City of Miracles

16. Close Your Eyes, I’ll Be Here in the Morning

Far away from Bulikov, in one of the provinces surrounding Ghaladesh, Sharma Muhajan stops and looks up.

Sharma is not rich, so she was in the middle of churning her own butter, a long, exhausting process. But then things seemed to…pause very strangely. Like things froze, just for a second. Yet now it’s gone.

A slight breeze wafts through her house. It’s curiously warm. But it makes her shake herself, and remember what she’s doing.

She goes back to her work, then fetches more milk for the churner. She sighs as she looks into the bucket of milk. It’s a pitiful amount, not enough to make what she needs, but she supposes it’ll have to do.

Sharma begins pouring the milk into the churner, staring into space and thinking about how, or rather if, they’ll make it through the month. Then she jumps, alarmed by the feeling of coldness in her sandals.

She looks down. The churner has overflowed. Milk is spreading across her floor in a dingy puddle.

Sharma frowns, bewildered, and looks into the bucket of milk. It’s the same amount—the same small, pitiful amount at the bottom—yet somehow it has overflowed her big churner.

Curious, she thinks, then walks over to a big pot, and tries to pour out the milk.

But she can’t pour it out. Because the milk just keeps coming. And coming. And coming.

And coming.

In Voortyashtan, far to the north, Mads Hoeverssen frowns as he tries to figure out what in the world is wrong with his automobile. Something somewhere is not draining right, he’s sure of it, which is blocking one of the fuel lines. But it’s just a matter of trying to figure out what is not draining right. If only he could get past that damn shaft here, on the side of the engine block here…

Then things pause for a moment. An odd little stutter, it feels like. And it’s gone.

A warm breeze flows across his face. He shakes himself and returns to his work, trying to get that shaft to budge, but it…

Squeak.

Mads stares. The shaft gives way to his touch as if it were made of soft cheese, bending perfectly.

He peers at the shaft. He realizes that what he’s done—however in the hells it is that he’s done it—is very bad, bad enough that the whole damn auto might not work.

Then, as if it heard his very thought, the shaft pops back into its original form with a squeak.

Mads peers at it again. He rubs his eyes. Then he slides out from under his auto, and thinks.

He looks at the dent at the edge of the driver’s door, which he’s never taken the time to get rid of.

With a clunk, the metal pops out and smooths itself over.

“Oh my word,” whispers Mads.

In Taalvashtan, in the southwest region of the Continent, a young boy chasing a ball accidentally runs up a wall, pauses as he realizes what’s happened, and bursts into tears, terrified. His parents, baffled, will have little idea of how to get him down, but they will eventually succeed. They may regret it later though, when their son realizes he can also run across ceilings.

In Navashtra, in Saypur, a young girl obeys a strange impulse and sings a song to the stones at the nearby quarry. She and the rest of her family, who are picnicking nearby, stare in fear and confusion as the stones slowly roll down the slopes to spell the words: THANK YOU, THAT WAS LOVELY.

In the Dreyling Shores, an old woman looks up and nearly has a heart attack as she sees her niece casually walking across the empty sky above the seas, laughing hysterically, waving her arms in mimicry of the nearby seagulls, who are no less alarmed than the old woman.

All of these aberrations—these and the thousands of others occurring across Saypur, the Continent, and the Dreyling Shores—are preceded by two things: the first is the strange pause, as if the world was frozen for a fleeting second; and then a warm breeze flooding through, touching people’s faces.

As one very young boy who has just discovered he can walk through wooden walls puts it, “It’s like there were stars in the breeze. And then the breeze put them in our heads.”

In Ghaladesh, the Military Council’s meeting with Prime Minister Gadkari and her cabinet is not going well. Mostly because the Military Council, despite being the Military Council and thus being very well informed, has very little understanding of what’s going on.

First there were the reports about the tower around Bulikov, and the giant black Divine thing that walked up the stairs inside. The Military Council had thought this was another Continental insurrection—except that the Continentals seemed just as surprised and terrified by it as everyone else.

Then there were the reports of former prime minister Ashara Komayd being sighted multiple times in the streets of Bulikov, which was very puzzling, as everyone knew she was quite dead.

And then there were the reports that the black tower, along with the famous walls of Bulikov, had simply disappeared. As if none of this had ever happened.

At first they were relieved. But then all the other reports came flooding in.

The prime minister’s aide rattles off the latest flurry: “…a woman in Ahanashtan can read poetry to wooden fences and make them rearrange themselves; one child, male, in Jukoshtan, leaves flower petals in his wake when he runs very fast; an elderly gentleman in Brost can make glass directly from sand just by having an argument with it; and now there are two or possibly even three—this is rather unconfirmed—women in Ahanashtan who can heal injuries of all types simply by holding the injured person in their arms and taking a long nap with them.” Her aide checks the figures once more. “In total, this is seventy-three reports in the last two hours.”

“And those are the ones we know,” says General Noor, ancient and gray but still wielding his steely stare. “There must be countless ones we don’t know about. Either because these people have hidden themselves away, or their…abilities function in an unseen manner.”

Prime Minister Gadkari considers this. She is known for being a quiet contemplator, not the sort of prime minister to rock the boat—a great contrast to Komayd and, after her, Gawali. “So,” she says eventually. “These are…miracles.”

“They would be, Prime Minister,” says General Noor. “Yet these are happening everywhere. Most miracles were restricted to the Continent.”

“And none of these people were known to have these miraculous qualities before,” says General Sakthi. “They’ve just…come from nowhere.”

There’s a snort from the back of the room. Everyone along the table slowly turns to look at Minister Mulaghesh, who is absently peeling a cigarillo.

“Do you have something you wish to say, Minister?” asks Gadkari.

“I am cursed,” says Mulaghesh, “with an abundance of things I wish to say, as we are well aware, Prime Minister.”

General Noor studiously looks away, as if trying to hide a smile.

Gadkari glares at Mulaghesh, who is minority leader of the opposition party and an eternal pain in her ass. It is only due to decorum that Mulaghesh is a part of any such cabinet meetings, though Gadkari has found that Mulaghesh does more talking than nearly all the people who actually have a right to be here.

“Do you, Mulaghesh,” says Gadkari icily, “have any opinions on the matter at hand? You do have some experience in…these matters.”

“ ‘These matters,’ ” snorts Mulaghesh. “By which you mean these insane horrors.” She sucks her teeth. “Komayd once said that the Divine might have been like any other energy—there’s a fixed amount of it, all being used by various…I don’t know, machinations.”

“Miracles,” says Noor. “Gods.”

“Yes,” says Mulaghesh. “Things like that.”

“Would this have been Komayd the elder?” asks Gadkari’s aide. “Or Komayd the younger?”

“I mean the one who wasn’t a scheming fucking bitch,” says Mulaghesh.

“Kindly cut to the point, Mulaghesh!” snaps Gadkari.

“The walls of Bulikov, the biggest miraculous thing ever, are now gone. That big black Divine thing that appeared out of nowhere, that’s gone too. All those things were using that Divine energy. And now maybe it’s just…dispersed. Like a plume of gas from a refinery flare.”

There’s a long silence as the room understands what she means.

“Dispersed,” says Sakthi, stunned. “You mean…Everyone, everywhere…could be a god?”

“Probably not,” says Mulaghesh. “These are just little things, little miracles, in comparison to what a Divinity can do. But they can still do them, apparently.”

“But…But you are saying that average, everyday people can now shape reality,” says Gadkari. “You are saying that anyone, anywhere, can take the world around them and make it what they want!”

Mulaghesh shrugs. “Somewhat. Sure. But at least it’s not just the Continent sitting on this. It’s everywhere. Now people everywhere can do it.”

Another long silence.

Noor turns to the prime minister. “I suspect we will need to set up some kind of an organization,” he says, “responsible for identifying and regulating such peoples.”

Gadkari, still bewildered, blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“Some kind of…temporary police bureau,” says Noor. “An emergency agency of some kind.”

“And if these effects are not temporary?” asks Sakthi.

“Then…perhaps a Ministry of its own,” says Noor.

Someone at the end of the table laughs bitterly. “A Ministry of Miracles,” they say. “What a nightmare!”

“The real question,” says Sakthi, “is who shall spearhead this effort?”

“True,” says Noor. “Ever since Komayd died—and it sounds like she’s actually dead this time—we have very few people in government with any experience with the Divine.”

Another silence. Then, for the second time, all the heads in the room slowly turn to look at Minister Mulaghesh.

Mulaghesh’s brow wrinkles as she realizes she’s the center of attention. She drops the cigarillo in shock. Then she sighs and says, “Ah, shit.”

Somewhere deep within Sigrud’s mind, sentience slowly blossoms.

He is alive. He is aware. And he is in terrible pain.

Everything hurts. Everything. It’s unimaginable how his body could hurt so much. Just thinking about drawing breath pains him, let alone actually drawing breath.

His mouth is dry. He moans.

Someone nearby says, “He’s awake. He’s alive!”

He opens his mouth. Someone dribbles water into it. The water is a blessing and a curse: his body hungers for it, yet it’s so difficult to swallow. He manages to do it once, twice, but can’t handle a third.

He cracks open his eye—this barest of gestures is like lifting two hundred pounds—and sees he’s in an opulent bedchamber, probably Ivanya’s. He trembles and looks to his right. Ivanya is sitting on the bed next to him with a bowl of water and a rag. His right shoulder is a huge mass of bandages. She looks tired, like she’s been working on him all day, if not all night.

She smiles at him sadly. “Can you hear me? Are you all in there?”

He exhales softly through his nostrils.

“Good. That’s good!”

He can’t speak the question, so he tries to use his eye to communicate it.

“You’re been out for three days,” she says. “I didn’t believe you’d make it. But you did. Barely.” She blinks rapidly. Sigrud realizes she’s trying very hard to hold her bedside manner together, which means his condition might look as bad as it feels.

He tries to speak, but he can’t get further than, “T-T-”

“Taty. Yes. She’s…Well.” Ivanya steps back.

Another person walks into view. A girl.

It is not quite Malwina, not quite Tatyana. She is a mix of the two: she has Taty’s wide, soulful eyes, and Malwina’s truculent mouth—and, oddly, the way she carries herself still reminds him of Shara. Unlike Ivanya, she doesn’t bother trying to smile. Her eyes look haunted and hollow and miserable.

Again, Sigrud tries to use his eye to communicate what he wishes to say.

“Hello,” says the girl. She takes a moment, wondering what to say. “We’ve…I’ve asked everyone to call me Tatyana. I guess because Taty had Shara in her memories. More of her, at least. And I wanted to keep that.” She tries to smile. “I couldn’t go back to being two people. Not after everything I did. Some things…Some things you can’t take back.”

Though Sigrud doesn’t have the strength to lift his hand, he crooks a finger. She sees it and crouches beside his bed, holding her ear up to his cracked lips.

“Weren’t you a god?” asks Sigrud, his voice a rattling whisper.

“I was,” she says. “I was…powerful. Quite powerful. Powerful enough to give it all away.”

He frowns at her.

“I gave it to anyone,” she says. She waves at the ceiling. “Anything. Random, perhaps. It wasn’t right for me to make such decisions about reality. It wasn’t right for me to make decisions about who should make such decisions. So I just…scattered it, sent it to wherever it all wanted to go.”

“A lot has changed since you’ve been out,” says Ivanya. “People are showing some…unusual talents as a by-product of what Taty here did, to say the least.”

He frowns at her, confused.

“Miraculous talents,” Ivanya says. “Everyone. Everywhere. The Ministry’s in an uproar. Everything everywhere is in an uproar. It’s a new world overnight.”

Sigrud crooks his finger again. The girl—Taty, he supposes—leans close.

“Why am I alive?” he whispers.

She sits up and smiles weakly at him. “I gave it away, but I couldn’t give it all away. I can’t change what I am. I am still a creature of the Divine, still the daughter of time—just not as strong as I used to be. But I could still snatch that miracle living inside you, and break it open, and use all the time it’d stored up. Specifically, I…I used it on your wound.”

“Your shoulder’s knitted faster than anyone’s should, from what happened to you,” says Ivanya. “You should have died within minutes of pulling that spear out.”

He shuts his eye, deflated.

“What’s wrong?” asks Taty. She leans close.

“I was ready to die,” he whispers. “You should have let me die.”

She sits up. She looks at him, her dark eyes large and sorrowful. “You’re all I have left,” she says. “You’re the only person who was there when I needed you. You’re all I have left now.”

Sigrud shuts his eye and sleeps.

He awakes in the night. He coughs and someone is again there beside him with the water, the rag, the drops in his mouth. Again he struggles to swallow.

“There, there,” says Ivanya’s voice. “There, there.”

When he opens his eye he sees she’s watching him with that curious, strained light in her eyes again, like she’s struggling to keep smiling.

He finds he can speak—but just barely. “Is Taty here?”

“No. Something’s wrong with her. She’s been having terrible headaches, and has nearly been as bedridden as you a—”

Sigrud shakes his head. “We have to get her off the Continent.”

“Why?”

“The Divine…it is shaped by the beliefs of the people around it. She’s still Divine, still being affected by the Continent. Olvos was terrified of it. Terrified of belief changing her.”

“You really think that’s what’s happening?”

“Olvos stayed cloistered away for fear of it happening to her,” he whispers. “She couldn’t even stop the torture of her own son.”

“But what can we do?” asks Ivanya. “Where can we send her? Saypur’s in a state of disarray, but I don’t think she could last there, not with the Ministry trying to make lists of everyone miraculous.”

Sigrud coughs. The movement sends daggers shooting into his chest. “The Dreyling Shores,” he says. “We never had gods, never had the Divine. I can take her there.”

“What! You? You’re not in a state to sit up, let alone take a voyage by boat!”

“I must speak to my wife. To Hild. She can make arrangements for me.”

“Your…Your wife?” Ivanya’s sidelong glance speaks volumes.

“She was my wife the last I saw her. That was thirteen years ago. I believe she has remarried since.”

“This is the only way to save Taty?”

“I think so.” He coughs. “Shara asked me to protect Taty. I will do so until I am certain she is safe. Even from a bed.”

“I’ll make the arrangements,” she says. She tries to smile again, but it doesn’t quite meet her eyes.

“There is something you’re not telling me,” says Sigrud.

“What?”

“When you look at me. You see something. What is it?”

She hesitates.

“Is it my injury?” he asks.

“No. Not just that.”

“Then what?”

She looks at him, cringing, then goes to her vanity and fetches a mirror. She holds it up to his face for him to see.

The face of an old Dreyling man looks back at him. It takes him a moment to realize it’s his own. His face is lined with wrinkles, he has faint brown spots at his temples, and veins riddle the edges of his nose. His hair and beard are silver-gray. His eye is faded, no longer the bright, glacial blue he’s used to seeing.

“She said she pulled the miracle out of you,” says Ivanya, “and all the time it had stored up. But it seems it had…stored up quite a bit of time. And when she put it back into you…”

Sigrud chuckles weakly. “Oh, goodness me. Goodness me.”

“You seem to be taking this well.”

“It would be foolish of me,” says Sigrud, “to dance with time itself and expect to come away unscathed. I thought I would be dead now. But I live on to help deliver Taty from danger. I hold no grudge against this.”

“I do,” says Ivanya sadly. “A little.”

He looks at her and smiles. “It was good while we had it,” he says.

“One evening,” says Ivanya, “does not seem to be enough, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson.”

“Yet it was what we got,” says Sigrud. “Will you help me, Ivanya? Will you help bring Taty to my homeland?”

She bends down and kisses him on the forehead. “Of course. Of course, of course, of course.”

Ivanya hires an ambulance for their procession to the Solda River the next day. Between Sigrud, who still looks ravaged, and Tatyana, who leans up against Ivanya with her face pale and sweating, they look like a bunch of plague victims being shipped off to quarantine.

Sigrud is only half-conscious, but no one bothers to glance at any of them. Mostly, it seems, because Bulikov has gone insane.

A woman builds a staircase out of a low cloud in the sky. A man passes by riding what appears to be a deer made of vines, laughing delightedly. A child sitting on a staircase draws something on the wall with his finger. A small, round door appears. The child opens it, steps inside, and shuts the door, which promptly vanishes.

This is the world we have made? This is what Shara and Taty and Malwina and I made with all our striving?

They finally make their way down to the Solda. Their vessel proves to be a dingy old yacht, and their captain a shifty-looking Saypuri man who quickly states his desire to get the living hells out of Bulikov at full haste, since it’s gone mad. “But the whole world’s mad now,” he says hollowly. “The whole world’s gone mad.”

“Get us to the Dreyling Shores quickly,” says Ivanya, “no questions asked, and you can buy a little piece of the world that hasn’t gone mad.”

They help Sigrud and Taty get stowed away in the passenger cabin. Ivanya quickly sets up shop beside their beds, unpacking boxes and boxes of medical equipment. Sigrud can tell already that it will be a difficult journey for him: this is much, much less comfortable than Ivanya’s beds.

He stares up at the ceiling, trying to remain conscious. He fails, and falls asleep again.

One day passes, then another. It’s a drifting world for Sigrud. Each time he sleeps it feels like an eternity. Sometimes it’s a handful of minutes. Other times it’s more than a day. His breath is shallow and quick now, always wheezing. He’s not sure if he’ll ever regain full use of both lungs.

Once he awakes to hear someone weeping in the night. He turns his head and finds Taty lying on her berth, eyes wet with tears.

“What is wrong?” he asks.

“I miss her,” she says. “I just miss her. That’s all.”

He isn’t sure if she means Shara or Tavaan. Perhaps it’s both. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

He looks out the porthole. They’re well north of Bulikov now, passing through the western arm of the Tarsils. Snowflakes twirl down from the moonlit skies.

“Does it get any better?” asks Taty. “Does it?”

“Eventually,” he says. “Yes.”

She looks at him, her eyes burning. “Don’t you leave me too. Not you. Not after all this.”

He tries to smile at her. “Close your eyes. I’ll be here in the morning.”

She frowns at him, suspicious.

“I’ll be here for a while,” he says.

She rolls over and falls back to sleep.

As Sigrud, Ivanya, and Tatyana continue their long, slow journey northwest along the Solda, the greater world begins its own journey into strange new lands.

In Taalvashtan, all those with the ability to produce or manipulate raw materials—iron, wood, stone, sand—begin to gather and meet every other night. They’re crafters, they’ve decided, workers and laborers, so perhaps it’d be wise for them to join forces. Create a guild or association of some kind. Make what they like, for a fee.

The next morning they start on their work, just to see if they can do it.

By evening, they’ve built a third of a skyscraper.

By the next day, word will spread of what they can do, and others will carry on the idea.

By the week after that, global real-estate markets will begin to collapse.

And by the end of the month, the finance markets will begin to do the same—just after the newly formed Alchemists Guild of Ahanashtan officially opens for business.

In Jukoshtan, a man who can sing songs that send listeners into a delirious, joyous daze travels through the outskirts of the city, sending audiences into rapturous, joyful trances—for a fee, of course. It won’t be until just after he’s gone that people begin to notice the sharp uptick in teenage pregnancies—pregnancies originating in sex that the girls cannot remember, and certainly didn’t consent to.

Within days, a bounty will be put on the musician’s head. But this will do little to stem the outrage, the shame, or the grief over the eventual suicides.

In Bulikov, a woman opens a sidewalk business: she sits in a chair beside a nondescript door, and over the door hangs a sign reading, ANYWHERE—FIFTY DREKELS. Curious people ask exactly what this means, and she simply says, “Anywhere. I can take you anywhere.” They soon find out she’s right: for fifty drekels, the woman will open the door on a desert island, the top of a mountain, or someone’s mansion.

By evening the queue for her business stretches all the way through Bulikov.

By morning a railroad company puts a price on her head. But any would-be assassins will find it’s very difficult to catch a woman who can open doors to anywhere.

More and more. More and more miracles.

More and more changes, more and more and more.

In Tohmay, in Saypur, there is talk and mutterings of a militia, or even an army. Some of these talents, it’s clear, are more aggressive and harmful than others. “Round them up,” one belligerent minister says, “start drilling them, and prepare for what’s coming. It’s going to be war now, got to be, war between us and whoever gets their troops ready first. If men can do anything, anything in the world, they’ll do war first, and we’d be fools not to strike hard and fast.”

In Ghaladesh, Minister Turyin Mulaghesh ignores these mutterings of war, and instead stays awake for four straight days, barking orders, answering messages, and planning with her own personal cabinet. “They may be miraculous,” she says to her employees, “but they are still citizens, and we will treat them justly.” She notices one skeptical glance, and snaps, “This changes nothing. They will still act like people, for better or for worse. And we shall be there to watch them.” Her employees and representatives salute her and scurry to work, making phone calls, running off to police stations.

On the dawn of the fifth day she stares out her office window at the Ghaladeshi skyscape, chewing an unlit cigarillo. They haven’t figured out a name for her yet, not who she is or what department she’s running, but she has to admit—it feels damned nice to be back in charge.

And on the outskirts of Ghaladesh, a curious procession is taking place: Saypuris slowly gather at the Saypuri National Memorial Grounds, where the remains of Saypur’s most honored heroes are interred. The dozens of people wind through the paths until they come to the Komayd section, where one monument is still fresh and new—a recent addition.

The Saypuris stare at the memorial to Ashara Komayd, the benevolent but defamed prime minister who suffered in silence, died tragically, and yet was somehow resurrected to fight for her nation one last time.

They place candles and flowers at the foot of her monument, solemn and silent. In a few years they will begin calling her a name that will grow in popularity until it becomes the common way to speak of Komayd; and though they could not possibly have known it, the name they will choose is curiously fitting for her last days.

They will call her Mother of the Future.

Sigrud awakes and smells the cold winds drifting through the cabin. “Are we in Voortyashtan?” he croaks.

Ivanya, tending to his bandages, looks taken aback. “We’re quite close. How did you guess?”

“Take me on deck when we pass through,” he says. “Once we’re free and through.”

“That’s not happening, my dear. You can’t sit up, let alone stand and walk upstairs.”

“I will do it,” says Sigrud grimly. “I welcome your help, if you can give it. But if not, I will still do it.”

Ivanya and Taty exchange a glance, but remain silent.

Their shifty captain has to do some quick talking and perhaps even quicker bribing to get them through the port of Voortyashtan, but after a few tense moments, the dingy old yacht continues on. Ivanya, grimacing and reluctant, helps Sigrud sit up in his bed. The pain is tremendous. The world spins about him, and he feels nauseous. He sweats and quakes, and is not at all sure he can get his legs to do what he needs them to do.

Yet he succeeds. With Ivanya and Taty’s help, he comes to the deck, stands underneath the dark night skies, and looks east as they leave Voortyashtan behind.

He smells the cold north breezes and the salty air. How long has it been, he thinks, since the winds of this place have passed through my lungs?

The shore is alight with construction, with industry, with life and commerce and movement. It is no longer the miserable, brutal hovel he remembers, not the crude, lethal place it once was. It is a place people travel miles to come to, not one they avoid.

“My daughter did that,” says Sigrud weakly, nodding at the lights on the shore. “She did that. She made all that happen.”

The two women support and embrace him as he watches as Voortyashtan fades into the distance.

“She did that,” he whispers, as if wishing that the world would hear, and notice. “And I am very proud of her.”

It won’t last forever, he knows. Not even that will last forever.

But it will last a while.

Sigrud awakes to the sound of clinking pots and pans, someone humming cheerfully, and the smell of smoke.

Where am I?

He opens his eyes and sees a gray stone ceiling above him. He smells pine in the distance, and he can hear something—the hush of waves, not far away.

It takes him a long, long while to remember. He’s in the Dreyling Shores, he realizes, back in the homeland he left so, so many years before. It was hard for him to follow, to understand everything that happened when he was feverish aboard the boat….

“You’ve got that confused look again,” says a voice from the door.

He looks over and sees Taty standing there, smiling uncertainly at him.

“Do I?” he says. His voice is terribly hoarse.

“Yes. Are you going to ask me where we are again? Ask me where the boat is? What day it is?”

“I don’t know what day it is,” he says. “But I remember—we are in the Dreyling Shores. Yes?”

“Yes. In the house your…ah, your wife got for us.”

He frowns. This memory is a little hazier for him. He remembers Ivanya going ashore somewhere, coming back with news of some kind—apparently the two of them must have arranged it all. A memory of this house calcifies in his mind—spacious, even palatial, and secluded in the hills. A safe place for three refugees to hide while the world sorts itself out. “Where is Ivanya?” he asks.

“She’s cooking. She’s very enthusiastic about it. But not yet, ah, very good at it.”

“Yes. I remember the broths she makes for me now….” He pulls a face. “It is very taxing, trying to be polite about them.”

Taty sits beside him on the bed and smiles. “You’re getting better, though. You remember more. You must be stronger. Aren’t you?”

Sigrud smiles weakly at her. “I remember this now.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Now is when you come in and tell me what you’ve seen in the woods outside.”

Taty laughs. “I do! Very good. And this time I won’t tell you the same story again and again. I’ll tell you something new.” She tells him about her explorations in the forest, in the hills, along the shore, and especially about her new acquaintances. “There’re all kinds of kids from the village down the road,” she says, excited. “They come to the shore every day and fish, and they showed me a cave, Sigrud, a real cave!”

Sigrud smiles as he watches her. I forget so easily, he thinks, that she is still but a child.

“I would like to see that,” he says.

“What, a cave?”

“No. To see you on the shore.” He thinks about it. “I will do that tomorrow, I think. Yes. I will come with you tomorrow.”

She looks at him, uncertain. “Are…Are you sure about that?”

“You said I was getting better.”

“But…Can you really get out of bed?”

“I have never been surer of anything. Find me a cane, and you and I will stroll together tomorrow.” He smiles. “I’ll be here in the morning, waiting for you. Do not let me down.”

Taty grips his arm as Sigrud, wheezing and wobbling, limps down the garden path to the forest edge. “Auntie is going to skin me alive for this,” she says. “She’s absolutely going to skin me alive.”

“Let her skin me instead,” he says. “I will be easier to catch.” He coughs, swallows, sniffs, and focuses on his next step.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Really?”

“I grew up with the sea. It is my right. And it is my right to see my friend enjoy it. Do not deny an old man his wishes. That is rudeness.”

Taty helps him slowly, slowly mount the hill before the shore, each step taking nearly a minute at times.

“Are you sure you can make it?” Taty asks.

“I have climbed higher heights,” he says. “After all. You were there.”

“I wasn’t paying much attention then.”

“Nor was I, really.”

They continue up the hillside.

“Did I do the right thing, Sigrud?” asks Taty suddenly, troubled. “In the tower, when I was someone…else. I worry about it. I could have, I could have…”

He remembers Shara saying: Few have any choice in how they live. Few have the power to decide their own realities. Even if we win—will that change?

“You did something few could have ever done, Taty,” says Sigrud. “You walked away from power, and gave people choices where they’d never had any before.”

“But now what will they do with them?”

“I think,” says Sigrud, “that they will be people. As they have always been. For better or worse.”

His cane sinks deep into the earth, it’s so rich and moist. The air is cold and splendid. The trees tower above them.

“I used to cut these things down, you know,” he says, gesturing at them. “A foolish way to make a living, isn’t it?”

“We’re almost there,” says Taty. “Almost.”

“I know. I can hear it.”

They crest the small hill, and Sigrud sees.

The sea is the same. The sea is always the same, as is the wandering, white shore before it. His heart is glad to see this, yet also saddened.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” says Taty, awed.

“Yes, it is,” he says. “Perhaps the most beautiful thing. But it could be more beautiful yet.”

“What do you mean?”

He waves at the shore. “Go and play. That is just what this scene needs.”

“Are you sure?”

Sigrud, grunting and wheezing, slowly sits to lean against the tree, facing out to sea. “I will be here for a while. Go on. Do not waste your seconds on me.”

“They aren’t a waste, Sigrud,” she says reproachfully.

He smiles at her. “I know. Go.”

“You won’t be cold?”

“I won’t be cold. Go and have fun.”

“All right. I’ll be back soon! I promise!” She lightly steps down the stones to the shore. He watches as she races along the waves to be met by three children he doesn’t recognize. By their gestures and demeanors, though, they seem to be very familiar with one another.

“A social butterfly, then,” he says, sniffing. Good. She needs more people in her life.

Sigrud leans against the tree. The forest rings with the distant sound of birdsong and the echo of the waves. It’s late morning now, the sun reaching the spot in the sky where its beams no longer pierce the pines at that striking angle, but it is still a gorgeous day.

A peaceful day. One bereft of threat or danger.

I did it, Shara, he thinks, gazing out to sea. We did it.

He looks up at the tree above him. A piece of time itself, calcified and slowly accrued, stretching toward the bright blue skies on this beautiful day.

He reaches to the side and feels its rough bark, its roots digging down deep into the soil.

And what have you seen, I wonder? What have you seen? And what will you see yet?

He tries to imagine it. Tries to imagine the world that’s passed, and the world yet to come. The one he had some small hand in making.

He looks down. A girl is walking up the shore to him. The sun is bright, reflecting off the waves behind her, and it’s hard for him to see, but he thinks her hair is blond. And is she wearing glasses?

A woman’s voice in his ear, perhaps Shara’s, whispering, “Can you believe it?”

Sigrud closes his eye.

Tatyana Komayd dances up the hill, shimmering with delight. “Seal babies!” she cries. “There are seal babies up the coast, Sigrud! I saw them!”

She climbs up to the top of the hill and looks around, trying to remember where she left him. Then she sees him, his broad form leaning against the biggest tree, one hand on his cane and the other touching the trunk, a curiously wistful touch, as if touching an old lover.

“They were tiny!” she says, running through the trees to him. “They were tiny and perfect and they were playing and I just couldn’t believe it! Are seals common here, Sigrud?”

He does not answer.

She walks over to stand before him. “Sigrud?”

Silence.

She peers closer at him, then her eyes widen.

She covers her mouth.

“Oh,” she says, in a soft, crushed voice.

The waves crash and crackle on the shores below.

She stares at him for a long time, hands on her mouth, tears silently running down her cheeks, the sound of birdsong in her ears. Then she sniffs and nods.

“All right,” she says. “All right.”

She sits beside him. Then she takes his hand in her own, fingers woven tight in his, and she watches the waves in the evening light.