had been her father’s from the beside the door, opened it, and stepped out into the night. She closed the door behind her.

With the firmament glowing above her, slowly smoldering, Rachel walked away from her home. She walked out across the fields. She climbed the fence at the boundary. She walked in her sturdy shoes across the light snow, leaving dark footprints behind her. The light of the firmament was enough for her. She walked straight out and she didn’t look back. She walked edgeward, and she knew that nothing was ever coming from that direction to sweep her up and change her life forever. What she had been waiting for, all her life, was the day she would stretch her legs and walk – walk edgeward.

A tension shattered as she walked. The storm had broken. She was the change that was to come.

She walked edgeward and felt herself relax. She no longer stood on the wall. She was on the other side, having coming through motherhood, wifehood. There were tears streaming down her face. She took another step, and another, and her life was swept away on the wind.

She did not see it, because she didn’t look back, but behind her the night warmed and a heavy rain swept over the farm, melting the snow, obliterating the tracks which were the only sign of her leaving.

There was a great silence in her mind and in the land around her. She had been alone before, away from her family. Whenever she went out among the outlying farms, healing, bringing comfort with her herbs, she had almost always gone alone. She was used to the physical silence, the absence of the family noise around her. But some part of her deep within had blossomed into an emptiness. It was as if a bee had been buzzing in her ear her entire life, and had suddenly fallen silent, just now, for the first time. She felt herself an observer of her own thoughts. As the observer, she knew that she should be feeling pain, and shame, and the sorrow of her family left behind. But the emptiness was where those thoughts should have been. And in the emptiness was peace.

Edgeward. That was all that was in her. Edgeward, with morning on her right. And the day passed. She did not stop, just put one foot in front of the other for the entire day. And then night rose fontward, on her right, and swept across the sky, and the stars were above her. The night was cold. She walked for some time under the light of the firmament. She spotted a haystack across a field, and she spent the night there, aware of the farmhouse visible across several more fields. She slept for several hours and then started off again, still under the cover of darkness, still earlier than the farmers in the house would be up.

The next day was warm. Spring rolled in with the glow of daylight. The stars hung stubbornly behind the firmament for a long time that morning and then subsided, their brightness lost in the general glow. She stopped mid-morning to eat. The farms had given way to rolling low hills. She saw sheep on one and changed her course to keep another hill between herself and any watching human eyes. She stopped on the shoulder of one of these hills to eat her first meal since leaving home. There was a boulder there, still chill with the night’s cold, but she leaned her back up against it for support. She ate bread and a little cheese, and a very little meat. From where she sat she could see no one, no living thing save for a few birds hopping from one low tree or bush to the next. The landscape was empty and quiet, and the firmament was subdued, the ribbons of colored light almost invisible against the bright day. It seemed as if the earth and the sky echoed the blooming lack within her – lack of content, lack of meaning, but also lack of pain, lack of fear.

Two more days she walked like this. Each day was warmer than the last, till on the fourth day she removed her cloak, rolled it, and tied it to her pack. Her feet were sore, and she stopped more often now to stare at the landscape, at the sky. She still ate sparingly. Her loaves were gone, but they would have soon gone stale anyway, and she was supplementing her meals with wild greens and roots she foraged as she walked. The rolling green hills with their sporadic sheep had flattened out again, spreading themselves into a lowland dotted with fens and marshes. This was rich land to her. She harvested as she went, tied herbs to the outside of her pack with cord twisted from the fiber of grasses. She ate well, and thought often of Gerta, her old teacher, dead a generation.

Through all her journey she’d seen no path that could be called a road. There were some beaten tracks, most clearly made by animals, others which might have been made by human folk. She avoided these, stuck to the animal trails, though she’d seen no other human being since she’d left home.

She reached the end of the lowland around noon on the fourth day. A few hills, rockier than the ones with the sheep, brought the land up, and after her first climb she could see back over her trail to the green hills in the distance. She munched on a caseril root, bitter but full of food, and watched a large bird lift out of one of the marshes and glide over the grasses. Other than the gray bird there was no movement in the landscape. No one was following her. The thought brought a twinge of pain to her heart. She felt this ache pass across the outskirts of the quiet within her. Then she observed it as it faded away, overcome by the calm deep within.

Edgeward. Her course was ever edgeward, keeping font on her right, fade on her left, and morn behind her all the time. She crossed the rocky hills and saw off to her right a dark forest stretching as far as she could see. It was fontward of her, out of her clear-pointed path. Ceasing her descent, she sat on the steep side of the hill and waited, looking first edgeward, then towards the forest. A hawk left the trees and fell like a rock into the grasses between her and the forest. It rose seconds later with something hanging from its mouth and returned to its home.

She was awake to the sensations within her, though they were so quiet, so calm and untroubled. Ever since the anticipation she’d felt all her life had melted away on that early morning, that spring festival day, she had been keenly aware of the place where that feeling had formerly lived. It was a strange place she’d never been aware of before, because it had always been filled with the anticipation of something coming – something going, myself going, she thought, the first thought she had formed in language since leaving home. Now the place was empty almost all the time, except when she looked edgeward. Then there was the sensation of a pull in that place, drawing her onward. Or perhaps it was just a feeling of rightness, the feeling that edgeward was the right way, the correct way.

Now the pull was absent. It had gone as soon as she saw the forest.

Feeling nothing either way she got up after a while and walked down off the hill, taking her time, for the footing was uncertain, with frequent patches of gravelly stone ready to slide out from under her. She reached the bottom of the slope without incident however, and turned edgeward once more. There was a stream running off to her right, in the middle of the land between the forest and the hills. After another hour she walked down to it and filled her waterskin. The pull edgeward had still not returned, but nothing had arisen to take its place. Lacking clear direction, she went on in the way she had been going, following the stream edgeward, with the forest on her right, the hills on her left.

Then, when she had just begun to see the first darkening of evening arising fontward, above the far reaches of the forest, she felt a sudden tug. She was looking at the forest, the trees dark and soon to be darker. She walked back down to the banks of the stream and looked into the waters. They were smooth and placid, slow moving. She could see her reflection in them, colored by the rose of the firmament above. A woman in the middle of her life, with long brown hair just starting to see some gray. A plain strong face, lined by the sun and by joys and cares, a little stern, with dark, deep eyes. She looked, also, like someone who’d been sleeping outside for days, and the bundles of drying herbs tied to her pack made her seem wild, like a creature of the forest, not the town or farm. She stared down into her own eyes, distorted by ripples, for a long moment, then she turned away.

Moving down the stream she found a place where the land dipped and the stream fell over a little shallow place at a higher pace. It spread out to thirty feet or more, but there were rocks above the water, and using these she made her crossing without getting her skirts wet. On the other side was a little scramble up the eroded bank, and then she was on the broad grassy area abutting the forest.

The forest loomed ahead of her. Even at the outskirts the trees were tall and wide, and the forest dark under them. There was a heavy boundary of small trees and bushes at the edge of the forest. They sheltered under the overhanging leaves of the larger trees further back but also basked in the light of the day. She walked up to this barrier, the grasses pulling at her skirts, leaving sticky burrs in the wool.

There was no path that she could see. Without looking back she pushed her way into the boundary trees, parting their branches with her hands. They tugged at her body, and smaller shrubs and vines pulled at her legs, but stepping high and pressing ahead she came through the densest stuff. Once she was properly under the cover of the larger trees the smaller growth grew smaller still, till it dwindled away almost completely. The light dwindled as well. Even though there was still daylight left outside the forest, beneath the leaves twilight came early. As far as her eye could see she saw huge trunks, most bigger around than she could reach. They stretched up very high before spreading their leaves out to touch the canopies of the other trees nearby, and very little light could break through. The forest floor was soft with a thousand generations of fallen leaves. Sound also vanished once she was through the boundary. It was almost as if she had entered a cave, as if she were deep under the earth rather than standing on its surface. Far head of her through the trees she could see daylight, a clearing of some kind. Weaving between the trees and around their great twisting roots she set out in that direction.

The trees were old. The forest must have stood, unchanged, since the beginning of the world. Each had its story, its life, from seed to sapling to great towering grandfather. And she felt the shortness of her own life compared to these. She knew she could not count the generations of her family that had lived and died while these trees had lived each one a single life. And still they went on, and they would go on long into the future, with more human generations pouring through the years while they stood unchanged.

Stood unchanged. Until they fell, they stood unchanged. She had reached the clearing, with the light of the late afternoon pouring down from high above and feeding small growth, a field of grasses with saplings scattered throughout. The clearing was long, with one end very thin and the other end wide. Down its center lay the remains of the great tree, slowly rotting, becoming just a long mound of mossy pulp in the middle of the field. It had taken smaller trees with it when it fell, causing the clearing which allowed so much life to flourish. For such a tree to die it must have been old indeed, or else ill. Perhaps this tree was one of the first in the forest to grow, and now it was one of the first to fall.

She stayed in the clearing that night, unsure where the next would be and unsure of walking safely in the darkness beneath the canopy. There was a young tree growing from what had been the branches of the old, already providing its own shade so that around it only cool soft mosses grew. She lay down atop these, wrapped in her cloak, with her pack for a pillow, and slept as deeply as she ever had, surrounded by an ancient place which thought nothing for her fleeting life or her fleeting thoughts. Her dreams were like the trees, old, dark, slow, and when she woke her mind was too quick for them. She couldn’t think them back to her.

I realized today that we’re about a third of the way through She Danced with Shadows (it’s short). This makes sense to me, in terms of the story. About a third of the piece concerns Rachel’s childhood and her life with her family. This seems nice and neat, but I’m not convinced that the pacing is working at all. It feels like we’ve spent an awfully long time watching her grow. Feel free to send me your thoughts on that (acodispo@gmail.com).

The server, Gregor, fancied himself an actor. He had participated in the circle plays in the small Western town he came from. When he ventured to the Edge in search of glory on the stage he’d found a job as a server in Revel’s parlor, as well as a precious few opportunities as spear-carriers and other lowly types in several amateur companies, but his ardour for the craft was undulled. So as he climbed the stairs to the second level of the Fallen Dragon he prepared for the role he was about to play. He would discover his customer crumpled on the table. Of course he would assume the great bard was asleep, perhaps suffering from the effects of a little too much wine. But then he would check more closely, and discover that the man was deceased. His surprise would be complete. In his mind he rehearsed the hearty scream that would echo through the parlor, evidence not only of his surprise at discovering a dead man, but also of his sorrow at the loss the untimely death by poisoning of Armen Severcross, the greatest bard of the age, meant to the world of the theatre. In reality the server though it no great loss. The famed bard was a talentless hack as far as Gregor was concerned, lucky enough to have a few rich patrons. And that voice, like a crushed frog. The woman with the poison had brought a merciful end to a career that grated on the hearts of true performers everywhere.

But when Gregor reached the top of the stairs and looked down the corridor all planned performances fled his mind, and with little talent for improvisation he simply stopped short and stared. Armen was sitting up in his chair, peering out the window, his fingers tapping an exotic rhythm on the table. In front of him was a single untouched glass of wine. He must have heard Gregor’s faltering steps, because he turned his face from the stars to peer down the corridor.

That face, that lumpen face which was so loved by the masses and by the courts despite its ugliness, looked even worse than usual. The bard’s mismatched eyes were bloodshot, his skin deathly pale and his lank hair dripping with sweat, but there was a smile on his too-large lips, and his eyes glittered with focus.

He looked Gregor in the eye, and his voice, though it sounded like the whisper of death, somehow carried down the corridor as if he stood nearby and placed his words carefully into Gregor’s ear.

“There’s something wrong with this wine. Would you taste it, brother?”

Armen smirked and watched the server turn as white as a dead man, whirl, and run down the stairs. He closed his eyes and listened to the pounding footsteps as the man proceeded through the parlor, no doubt causing undue stress to several patrons. Armen almost felt pity. It had been cruel of Marath to involve the man.

He opened his eyes and picked up Marath’s glass, drank it down himself. He knew the clerksbane leaf would protect him from further doses for several hours yet. It was remarkable: the poison they’d used was completely tasteless. The wine was very fine indeed.

The drink eased the throbbing of his head somewhat, but he still felt terrible. He wished that he’d eaten the leaf before meeting Marath, as he’d thought to. But the thing had cost a fortune to procure, and he hadn’t wanted to waste it if she wasn’t going to poison him. He shook his head and shivered at the thought of how close the thing had been. Next time he would come prepared, and damn the cost.

He finished the poisoned wine and tossed the glass out the window. So Morash had moved first. Now any further violence was completely justified.

Armen Severcross croaked out a laugh and turned to stare out at the stars, considering his next move.

The End — for now

His head snapped toward her, and he felt the world spin a little around him. The stars outside the window blurred in the corner of his eye. She wasn’t smiling anymore, but she was still studying him. He looked down at her glass. Her had been sure she had been drinking with him, but the glass was exactly half full, no less.

“Ha!” he laughed again. He felt a sharp pain somewhere deep in his abdomen, and his hand clenched toward it. He made use of the involuntary motion and slipped trembling fingers inside his jerkin, withdrew a hidden dagger. He stabbed at her throat, but his movements were jerky, slow, lacking the preternatural grace which normally so belied his awkward appearance. And she was faster than him even on a good day. The edge of her hand lashed out and hit his stabbing hand in the wrist. His hand went limp and the blade tumbled out the window.

Another pain wracked his innards and he crumbled forward onto the table. The gold pendant he was wearing flopped out of the neck of his jerkin and lay glinting in front of his nose. His elbow knocked his glass off the table. It broke with a muffled crunch somewhere behind the table. He smiled a little as Marath grasped his hands in her own and pulled them, almost tenderly, across the table toward her, away from any weapons he might have left.

She bent down to whisper in his ear. “Morash sends his regards. Goodbye, brother.”

He blacked out briefly, and when his vision returned, blurrier than before, he could see her walking away down the corridor. He thought about reaching for a knife, but his backup was in his boot, and his hands only twitched a bit when he directed them to move. The pain in his abdomen was fading now, which seemed like a bad sign.

When she reached the top of the stairs Marath glanced over her shoulder. Armen was motionless, his eyes still open and alive, but barely. Those eyes, which could express the steely determination of the warrior or the tender sweetness of a maiden at the whim of their owner now seemed expressionless, without artifice.

Marath turned and walked down the stairs.

As soon as she was out of sight Armen focused his rapidly fading gaze on the pendant lying in front of his nose. His focused all his will on it. He directed his left hand to move. It did not. He groaned, deep and low, and tried again, enlisting any muscles still operational to the cause. His entire arm jerked, and his numbed fingers settled on the pendant. He blacked out again, but fought out of the dark, screaming inside. Outside he moaned slightly. The pendant was still there. He tried to flick the tip of his index finger. Miraculously, it obeyed, poking a certain part of the pendant. The jeweled exterior popped open on clever hidden hinges. Within the compartment was a single gray, crumbling dried leaf from some small plant.

For a moment he just stared at it, because he could do nothing else. In fact he could see nothing else; the rest of his vision had faded into gray indistinction. He moved his finger again, and the leaf tumbled out of the compartment onto the table, just under his lips. He summoned all the energy he had left, and turned his head. He thought he had opened his lips. He though he felt the leaf adhere to his numbed tongue. He tried to swallow. Then the world went black once more.

Please also forgive my missing a Monday post. You’ll get another entry in Armen’s story tomorrow as well as Friday, to make up.

Armen’s eyes snapped open.

“Don’t let me interrupt you, Armen. You look like you could use some beauty sleep.”

Marath had arrived as she always did, without a sound. Armen’s senses were sharp, his hearing especially, and every time they met he felt a wound to his pride. She probably knew it, too, knew how he prized his ability to pick out variations of sound that the untrained ear could not detect. And so every time she pricked him with her perfect silence, arriving at precisely the moment when he let down his guard.

“I was beginning to suspect someone had finally killed you, Marath,” Armen growled. His critics had said that his voice sounded like the noise of a bull frog being crushed between two boulders, but even the most vehement of them was also forced to say in qualification: “I do not know how a man creates such beauty with such a voice.”

“No doubt you would have been pleased if it had been so,” she replied. She pursed her lips in something that might have been called a smile. She was no great beauty either, but she wouldn’t have been picked out on the street for being ugly. It seemed unlikely she would have been picked out on the street at all. There was very little memorable or remarkable about any part of her. Armen thought she preferred it that way.

“No doubt,” sneered Armen, and he slumped back into his chair, or at least as far back as the overstuffed cushions would allow. He grabbed his glass with unnecessary force, swirling the wine and spilling some over the rim onto his fingers. He ignored it and swallowed a gulp. Marath always put him in an ill humor, made him act rashly. And unconsidered action was dangerous around her.

Marath sat quietly, watching, no, staring at him as he drank, studying him frankly. The twist on her lips was still there. He caught her eye, and the twist deepened. He rolled his mismatched eyes up into his head, set the glass down — with a little too much force again, spilling red onto the dark wood — and made a gesture of query, his two hands open before him, palms up.

“What?” he snapped, and waited.

She looked out the window and said, offhandedly: “I heard your performance for Duke Cerdig in the East went well.”

He leaned forward, resting on his elbows. “I’ve heard the same thing,” he grated. “But I don’t remember a bit of it, myself.”

She snorted out a laugh and her posture loosened into the chair. Armen too settled back again, smiling a little. He was pleased to have finally made an impression.

The server came up the stairs with a fresh bottle and a fresh glass, which he filled and set in front of Marath. The man refilled Armen’s glass, then made as if to leave. Armen stopped him and asked him to leave the bottle. The man nodded, set down the bottle, and left quietly.

Peevishly Armen filled his glass to the top — the server had left it only half full. When he looked up Marath was watching him again.

“Do you always stare so, sister?” His grandfather had always called people “brother” and “sister.” The old man had been from the South, and said that was what people said there, but Armen had been to the South and nobody had ever called him “brother.”

“I’m looking for weaknesses,” she said, blinking slowly.

This time it was Armen’s turn to laugh, a rough bark that was gone before it’d hardly left his lungs.

“They shouldn’t be that hard to find,” he said, swilling back a gulp of wine.

“Not at all. But they are so numerous, I am forced to catalog.”

He laughed again, then they sat in silence for a while. Armen was enjoying this meeting much more than he’d anticipated. Marath seemed in a friendlier mood than when they’d last met, and he couldn’t help thinking what he thought every time after they spoke, that he admired her as he admired few people in the world. Then again, admiring her would get him in as much trouble as unplanned action. He shook his head and set his wine down. It was stronger stuff than he’d thought, and his head felt a little fuzzy.

He looked out the window and considered what he had come here to do. He wasn’t a violent person by nature. In truth he was a bit of a coward, and he didn’t care to hide it from himself. He reflected that this was the reason anyone committed violence: fear of the other, fear that the other might commit the violence first. So he did violence to protect himself even though it seemed such a waste. He sighed and tugged at his collar, feeling hot.

“It’s Morash. The sorceror,” he muttered across the table, not looking at her.

“I know,” she said.

One evening a few years later, as she prepared the meal, Rachel heard Carlen and Gunter talking out in the garden.

“Well, it’s at least time to be thinking about it,” Carlen said in a louder tone. “We aren’t getting any younger. Sometime in the next few years.”

Rachel quietly pulled the window open, letting in a rush of cold fall air which made the steam from the soup pot twice as visible.

“The problem,” Gunter said, “is that she doesn’t spend enough time with anyone her age to get to know them. We’re a little far from town for that.”

“We could give her some time to herself, send her down to the town. She could stay with Gerta, learn the herbs.”

There was silence in the garden for a moment or two. Rachel moved to stand at the other end of the window, and she could see her parents, sitting across a garden row from each other on three-legged stools, bending down to weed. Carlen’s long white hair was wrapped up in a bun on her head to keep it out of the dirt. Gunter was looking at his wife. His back was to Rachel and she couldn’t see his face, but his form spoke of sadness.

“We couldn’t spare her, Gerta. There’s too much to be done. We could sell the pigs, and perhaps you and I could manage on our own for a while, but that money would only last so long.”

“I know, love,” said Carlen. They bent back to weeding, but in a moment Gunter straightened again. He looked out mornward, towards the town. Then he moved his stool closer to the garden bed and bent down to speak very quietly to his wife.

The next morning Rachel hitched the new goat to its cart and waved to the old goat, who was busily munching hay in her pen. She went into the cowshed and helped her father lift the jug of fresh milk. Together they carried it out into the yard and placed it in the cart. Then Gunter surprised her by fetching his walking stick from beside the farmhouse door. He joined her back at the cart and smile at her, seaming his face with wrinkles.

“I thought I’d walk along with you today, lass,” he said, “and have a few words with Bresson.”

She nodded happily, trying to remember the last time he had taken the morning off from chores to walk with her next-door. They walked in silence for a time. It had been a bright night, so they brought no lantern. The stars were still visible, though fading, and the firmament changed as they walked from greens and golds to reds and blues. The new goat still had a tendency to want to wander to the side of the road in search of nibblings, so from time to time Rachel nudged it gently back on course. After a while they spoke quietly about the weather, and the fall festival soon to come. Gunter told Rachel about how when her brothers got to be her age they had fought over who would do the milk run to Bresson’s farm, because they both had their eye on pretty little Sara. Rachel laughed and pointed out that “pretty little Sara” was now a plump housewife with a temper and seven children, who lived in town. Gunter laughed and nodded.

“They lost interest after a year or two. She had a temper even then. But the milk delivery got earlier each day for months while they each tried to get a jump on the other. Until I put a stop to it.” Gunter chuckled and bowed his head.

They reached the next-door farmhouse a bit later than usual. They had taken their time. She wasn’t sure, but she thought Gunter walked with a slight limp now, as if his leg or hip bothered him. She thought she would ask him about it later.

Bresson came out to meet them. He was older than her father by several years, but still hale and hearty. He was thick and stocky with a forked white beard, and he burst into a grin when he saw them. He greeted Rachel as he did every day, with a gentle nod and a question about her mother’s well-being, then he shook her father’s hand. While Rachel led the goat to the farmhouse the two farmers stepped aside to converse.

A new crop of grandchildren were running about the yard already, even just past dawn, as it was. Or great-grandchildren they must be. The parents were young folk Rachel could remember as being the older children when she was small. Two sons of Bresson’s sons. One had married a girl from the village, and the other’s wife was from a farm off fontward. A girl from next-door had married too, but she had chosen to move to town where her husband’s smaller family lived. Rachel could not think to blame her. Though the town could be noisy and crowded, Bresson’s farm was that and more, with folk ranging from babes in arms to Bresson’s aged mother, who had sat in her chair on the porch as long as Rachel could remember. They were building another room onto the already-sprawling main farmhouse, and Bresson’s oldest daughter, whose own children were nearly grown, had built another house several years ago on the other side of one of the fields.

Thad, the husband of Bresson’s oldest daughter, helped her lift the milk jug out of the cart and handed her the new one. He smiled and asked her how the old goat was doing. She spoke with him a bit while some of the younger children clustered around her skirts, tugging on her. They called her “milk lady,” and asked for a ride in the cart. She and Thad kept them from climbing into it. While they did so Rachel kept half an eye on her father and Bresson. After a bit they seemed to conclude their talk. Bresson clapped her father on the shoulder. He waved to Rachel, then went into the farmhouse. Gunter came walking over. He looked pleased, but he said nothing about the conversation. Rachel tucked the empty jug into the cart and led the goat back around to go.

“We’ll have a crock of butter tomorrow if you can spare it,” said Thad in parting. “Emi’s been doing a bit of extra baking.” Rachel nodded, and waved, and they were on their way.

Gunter said nothing about what he’d talked about with Bresson. Their journey home passed in easy silence.

The next day, mid-morning, Rachel was out in the yard when she looked up and saw a young man walking down the track. It was Bresson’s son Baram. He was tall for his age, just a year or two older than Rachel, and skinny. He waved hello.

“Hello,” said Rachel.

“My pa sent me down to help you all about the place,” he said. “Your pa’s going to trade a pig for my labor for the year. Besides there’s almost too many hands around back there.” He nodded his head over his right shoulder, then continued in his rather breathless way of speaking. “I was caring for the babes more often than not, rather than the herd! How are you, Rachel?”

She shrugged. “Well, I’m alright. If you’d like you can help me muck out the cow’s shed.”

So the two of them worked in the shed, side by side for a few hours. Rachel liked the way Baram talked, without stopping, about anything that came into his head. She had a vague memory of hitting him and knocking him down once, when they were younger. Or had it been his little brother Mikel? She wondered why she’d done it.

From then on Baram came down the track every morning. He worked the day, shared dinner with them, and then walked home in the evening, walking carefree in the dark under the firmament. He started by helping with the everyday tasks, but soon he found other things to do, things that had been left undone for some reason. Rachel was surprised there were so many of these to be found, and she felt a little ashamed about it. Baram re-thatched the roof of the farmhouse, whitewashed the walls, and rebuilt the stalls in the cowshed, while Rachel and her parents kept up with the regular work about the farm.

With Baram’s help they had the farm in much better shape that winter than it had been in years.

“In the spring,” said Carlen one night, as they sat around the table finishing the meal, “how would you like to go into town for a time and learn the herbs with Gerta?”

Rachel looked up from her bowl but said nothing. Baram spoke up.

“You’d do well to learn the herb lore, Rachel. Especially out so far as we all are here. And also with Gerta getting older, she’s less able to come out to help folk at the further farms than she used to.” He smiled at her and sopped at his soup with a crust of bread.

“Also, lass,” said Gunter, “you’d get to spend more time with folks your age down in town. Your mother and I, well, we aren’t fit company for a young lass like you. Not all the time.”

Rachel looked grave. She spoke across the table to Baram.

“You’ll still be coming out here to help? It would be a hard thing to take care of the farm with only two.” She looked at her parents and tried not to think that it was getting to be a hard thing even with three.

“Of course,” he said, grinning. “Your da’s pig paid my way till the fall.”

Rachel looked at the three of them. She looked at her parents’ faces, with their lines and wrinkles, and at Baram’s eager face with fuzz on his cheeks. She thought of her father’s hip for some reason, and she thought of herbs that might ease discomfort of that sort. She thought of the other children in the village, her few friends there, festival friends she visited only four times a year. She thought of how she and they were just barely at all children anymore, of how soon they would be young folk. She thought of the newborn great grandchildren next-door, and of their parents, growing up just a few years ahead of her.

“It’s a good idea, ma, pa,” she said, smiling at them. “I’ll go down in the spring, if Gerta will have me. And I’ll come back as soon as you have a need.”

They smiled, and nodded, and finished their soup, and talked of other things.

In the spring the remaining snow melted away. Before the dawn on the festival day Rachel, Carlen, Gunter, and the goat left their house again. When the next-door family joined them they were suddenly part of a crowd, and Rachel felt the building anticipation which always grew to such a peak on the day of any festival. It was the sense of something new about to happen. Whatever it was, that something would sweep her up and turn her life. She was waiting for it. She had been waiting for it for a very long time.

Baram walked beside her and the goat, talking without cease. Even though he saw her every day he seemed to have an endless stream of things to tell her. She found she didn’t mind. She had always been quiet, used to speaking when she needed to, used to having two sets of attentive ears to hear all she might have to say. She supposed that Baram talked so much because if he ever stopped at home someone else would start talking, and he’d never get in a word. Or perhaps he talked so much around Rachel and her parents because he never got a chance to talk at home. But Rachel doubted that. She couldn’t think of Baram without words tumbling out of his mouth.

They danced on the green that afternoon, she and Baram. She danced with other boys and girls too; she was old enough, now. But she spent some extra time dancing with Baram. She wouldn’t see him for several weeks at least, and she thought she’d miss his voice a bit.

After the feast in the middle of the afternoon, while the day was still warm, Rachel went to see Gerta. The old woman had come down to the green to watch the festival from the comfort of a rocking chair.

“My grandson fetched it for me,” she said, “so that I could watch the young people. Like you, pretty thing.” She smiled at Rachel. She had bright, even teeth, in a face made of wrinkles.

“You can stay in my house and learn the herbs,” she went on, “but if you have the knack for it you’re going to have to stay longer than the summer. It will take that long to determine whether you have the knack.”

“How long?” Rachel asked, thinking of her parents.

“A year. I can teach you a lot in a year, and after that if you truly take to it you’ll call on me often for advice and further teaching.” The old woman chuckled in her surety. “Once the herb knowledge gets into you, if you’re apt for it, you won’t want to stop. It gives a power of a sort, it does.” She grinned again, and Rachel found herself grinning back.

Deep into the night after the firmament darkened the spring festival kept whirling over the green. The fires burned bright and food and drink was plentiful – not as great a feast as there would be at the fall festival, during harvest, but still a great bounty. Rachel danced with Baram again, twirling in the light of the leaping flames on the ground and the twisting, flicking firmament above. Then she danced with an older girl from the town, an eager-smiling girl with raven hair. Then Baram again. The night was wild and free, and something was bound to break loose, something was bound to change.

It did, but she had been expecting it all day. It wasn’t a surprise. At the end of the festival the elders pronounced a final blessing, and the fires were allowed to burn low. The outlying families began to depart. Rachel took from the cart a small bag she’d packed for herself, with a few changes of clothes and her few personal things. Baram had found the goat and was hitching her to the cart. Gunter and Carlen stood in the fading firelight, looking somehow small and shrunken.

They hugged Rachel to them. They murmured how much they would miss her. She smiled at them and kissed their cheeks. She waved to Baram, and shouldered her bag, and watched them vanish into the darkness with the rest of Baram’s family clustered about. The wheel of the milk cart creaking could be heard even after there was nothing more to see.

Rachel helped Gerta back to her house, which was on the mornward side of town. Her grandson, a big, round young man, carried the rocking chair. Gerta hobbled along with a stick in her right hand and Rachel’s outheld arm in her left. As they walked Gerta spoke of festivals she remembered, about particularly interesting events that had happened during festivals of her youth, forty or fifty years before. Rachel laughed at the funny stories, but she kept looking over her shoulder. At first she thought she was looking to see whether her family might be standing there, waiting for her to join them on the long road home. But she knew they wouldn’t be, and after a while she no longer knew why she kept looking back.

Gerta kept a neat little house on the edge of the town proper. Beyond it were a few farms fontward, and a wood that eventually lead into a deeper forest mornward. The road passed fontward of the house. They made it to the front door of the little house without a light, walking by the radiance of the firmament. Gerta’s grandson left the chair there, and bid goodnight to them both, weaving a bit as he walked back towards the green.

“He’s a good boy,” Gerta said. She pulled the latch up and opened the door of her house, and lead the way inside. “Come girl,” she said.

Inside it was dark, and Rachel stood still near the door. She heard Gerta moving across the room, and saw the darkness of her bent shape pass in front of the faintly glowing embers in the fireplace. Then a candle flame flickered to life at the hearth. Gerta held the candle in her hand, and she lifted it aloft and gestured in a semicircle with her stick.

“Home, girl,” she said. “Welcome.”

It was actually a little bigger than Rachel’s home. And this was a place for only two, or even one. The rafters were hung with the herbs which were Gerta’s trade. It seemed as if a forest were hanging upside down in the room and drying out in the heat of the fire. There was a second room, as well, off the back, where Gerta had her bed up against the back of the hearth and chimney. This room was also hung with drying plants.

Gerta was very tired, and she pointed Rachel to a pallet in the corner of the main room by the hearth.

“You’ll be there, girl.”

Then Rachel helped the old woman into bed, as if she were a child.

“Tomorrow you’ll meet them, all the precious plants, my dear,” the old woman murmured, and closed her eyes.

Before she lay down Rachel went outside and stood in the open air, much cooler now that the light of day had fled. She looked across the town and out edgeward. She looked towards home, and she looked past it, and she felt something coming towards her, sure to arrive at any time.

And so began her time as apprentice. To her it seemed to fly by. She took to the herbs in a way that made Gerta clap her hands, though the old woman forced her to do the hardest work even when shortcuts came naturally to her. She learned in the wood, gathering the plants as they grew in the spring, learning where they could be found. Gerta hobbled after her with the stick, or sometimes stayed in the village and drew her maps in the dirt outside the house. She learned in the house, grinding the dried leaves into powders, mixing them in the proper amounts, boiling or baking or steaming or brewing or burning them for the proper lengths of times. She learned in the village, going with Gerta to where the sick were, administering care, poultices, and potions.

The accumulation of new knowledge was addictive to her. It was a feeling she had seldom felt in her life before, of gaining knowledge piece by piece at a steady pace. She asked questions of Gerta constantly, and Gerta was delighted. With this new drive and sense of accomplishment, she began to forget the edgeward horizon. She seldom stood by herself as the firmament faded at the end of the day, seldom stared out that way as she had done since she was a child. It was almost as if the herbs, and her newfound vocation, were the thing, the great happening, which she had been waiting for for so long.

She didn’t see her parents until the summer festival, which arrived with stunning quickness. When she saw them she was overjoyed. She was saddened, too, by how thin her father and the goat looked. And she was pleased that her mother looked just the same. She found it a joy to see Baram again too, and they danced as they had done at the last festival. Things were well at the farm, they all said, but they would be glad to have her back. And they saw the gleam in her eyes when she spoke of what she was doing and learning, and they knew that she might not be back for some time.

And then came fall, and winter, and another spring. Through dark and cold of the winter she and Gerta practiced the making of potions which could ease colds and coughs, and other maladies of the season. There was no shortage of work to be done. There was even time spent outside, for some herbs grew through the winter and could be harvested, if they could be found.

And in the spring life came again into the world, and Gerta nodded and told her that she would succeed the old woman as the healer of the town and the surrounding countryside. And Rachel thought that Gerta would never die, though her limp had gotten worse and she seldom went out of the house, sending Rachel to gather plants or to tend to most of the sick in the town.

And at the height of summer, just before the festival, Baram came to town and told her that her father was very ill. He described the sickness which had come upon Gunter so suddenly, though they suspected that something had lurked in him for a long time, sapping his strength and making him grow lean. If only they had known. After he spoke Baram was silent, as he seldom was.

Gerta listened carefully to the description of the symptoms. She could not make the journey herself, but she sent Rachel with careful instructions, and a basket full of herbs, and her blessings.

So she returned to her home, and to her weeping mother, and she burst through the door and held her father’s hand for five minutes before his labored breathing ceased. His eyes were closed already by the time she arrived, but she thought she saw him smile a little when she whispered in his ear that she had come back to him.

They buried Gunter by the wood fontward, next to the graves of Carlen’s parents, whose farm it had been long ago. And Carlen placed two more markers beside her husband’s on that day, surprising Rachel and Baram. They were marked Bertram and Ralf.

Rachel didn’t return to the town. Gerta took another apprentice, and had just time enough left to teach him the beginnings of the lore, which he took to swiftly, before she died in the spring of the next year. Rachel stayed through the summer, through the fall and into the winter, and at the spring festival she and Baram were married. That night they returned to the farm where Rachel had grown up, her old home, her new home. Before they went into the house Rachel went to the edgeward side of the yard and stared out towards the horizon. Then her husband called to her, and she went inside.

And in the winter Rachel gave birth to her first son, and called him Gunter.

Leaving the wine where it was, he settled back in his chair. It was overstuffed. He felt as if his head was being pushed forward a bit too far by the cushioning. Because of this he felt in constant danger of falling forward. But it was the style — ostentatious, overstuffed, too comfortable by half. The chair was upholstered in an exotic pattern he could not name, in a color he suspected there was no name for at all. And in his little nook corner of the parlor’s second floor there was a wasting of space. In front of the window: his chair, the little table with the glass of wine on it, and then another identical chair, sitting empty. That was all. But Revel knew some clients liked their privacy, and so he kept these two- or three-person nooks arranged here and there about the expansive halls, waiting for just such a meeting as the ugly man had proposed. That was why he had come there, despite his disdain for the furnishings. That, and for the wine, for which he held no disdain and in fact a great deal of regard.

He was ugly as a painting or other work of art is ugly. That is, though a master’s painting of an ugly subject could not be called ugly, a hack’s painting of the most beautiful subject would certainly be called ugly. He managed to give this impression, that he was the portrait of a handsome man executed by a hack. The rippling, bizarre glass which was the rendering of the talentless hand lay between the viewer and the man’s true appearance.

This was, in fact, as near to being literally true as it could be. The ugly man had a handsome brother, a twin named Cerdig, and when the two were viewed side-by-side it would have been natural to suppose the one the botched attempt and the other the master’s work.

The ugly twin’s name was Armen. With one hand he pulled his short cape off the back of his chair where he’d set it when he arrived and shrugged it over his shoulders. The breeze coming through the open window had turned chilly, and though he himself had opened the window moments before, and though it stood within his power to shut it, Armen did not, because he preferred the chilly fresh breeze to the cloying miasma which hung in the air within the parlor, fruit of the scented candles Revel kept burning around the place at all times. Armen would take the fresh breeze off the aether any day, with all its variability of temperature, over the controlled and created uniform scent of candles infused with mint, rose, or starslip essence. This was another place where he and Revel differed in taste. Reflecting, Armen thought perhaps they shared no taste but the wine.

The hour was growing late. Armen took another sip. He toyed with the laces of his jerkin, tugging at them idly until they were perfectly even. He looked out the window. He looked down along the gallery. On the left a balcony rail overlooked the largest room in the parlor, which was just beginning to get busy at this hour. On the right were booths built into the wall. At the end of the gallery was the staircase that led down into the main room. Someone was coming up the stairs, but the person turned the corner and Armen relaxed into his chair. It wasn’t his person.

He sipped again. He looked out the window again. The stars shone coldly, as before. He closed his eyes and thought about Belinda. The last time they’d parted she’d been in a mood. She had promised to toss him out the window if he ever came back again. Given the location of her mansion, that would be a long, long fall. He shuddered at the thought. There was little doubt that she meant it. Armen had good information indicating that a previous paramour had actually met that very fate. He was probably still falling, for all anyone knew. The best way to deal with her in this sort of mood would be time. Time and patience, and a careful approach. Perhaps a poem and a bouquet of roses.

“Dreaming, Armen?” asked the voice, from the other chair.

He had a hope that the many years he intended to spend in contemplation and reasoning would act as an atonement for his destructive early life, but he kept it to himself. This hope was a prideful thing, and he tried to expel it from his being. It was enough to do his work without taking pride from it. All he might accomplish was made possible only by the long lives the monks before him had given to the cause of restoring meaning to a mad world. Any credit was due to the order, not to an individual monk, and the order was strong enough to take pride and recognize it as meaningless.

The pistol lay there on the shopkeeper’s board, secured by a latch with a lock, as all the valuable items in the shop were. There were precious few things of value, actually. The place was dingy and ill-kept, like the shopkeeper himself: a cringing man with a greedy look. Abraham doubted the man had any idea how valuable the piece was. He probably thought it valuable as the only firearm in his shop, but Abraham knew that it was worth more than the rest of the wares together. Years before he had seen one on the hip of the captain of Lord Richel’s personal guard, and he had seen it used in battle. The weapon in the dull shop was that finely-gilded gun’s sister, for all that it bore no decoration and was much in need of a cleaning. The runes graven on the barrel, obscured though they were by layers of grime, were what gave the weapon its deadly power.

The cringing man, no doubt noticing Abraham’s rapt attention to the weapon, scuttled over dry-washing his hands. He grabbed a lamp from a shelf nearby and held it over the display board, banishing the shadows of the poorly-lit shop.

Abraham straightened, berating himself internally for having shown an interest. He made as if to turn away, not meeting the shopkeeper’s eyes, but the man mustered a creaking raspy patter to forestall him.

“That’s a fine weapon, that is, sir. Would sir care to examine it more closely?” He produced a ring of keys with a clattering flourish, then set about setting them one by one into the lock, though no two looked alike and the correct one should have been easily distinguishable to a reasoning mind and eye.

“Is it?” replied Abraham. “You see, I wouldn’t know.” He brushed his hand over his tonsure pointedly. The shopkeep’s face fell a little, but he rallied and continued to jam keys into the lock till he found the right one.

“Let me show you, brother. It’s a fine thing indeed, well-suited for a pilgrim’s tribute to his god.” Abraham bristled — the man took him for a religionist — but kept quiet despite himself. He felt a stir within his heart as the shopkeeper lifted the pistol out of its brace, holding it by the barrel, and offered it to him with a duck of his sparse-haired head.

Abraham hesitated. It had been many years since he’d held a weapon, and though he was well-versed in the crossbow he had only used a firearm once or twice. But the grip fit his palm as if the weapon had been built for him, and he let his fingers curl around it. With a slight sneer just visible on his lips the shopkeeper reluinquished his hold on the weapon. Abraham ignored him.

He let the weight of the barrel bear his hand and arm down till the muzzle pointed at the floor. The weapon was heavy. Reflexively he shifted his stance slightly to accomodate it. Then in one smooth motion he lifted the pistol and sighted along the barrel’s length across the room, to where a piece of religious statuary poorly cast in bronze sat on a shelf. There was a little gasp of breath from the shopkeeper. Lowering the weapon again Abraham turned to regard him coolly. The man was caught with a look of confusion on his face. Though Abraham wore the tonsure and robes of a monastic, even the ill-educated shopkeeper could perceive the grace and ease with which he moved when he held a weapon. Abraham thought he saw fear on the man’s face, mixed with greed.

The monk held the weapon up with the muzzle toward the ceiling, close to his face, and examined it. The shop, the keeper, the busy noises of the street outside, everything faded into the background as he studied the runes along the pistol’s barrel. He knew some of them, and others he had seen before and would be able to work out the meaning of. With time and careful contemplation the weapon’s secrets would unfold and lend him their power to use as he pleased. The piece might be a companion much-needed along the road ahead of him, which he knew already would be fraught with danger. The man of war within him, long denied, raised voice and spoke of how even without direct use the weapon would provide passive protection against the human dangers of the road. By this means the weapon, made for destruction, might work to preserve reason. Perhaps it too would have a chance to atone through careful use for all the wasteful death it had caused since its making.

The man of peace fixed the shopkeeper with a cold glare.

“It’s a footman’s weapon, and in poor care besides. I’ll give you no more than nine pieces for it.”

The shopkeeper’s eyes glimmered with greed. “Fifteen,” he offered, slyly.

Abraham smiled inwardly, but to the cringing man he said only:

“Done.”

I heard from a marooned sailor that there was once a ship that went beyond the farthest reaches. It sailed into the aether until it had gone for years with no sign of any fragment of the old world. It sailed far beyond my ken in a bid to reach the stars. The captain was mad. He thought the stars were fragments built entirely of gold and silver, treasures of the old world beyond the imagining of the impoverished sundered fragments, glowing in the darkness with the splendor of their richness. But he was mad, and the ship never reached the stars. Perhaps it still drifts in those vast empty reaches, set on a straight course toward the impossible, sailing slower and slower as its magic dies. Someday it will stop and hang in the black, just another piece of litter in the wreckage that is the universe.

I could have told that mad captain that the stars were not treasures. I could have told him that his search was in vain. I am one of the few who might have saved him and his crew. I am an old god, and I remember that there used to be a star quite close by. The people called it the Sun, and they worshipped it and then brought it down to ruin them. And I undured the ruin, and I still remember.

The entire universe has changed beyond reckoning, but my domain remains the same as it has ever been. I inhabit a dry place of rock, and I rule within these confines. It is my place, and I am its mind.

Casting back I can recall the ice that made me, though my memories of that time are hard and stoney. That was long before the people came and gave me their mind, their focus and their presence. When the ice came and scraped the earth away, baring my face, I felt it as the rock feels it. Those are ageless memories, feelings bound up in the molecules of physical substance, the pieces and parts of my cold hard body. These days I remember things more clearly, in a focused way. I have become a spirit and a thinker, and I thank those who made me this way, though they are long gone.

I am a spirit of place. Bound to my stone I have traveled with it through the ages. Time has little meaning to me. People have made my life what it is and isn’t. When they first came and worshipped me, named me, they made me into the god that I am, they made me more than rock. When the world was sundered no one came for a very long time. They had to learn to fly again before they could reach me, because I am cut off. I drift far away from the other fragments of that world, cold and lonely.

It doesn’t matter. I have always been alone and sufficient unto myself. That is what kept my domain in one piece as the world tore itself apart. I am myself, and I am my place, and my mind is strong. So the place endures, and I endure, cold rock hanging in the aether.

I am sufficient. They made me so. The lonely rock hanging on high, often seen but never visited. I have brothers and sisters who felt the pad of many feet, every day, worship worn into their shoulders. But I was revered from a distance, the far-off god, the spirit on the horizon.

Now they have begun to come back to me, very slowly, one by one. First was the marooned sailor, drifting in a dingy, nearly out of food and water. I pulled him close, gave him what succour I could, spoke with him and shared my mind. He drew comfort from having someone to talk to, I think. Now his bones lie amongst the rocks, fading away, but his voice still lingers, as whispers and remnants, and sometimes I converse with him again, thought I am unsure whether it is really him or just an echo in my mind.

And since his arrival there have been one or two passings. Unlike those lost brothers and sisters who would have known the touch of other minds only through the soles of the climbers’ feet, I can make contact at a distance. I can perceive beyond my own borders even if I cannot act there. So I note their passings, these ships sailing serenely through the aether. They circle at a distance, or drift by on the way to more interesting places. And across the distance between I can feel one or two sailors look from the crows-nest, or out over the rails, and see me. I call to them. I call lightly and find an answering call in their blood. Even through the final destruction of the world which gave them birth, where they gave birth to me, the blood of the human species still feels my call. They point me out to their fellow sailors, the majestic rock in the darkness which seems to be possessed of an inner life visible even across the distance. They keep their eyes on me as they sail by, noting how my profile changes as their relationship to me changes. “It looks like an old man,” they say, “a maiden standing” or “a lion’s head”. I take these in, I add them to my stockpile of names. And I watch them sail away.

I am glad that the people have learned how to fly. I am glad they can come to see me again. It feels good to be named again, to be observed and wondered at. It is lonely in the dark without the touch of those awestruck minds.