The Snow Queen

33

“Come on, sibyl! Come meet my other pets.” Blodwed’s sharp, high voice pricked Moon like a goad, started her through the crowd of gawkers gathered at the entrance of the cavern. They had all come forward to stare at her, pointing and muttering, calling out vulgar questions that she ignored with all the restraint left in her dazed body: a prize fish, dangling on the pier. But none of the nomads would get close enough to touch her, and they parted before her stumbling progress like grasses before the wind. Even Blodwed had never actually touched her; but Moon recognized the stunner hanging from the girl’s belt.

And even if she dared to break free from her captors, there was nowhere to go. They had traveled for two days on snow skimmers climbing into the icebound highlands of the interior, to get to this isolated nomads’ camp. She had no strength left to carry her alone through the Winter wilderness… barely the strength to carry her on across the immense floor of the rock shelter. Dogs barked and bayed at her passing, chained among the bright-colored synthetic tents, the patterned gray-and-brown ones made from hides — the tents dotted the cavern like grotesque fungal growths. Dozens of perpetual-radiance heaters and lanterns filled the looming space with warmth and light, as the voices of the booty-haggling kinsmen behind her filled and refilled it with echoing noise. Moon slowed, holding out her mittened hands to one of the heaters as she passed. But Blodwed’s impatience radiated like heat—”Come on, hurry up!” — and she moved on, too numb with exhaustion and cold to protest.

Blodwed herded her into a narrow, down sloping passage half in shadows at the rear of the cave; she saw light dimly, on ahead. A miasma of strange smells prickled like smoke inside her head as she went forward, to find her way barred by a gate of wood and twisted wire. Blodwed pushed past her, pressed a thumb into the bottom of the heavy lock. The lock opened, and she waved Moon through.

Moon went ahead, hearing Blodwed come through behind her; stood still in place as she took in the details of her new prison. The rock chamber was twenty or thirty feet in diameter, with a ceiling almost as high, and an incandescent heater sat in its center like a sun. Around the perimeter, locked in cages, tethered by rope or chain, were creatures of half a dozen unidentifiable species, furred, feathered, covered with scales or masses of naked wrinkles. She covered her nose and mouth with her hand as the smell of their squalid misery struck her full force. She saw them cringe, saw them snarl; saw the ones that lay sullenly apathetic with no response at all… saw the human being lying on a bare cot by the far wall, as far from the gate, as far from the rest, as possible.

“Damn her! Damn her!” Blodwed shouted suddenly. Moon jerked around, the menagerie hissed and yowled and clamored, as Blodwed turned and ran back up the passage. The gate banged shut behind her. Moon turned back, looking across the room toward the figure still lying unresponsive on the cot. She went forward slowly, limping as sensation began to burn in the soles of her feet again. The frightened animals cowered back from her.

She reached the stranger’s side without waking him, seeing as she approached that it was a man, an off worlder… a Blue. His heavy uniform coat was splattered with dark stains, and he wore the dingy white leggings and boots of the nomads. Looking down at his face she saw the finely-drawn features she had seen so often on aristocratic Kharemoughis; but this face was like cut crystal, the skin strained over the hollow bones. And still he did not wake. His breathing was labored, wrong. She put out a hand uncertainly, touched his face; pulled it back from the burn of fever.

She let her quivering legs go out from under her, sank down be side his cot on the cold floor. The animals had grown quiet, but she felt their frightened eyes still on her, and their misery overwhelming her, until her own cup of misery overflowed. She let her head fall against the cot’s edge, hard dry sobs shaking her apart. Help me, Lady, help me… everything I touch I destroy.

“What’s… wrong?” A feverish hand ruffled her hair; she jerked upright, swallowed her sobs. “Are you… for me crying?” The words were in Sandhi. The sick man struggled to lift his head; his eyes were red and crusted, she thought he barely saw her.

“Yes.” Her answer was scarcely louder than his question.

“No need—” A fit of coughing knocked the breath and the words out of him.

“Look at this! Look at it!” Moon stiffened back and around as Blodwed burst into the chamber again, dragging a larger girl after her. “Smell it! I told you to keep them right while I was gone!”

“I did—” The older girl cried out as Blodwed caught her by the braid and yanked.

“I ought to rub your face in it, Fossa. But I won’t, if you get this place clean before—”

“All right, all right!” The older girl backed toward the gate, wiping away pain-tears. “You snotty little wart.”

“Wait. What’s wrong with him?” Blodwed pointed past Moon at the off worlder

“He’s sick. He tried to get away when we let him out to take a piss; he ran right out into the blizzard, you know? He went in circles and we found him right outside.” She made the crazy sign, and shook her head, backing up the passageway.

Blodwed came on across the chamber, crouched down beside Moon, looking at the sick man’s face. “Ugh.” She clamped his jaw roughly in her hand as he tried to turn his head away. “What did you do that for?” His eyes closed.

“I don’t think he hears you.” Moon put a hand over his, squeezed his fingers lightly before she let go. “He needs a healer, Blodwed,” tentatively.

“Is he going to die?” Blodwed sat back on her knees, the truculence unexpectedly melting out of her voice. “There’s no healer here. Ma used to do it, but she’s not right in the head. She never taught anybody else. Can’t you help him?”

Moon glanced up at her. “Maybe I can…” She began to put her hair into braids. “Do you have any off worlder medical supplies?” Blodwed shook her head. “How about herbs, anything?”

“I can steal Ma’s. They’re old—” Blodwed stood up expectantly.

“Just get them.” Moon watched her go, confused by her willingness. She lifted the off worlder hand again, feeling for the pulse in his wrist; caught her breath as she saw the inside of his arm, crisscrossed with ragged scars. She stared in silent disbelief, lowered his arm again carefully, wrist down. She kept her hold on his hand as she sat waiting, and kept her mind empty.

“Here they are.” Blodwed came back through the gate at last, carrying a skin-wrapped bundle beaded with tiny bones and bits of metal. She opened it, spread it out on the floor between them. “Neutron activation,” she said, waving her hands. “Ma always says power words. Do you say power words, sibyl?” There was no taunt in it.

“I suppose so.” Moon picked over the leafy bundles of dried plants, sniffing at clear plastic bags of seeds and flower heads. Her hope faded. “I don’t know any of these.”

“Well, that one’s—”

She shook her head. “I mean, I don’t know how to use these.” KR j Aspundh had told her about the Old Empire’s exploration service, that before they opened new worlds for human colonists they had seeded them with a panacea of medicinal plants, different series for different ecosystems. “In the islands we used a lot of sea plants for curing.” And called them the Lady’s gifts. “I’ll have to ask — you’ll have to ask for me, input me; will you?” Blodwed nodded eagerly. “Ask me their uses,” Moon gestured. “Remember what I say — exactly, or it won’t do any good. Can you?”

“Sure.” Blodwed grinned arrogantly. “I can sing all the landmarks of the trail song. Nobody else can, any more. I can sing any song I ever heard on the radio even once.”

Moon managed half a smile, stopped by the stiff bruise on her cheek. “Then prove it. Ask, and I will answer. Input…”

Blodwed cleared her throat, sat up straighter. “Oh, sibyl! Tell me . uh, how to use these magic plants?”

Moon took up a bundle of herbs in her hand, felt herself begin to fall backwards down the well of absence… Clavally. She came into the light again, to find a face she knew, Clavally’s flushed and startled face, tousled hair, bare shoulders as close to her as… Danaquil Lu. She saw Clavally pull a blanket up to cover herself hastily. She thought, uselessly, Danaquil Lu, I’m sorry… Clavally, it’s only Moon… But she could not affect their lives even while she intruded on them so profoundly, to share her apologies or her happiness at even this reunion; to ask their help, or to communicate in any way at all.

But a tentative smile formed at the corners of Clavally’s wide mouth, as though she saw a message fill the window of Danaquil Lu’s eyes. She touched his cheek tenderly, still smiling, and with knowing patience lay back on the bed to wait…

“…No further analysis!” Moon slumped forward, drained, felt Blodwed’s quick hands catch her and keep her upright.

“You did it! You’re not a fake—” Blodwed propped her against the cot and took her hands away, suddenly leery. “Wake up! Are you awake? Where did you go?”

Moon nodded, let her forehead rest on her knees. “I… visited old friends.” She wrapped her arms around her shins, holding on to the memory: the only warmth, the only happiness she could remember.

“I know all the herbs now, sibyl.” Blodwed’s voice pawed at her. “I’ll show you. Are you going to cure him?”

“No.” Moon raised her unwilling head, opened her eyes. “I’m going to bring a real healer to use the herbs. But you’ll have to help me, give me whatever I need.” A nod. Moon readied herself, knowing that if she simply had the strength to begin, the Transfer would take her through to the end. Her body rebelled, refusing to gather for another ordeal, but she knew that if she surrendered to exhaustion now, it might be too late for the off worlder by the time she could start again. And she was not going to watch another person die because of her. She focused her attention on his face.

“All right, ask me how to treat him. Input!” and she flung herself through… Into a white-walled anti-gravity chamber, where she watched a cluster of men clad in pastel and transparent suits drift weightless, tethered to a table, arguing an incomprehensible medical procedure. Beyond them, beyond the reinforced glass of a wide window, she saw thick fingers of ice deepening beneath an eave, and floodlights illuminating a field of drifted snow…

“…analysis!” She came back into herself, barely hearing the dry rattle of the end sign inside her head. She smelled the pungent reek of half a dozen strange herbs on her hands and clothing as she crumpled forward. Mind fog hal oed her view of Blodwed’s peering face and the inert blanket-bundle of the sick off worlder turning them to a holy vision. Reassured, she found her hands and knees I and crawled toward the heater in the room’s center. When the cloud of energy became so intense that her body could not endure more, she let herself down at last, and slept.

Moon came awake with the urgency of terror, stared at the unexpected walls that closed her in. Stone walls — not the endless desolation of sky above a lifeless, stony beach, where an executioner in black wore a medal as familiar as the face of her only love… She hid from the phantom behind a wall of fingers, pressing the swollen soreness of her face. No, it isn’t true!

A soft trilling intruded on her, expanding her awareness, pulling her back into the stone-walled chamber. She lowered her hands, seeing the cluster of cages across the room, and felt time’s flood sweep her into the present. Someone had moved her to a pad of blankets. The animal stench had cleared, as though someone had cleaned the cages out as well, and the air was strong with the smell of herbs. No sounds reached her from beyond the locked gate; she guessed that it must be far into the night. The animals stirred and rustled, tending to their own lives, watching her with only half an eye now. “You know I’m just another pet.” She climbed uncertainly to her feet, swayed a moment, seeing stars, before she could cross the room.

The off worlder lay under a half-tent of blanket, wrapped like a swaddled infant in more covers. A pot of pungent herb-brew steamed on a hot plate by his head. She kneeled down by the cot, put her hand against his face. Cooler, not really sure that he was. “Please come back…” Prove I have a right to be alive, and be a sibyl. She bowed her head, pressed her forehead against the hard frame of the cot.

“Have you… back for me come, then?”

She looked up, saw the off worlder struggling to open his eyes. “I — I never left you.” He frowned, shook his head as though it didn’t make sense. “I’ve never away gone.” She repeated it in Sandhi.

“Ah.” He watched her through slitted eyes. “Then I’m not afraid. When… when will we go?”

“When? Soon.” She smoothed his wiry hair, and saw him smile. ;^,. Not knowing what he was asking, she said, “When thou art “‘* stronger.” She used the familiar form unthinkingly.

“I didn’t think you so fair would be. Stay by me… until then?”

“I will.” Glancing down, she saw the untouched mug of thick medicine broth on the floor by her knee. She picked it up. “Thou must this drink.” She put her arm under his shoulders, rolled him onto his side. He worked a hand free obediently, but it could not hold the cup; she saw the livid scars along the inside of his wrist again. She held the cup for him, helped him drink it down. Coughing took him as he finished it, rattling in his chest like stones. The plastic mug slipped from her hand and rolled under the cot. She held him tightly in her arms, sharing her own strength with him, until the attack passed; and then a little longer.

“Thou feel… so real.” He sighed against her shoulder. “So kind…”

She let him slip back onto the cot, already asleep. She sat for a long moment watching him, before she settled against the cot frame, resting her head on her arm, and closed her eyes again.

“You are real.”

The words greeted her like old friends as she woke again, slowly raised her head from her sleep-deadened arm. She sat back, disconcerted, blinking.

The off worlder slumped against the wall, propped into place by a knot of blankets. “Did I it dream, or… did you to me in Sandhi speak?”

“I did,” in Sandhi. Moon worked her fingers, felt the needles starting as circulation stirred in her arm. “I — cannot it believe. You were so sick.” She felt a shining warmth fill her. But the power came through me, and I healed you.

“I thought you the Child Stealer were. When I was young, my nurse said she as pale as aurora-glow is…” He leaned more heavily on the heaped blankets. “But you’re no ghost. Are you—?” As though he still half doubted his senses.

“No.” She massaged her twisted neck muscles with her other hand, wincing. “Or I wouldn’t so much hurt!”

“You’re a prisoner too, then.” He leaned forward slightly, squinting his eyes were still inflamed. She nodded. “Your face. They didn’t you… molest?”

She shook her head. “No. They haven’t me hurt. They — fear me; so far.”

“Fear you?” He glanced toward the gate, and what lay beyond it. The distant sounds of a new day out in the camp reached them like an echo of another world.

She lifted her chin, saw him grimace at the wound on her throat, before his face went slack: “Sibyl?”

She lowered her head again.

“Gods, this moves too fast.” He lay down again, resting on his side through another attack of coughing.

Something out of place caught the corner of her eye. She twisted, found a pile of blue-black cloth trimmed with braid behind her, a jug, and a bowl of dried meat. “Someone brought us food.” Her hands were reaching for it even as she spoke. “Food—” not even knowing how long it had been since she had eaten anything.

“Blodwed. Hours back. I pretended to sleep.”

Moon took a long drink from the pitcher, a creamy blue-white liquid that slid down her parched throat into her shriveled stomach like ambrosia, “Oh—” Suddenly ashamed, she lowered the pitcher, pushed up onto her knees. “Here.” She filled the plastic mug, held it up to him.

“No.” He put an arm across his eyes. “I don’t it want.”

“You must. To heal, you need strength.”

“No. I don’t—” The arm came down from his eyes, he lifted his head to look at her. “Yes… I guess I do.” He took the drink in his good hand; she saw scars on that wrist, too. He caught her looking at him, raised the mug to his mouth without comment and sipped slowly.

Moon chewed a mouthful from a strip of dried meat, swallowed it whole before she asked, “Who are you? How did you here get?”

“Who am I…” He looked down at his uniform coat, touched it; his face changed with a kind of wonder, like a man coming out of a coma. “Gundhalinu, sibyl. Police Inspector BZ Gundhalinu—” he grimaced, “from Kharemough. They shot down my patroller, and took me.”

“How long have you here been?”

“Forever.” He opened his eyes again. “And you? Did they you from the star port kidnap? Where are you from — Big Blue, or Samathe?”

“No, Tiamat.”

“Here? But you’re a sibyl.” He lowered the cup from his lips. “The Winters don’t—”

“I’m a Summer. Moon Dawntreader Summer.”

“Where did you Sandhi learn?” Something darker than curiosity shadowed it.

Moon frowned uncertainly. “On Kharemough.”

“You’re proscribed, then! How did you back here get?” His voice broke, too feeble to support the weight of an authoritarian demand.

“The same way I left — with tech runners She slipped into her own speech without realizing it; taken by surprise, indignant at his indignation. “What are you going to do about it, Blue? Arrest me? Deport me?” She put her hands on her hips, clenched with resentment.

“I’d do both… if I were in any position to.” He followed her doggedly from language to language. But the righteousness drained out of him and left him limp on the cot. He laughed, a hoarse, hating sound. “But don’t worry. Flat on my face… with the cosmic crud, and living in a kennel… I’m not in any position.” He finished the liquid in the mug, let it hang empty from a finger over the cot’s edge.

Moon refilled the mug and put it into his hand again.

“A smuggling sibyl.” He sipped carefully, watching her. “I thought you were supposed to be serving humanity, not yourself. Or did you have that tattoo… put on purely for business reasons?”

Moon flushed with fresh anger. “That isn’t allowed!”

“Neither is smuggling. But it’s done.” He sneezed violently, spilling his drink on himself, on her.

“I’m not a smuggler.” She flinched, brushed droplets from her parka. “But not because I think it’s wrong. You’re the ones who are wrong, Gundhalinu, you Blues — letting your people come here and take what they want, and give us nothing in return.”

He smiled mirthlessly. “So you’ve swallowed that simplistic line bait and hook, have you? If you wanted… to see real greed and exploitation, try a world that didn’t have our police force to keep the peace. Or to keep… people like you from coming back to make trouble, once you’ve been off world

Moon settled back on her heels, saying nothing, holding the words prisoner. Gundhalinu matched her silence; she sat listening to the breath wheeze in his throat. “This is my world, I have the right to be here. I am a sibyl, Gundhalinu, and I’ll serve Tiamat any way I can.” Something harsher than pride filled her voice. “I can prove my claim any time you ask. Ask, and I will answer.”

“No need, sibyl.” A whisper of apology. “You already have. I ought to hate you, for curing me—” He rolled onto his stomach, looking down at her; she blinked at his expression, her hands closed over her own wrists. “But knowing I’m alive and not alone, seeing your face… hearing you speak a civilized language, my own language: Gods, I never thought I’d ever hear it again! I thank you—” his voice broke. “How long… how long were you on Kharemough?”

“Almost a month.” She put another piece of dried meat into her mouth, let the juices begin to dissolve, easing a throat closed by sudden empathy. “But — I might have stayed longer, maybe all my life. If things had been different.”

“Then you liked it there?” There was no sarcasm now, only a hunger. “Where were you? What did you see?”

“The Thieves’ Market, mostly. And the star port city.” She sat cross legged, pulling her feet into place, and let her mind see only the days that had feasted her eyes; see Elsevier and Silky and Cress alive and sharing her feast; the journey down to the planet surface, and KR Aspundh’s ornamental gardens… “And we drank lith and ate sugared fruits… Oh, and on the screen we saw Singalu raised to Tech.”

“What?” Gundhalinu sat against the wall, gasping with incredulous delight. She noticed that he was missing a tooth. “Ye gods, I don’t believe it! Old Singalu? You’re making that up, aren’t you?” Laughter was the best medicine.

She shook her head. “No, really! It was an accident. But even KR was glad.” And she remembered tears welling in Elsevier’s eyes, in her own… Tears rose again suddenly; tears of grief this time.

“Dropped in on KR Aspundh.” He shook his head, wiped his own eyes, still grinning. “Even my father didn’t just drop in on KR Aspundh! Well, go on, what next?”

Moon swallowed. “We… we talked. He asked me to stay a few days. He’s a sibyl, you know—” She broke off.

“And I know there are a lot… of things you’re not telling me,”

Gundhalinu said quietly. He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to know. I don’t even want to know why the hell KR Aspundh has tech runners to tea. But you could have had anything you wanted there — the life, all the things you couldn’t have here. Why? Why did you leave all that, and risk everything to come back here? I can see it in your eyes, you wish you hadn’t.”

“I thought I had to.” She felt her broken nails dig into her palms. “I never wanted to go off world in the first place. I was going to Carbuncle to find my cousin… But when I got to Shotover Bay I met Elsevier, and then the Blues tried to arrest us—”

“Shotover Bay?” A peculiarly chagrined expression settled over his face. “It’s a small universe. No wonder I keep thinking… I’ve seen your face somewhere.”

She leaned forward with a smile starting, studied his face in turn. “No — I guess I was too busy running.”

He twitched his mouth. “No one’s ever called it memorable. So you were going to Carbuncle. But after five years, you aren’t still going there? Whatever happened to your kinsman is ancient history, by now.”

“It’s not.” She shook her head. “While I was on Kharemough I asked, and the Transfer told me I had to return, that it wasn’t finished yet.” The cold silence of the void grew loud inside her, squeezed her breath away. “But ever since I’ve come, everyone I’ve cared about I’ve destroyed, or hurt…” She hunched over, pulled herself into a hiding place.

“You? I don’t — understand.”

“Because I came back!” She let the words come, making him see her for what she was, every act and every retribution that had brought her relentlessly to this place… “I made it happen! I made them do it, it was all for me. I’m a curse — none of it would have happened without me, none of it!”

“You wouldn’t have seen it happen; that’s all. Nobody rules anyone else’s fate — we don’t even control our own.” She felt his hand hesitantly on her shoulder. “We wouldn’t be prisoners here; I wouldn’t be alive now to say… you’re wrong to blame yourself, if we did. Would I?”

She raised her head. “But the mers, Lady, even the mers… they were safe on Ngenet’s land, until I came!”

“If Starbuck and the Hounds were poaching, it was no fault of yours. It was nobody’s doing but the Queen’s. I’d say you must be thrice blessed, not cursed, if all you got… out of an encounter with Starbuck was a sore throat.” He began to cough, pressing his own throat.

“Starbuck?” Slowly she uncoiled, stretching her legs, gathering the courage to ask: “Was he — the man in black? What is he?” Not asking, Who is he?

Gundhalinu raised his eyebrows, took his hand away from her softening shoulder. “You’ve never heard of Starbuck? He’s the Queen’s consort: her Hunter, her henchman, her chief advisor when she deals with us .”… her lover.”

“He saved my life.” She traced the scab of the healing wound across her neck, finding the strength to ask, “Who is he, Gundhalinu?”

“No one knows. His identity is kept secret.”

He loved you once, but he loves her now. The words of the Transfer reverberated. “Now I understand. I understand everything! . It’s true.” She looked away, and away; but the emerald eyes behind the black executioner’s mask followed her, followed’ What is?”

“My cousin is Starbuck,” whispered.

Gundhalinu said calmly, “He can’t be. Starbuck is an off worlder

“Sparks is one too. His father was one. He always wanted to be like them, like the Winters… And now he is.” A monster. How could he do this to me?

“You’re jumping to conclusions. Just because Starbuck was afraid . to kill a sibyl—”

“He knew I was a sibyl before he ever saw my sign!” She struck back at his insufferable conviction. “He knew me; I know he did. And he was wearing the medal that was Sparks’s.” And he was killing mers. She pressed her knotted fist against her mouth. “How could he? How could he change into that?”

Gundhalinu lay down again, uncomfortably silent. “Carbuncle does that to people. But if it’s true, at least he had enough humanity left to spare your life. Now you can forget about him; forget about . one problem, at least.” He sighed, staring up into shadows.

“No.” She pushed herself to her feet, moving in a stiff circle be side the cot. “I want to get to Carbuncle more than ever. There has to be a reason for what he’s done; if he’s changed, there’s a way to change him back.” Win him back. I won’t lose… not after I’ve come so far! “I love him, Gundhalinu. No matter what he’s done, no matter how he’s changed, I can’t just stop loving him.” Or needing him, or wanting him back. He’s mine, he’s always been mine! I won’t give him up — no matter whose he is, or what she’s made him into… appalled by the truth, made helpless by it. “We pledged our lives to each other; and if he doesn’t want that any more, he’s going to have to prove it to me.” One hand made a fist, the other clung to it.

“I see.” He smiled, but there was uncertainty behind it. “And I always thought you natives led dull, uncomplicated lives,” unwitting condescension crept back, making him comfortable. “At least on Kharemough love has the courtesy to know its place, and not tear our hearts out of us.”

“Then you’ve never been in love,” resentfully. She crouched down by the pile of bright-and-dark cloth Blodwed had left them; picked up a piece distractedly. It was a tunic, sewn with wide bands of woven braid.

“If you mean all-consuming, sense-clouding, lightning-struck love — no. I’ve read about it…” His voice softened at the edges. “But I’ve never seen it. I don’t think it exists in the real universe.”

“Kharemoughis don’t exist in the real universe.” She took off her parka, pulled open the seal of her dry suit and climbed out of it, rubbing her skin-sore, abraded arms, scratching her back. Letting him watch, aware that he tried not to; taking perverse pleasure in his discomfiture. She pulled the soft, heavy tunic on over her skimpy un dersuit, struggled into the leggings and fur-lined boots, buckled the wide painted-leather belt around her hips. She touched the hand woven braid that ran down the tunic front, along the hem — all the colors of sunset against the night-blue wool. “This is beautiful…” Astonishment pushed up through her darker preoccupation. She realized suddenly that the braid, the garment, were very old.

“Yes.” Gundhalinu’s expression was not the one she had expected. But she saw the embarrassment lying below it, and felt a pinprick shame at his shame.

“Gundhalinu—”

“Make it BZ.” He shrugged away his self-consciousness. “We’re all on a first-name basis here.” He gestured at the animals.

She nodded. “BZ. We’ve got to find—” She broke off again, hearing someone enter the passageway. The lock rattled and the gate swung back. Blodwed came through it, trailed by a small, rosy cheeked child and carrying a box. She pulled the gate shut with her foot. The animals stirred and peered out at her all along the walls; tension made their movements furtive. The toddler wandered toward the cages, sat down unexpectedly on the floor in front of one. Blodwed ignored him, coming on across the room.

Moon glanced at Gundhalinu, saw the life go out of his eyes and the animation out of his face, leaving bleak resignation. But Blodwed beamed as she dropped the box, stood before him, inspecting him like an inquisitor. “I don’t believe it, he’s all right! See—” She caught his sleeve, tugged on his arm. “I got a real sibyl just to keep you alive, Blue-boy.” He pulled free, sitting up. “Now you can finish reading to me.”

“Leave me alone.” He put his feet over the cot’s edge, propped his head on his hands. He began to cough, sullenly.

Blodwed shrugged; looked back at Moon, scratching her beaky nose. “You okay too? I thought you were both dead this morning.” A bare hint of deference crept into her voice.

Moon nodded, controlling her own voice, picking the words cautiously. “I’m all right… Thank you for bringing me clothes to wear.” She touched the front of the tunic. “This is very beautiful.” She couldn’t keep the incredulity out of it.

Blodwed’s sky-blue eyes were full of pride for an instant; she glanced down. “They’re just old stuff. They belonged to my great grandmother. Nobody wears those things any more; nobody here even knows how to make them.” She tugged at the hem of her dirty white parka, as though she really preferred it. She rummaged in the carton, pulled out a fist-sized cube of plastic. Unintelligible noise filled the air like ram. Blodwed began to hum a tune, and Moon realized that she was picking it out of the radio static. “Reception really stinks back in this cave. Of course it didn’t help that old Blue boy here tried to take this apart and make a transmitter.” She made a face at him. “Here’s your dinner,” tossing a can onto the cot. A sudden shriek behind them jerked Moon around. The toddler stood wailing, waving his hands by the cages. “Well, don’t stick your fingers in there, damn it! Here’s yours.”

Moon caught the can as it arced into her hands, sat down and pulled the lid up. It vaguely resembled stew. She watched Gundhalinu open his own can, with a twinge of relief. “Is… he your brother?” to Blodwed.

“No.” Blodwed moved away, carrying handfuls of meat and a box with an animal’s picture on it. She made the circuit from tethered creature to caged one, giving them each their evening meal. Moon watched them nutter up or cringe away from her rough movements, slink forward again after she passed.

Blodwed came back, scowling, sat down with her own can. The little boy appeared beside her, pulling at her jacket and whining. “Not now!” She pushed a spoonful of stew into his mouth. “You know anything about animals?” She glanced at Moon, looked back over her shoulder at the cages.

“Not these.” Moon looked away from the boy, whose face was as perfectly pink and white as a porcelain figurine.

“Then you’re going to do what you did yesterday again — only this time tell me about the animals.” She glared, expecting a refusal. “I think some of them are sick too. I — I don’t know how to take care of them either.” Her gaze broke. “I want to know how.”

Moon nodded, swallowing the last of her stew, and got slowly to her feet. “Where did you get all these animals?”

“Stole them from the spaceport. Or got them from traders, or out trapping… the elf fox and the gray birds there, and the conics. But I don’t even know the names of the rest.”

Moon felt Gundhalinu’s eyes trail her with dark accusation, ignored it as she walked toward the closest of the animals, the hardest one to face — the shivering pouch of wrinkles that squatted on a nest of dried grass. It blubbered obscenely, showing her a wide sucker mouth as she opened the cage door. Biting back her disgust, she crouched before it, offered it a handful of food pellets at arm’s length, holding very still.

Its burbling hysteria gradually died away, and after another endless moment it floundered forward, inch by inch, to touch her hand tentatively with its mouth. She shuddered; it scuttled back, worked its way forward again. It took the pellets one by one from her palm with great delicacy. She dared to stroke it with her free hand; its brain like convolutions were smooth and cool to her touch, like the surface of a smocked satin pillow. It settled contentedly under her hand, making a sound like bubbles popping.

She left it slowly, went on to the pair of lithe, pacing carnivores in the next cage. Their ears flattened, their tusks showed white against the black-on-black patterning of their fur. There was something feline about them, and so she began to whistle softly, creating the overtones that had made cats come purring into her lap at home. The long, tufted ears flicked, swiveled, tuned like radar… the animals came toward her almost reluctantly, drawn by the sound. She offered them her fingers to sniff, felt a thrill of pleasure when an ebony cheek brushed her hand in a gesture of acceptance. The cat creatures sidled along the bars, demanding her touch with guttural cries.

She moved on more confidently to the leather-winged reptile with a head like a pickax; the feather-soft oblongs with no heads at all; the bird with emerald plumage and ruby crest that lay listlessly in the bottom of its cage. She lost track of time or any purpose beyond the need to communicate even to the smallest degree with every creature, and earn for herself the reward of its embryonic trust… Until she reached the end of the circuit at last, found the little boy lying asleep on Blodwed’s knee, and Blodwed staring up at her in silent envy.

Moon glanced away, understanding the look in one final moment of empathy. “I — I’m ready to begin Transfer, Blodwed; whenever you say.”

“How did you do that?” Blodwed’s words struck her like blows. “Why do they come to you, and not to me? They’re my pets! They’re supposed to love me!” The boy woke at the sound of her anger, and began to cry.

“That should be obvious,” Gundhalinu muttered sourly. “She treats animals like human beings, and you treat human beings like animals.”

Blodwed stood up furiously, and Gundhalinu stiffened; but no words came out of her, and she did not bring up her white-knuckled fists to strike him.

“Blodwed… they’re afraid of you. Because…” Moon struggled, fitting reluctant words to her thoughts. “Because you’re afraid of them.”

“I’m not afraid of them! You were afraid of them.”

Moon shook her head. “Not that way. I mean… I’m not afraid to let them see I care about them.” She twisted a braid.

Blodwed’s mouth worked, her scowl faded. “Well, I feed them, I do everything for them! What else am I supposed to do?”

“Learn to be — gentle with them. Learn that… that gentleness isn’t… weakness.”

The little boy clung to Blodwed’s leg, still crying. She looked down at him, put her hand on his head hesitantly, before she followed Moon back to the cages.

Moon began the circuit again with the brain creature, luring it into her hands, making it the focus of her senses. “Ask me about them. Input—” She heard Blodwed’s question and carried it down…

“…analysis!” She found herself sitting on the floor, exhausted, with the snub-nosed elf fox cub suckling her braid. She smoothed its thick white crest, removed the braid from its mouth and its pinprick claws from her tunic with great care, held it out to Blodwed in both hands. “Here,” faintly, “take him.”

Blodwed reached out, uncertainty slowing her movements; the cub did not struggle or protest as Moon slipped it into her waiting hands. Blodwed settled it against her stomach, held it there almost timidly. She giggled as it worked its way in through the opening of her parka and settled against her side. The toddler sat at her feet reaching up after it with one hand, his thumb in his mouth.

“Did I tell you — enough?” Moon glanced away, along the circle of bare cages, still overlaid by the shadowy green and gold of an imported-pet shop somewhere on another world. So far away… all of us so far away from home.

“Lissop, starls, batwing…” Blodwed named them all. “I guess I even know what’s wrong with those,” pointing. “I don’t have the right food.” Her face pulled down. “But you did good,” encouraging again. She held the cub close. “Didn’t she, Blue?”

Gundhalinu smiled, grudgingly, and made a salute. “A noble—” He broke off.

Three pairs of eyes looked up together at the sound of someone else entering the passageway. The gate swung open, and a bearded, heavy-faced man entered. The animals shrank back along the walls.

“What do you want, Taryd Roh?” The surliness was back in Blodwed’s voice.

“The shaman wants this fixed.” He held out a fragile-looking instrument that Moon did not recognize. “Tell the Tech there to get started earning his keep.”

“He’s too sick.” Blodwed stuck out her chin.

“He’s alive,” Taryd Roh grinned, swiveling his gaze to Moon. “And this pretty little doll you brought him would put life back in the dead. How’d you like to visit my tent, little sibyl?” A rough hand brushed her bruised cheek, hurting her.

Moon backed away, filled with disgust. He laughed and went on past her.

“Listen, Turd,” Blodwed said, “you keep away from her! She really has the power—”

He sneered. “Then what’s she doing here? You don’t believe that superstitious crap, do you, Tech?” He set the broken instrument down in front of Gundhalinu, and a set of tools. “Just don’t have too much fun. Because if this isn’t working by tomorrow, I’ll make you eat it.” He flicked the tarnished insignia on Gundhalinu’s collar; Moon saw Gundhalinu’s thin face go gray and slack.

Taryd Roh turned away from him, strolled back across the chamber to the gate like a killer skule moving through a fish trap.

Blodwed threw an obscene hand-sign after his retreating back. “Gods, I hate him, that bastard!” She winced as the elf fox pup woke inside her jacket, squirming and scratching. “He thinks he’s the Prime Minister or something, just because he’s Ma’s favorite. He’s been to Carbuncle, and he’s crazy too — that’s why she likes him so much.”

Moon watched Gundhalinu stretch out on the cot, moving like an aged cripple, and turn his face to the wall. She said nothing.

Blodwed pulled the wriggling cub out of her parka and thrust it back into its cage, almost angrily. Moon felt Blodwed search the room with her eyes for something that had disappeared; she kept her own eyes on Gundhalinu. Blodwed dragged the babbling baby to his feet and went out the gate, leaving them to smother in silence.

Moon made her way through the heaviness of the air to Gundhalinu’s side, kneeled down. “BZ?” Knowing that he did not want her to ask, knowing that she had to. She touched his shoulder. She felt the trembling of his body even through his heavy coat. “BZ…”

“Leave me alone.”

“No.”

“I’m not one of her animals, for gods’ sakes!”

“Neither am I. Don’t shut me away!” Her fingers dug into his ] arm, forcing him to acknowledge her.

He rolled onto his back, lay staring up at her with bleak eyes. ‘ “And I didn’t think things could get any worse.”

Moon looked down, nodded. “Then maybe they’ll start getting I better.”

“Don’t.” He shook his head. “Don’t tell me there’s going to be a ‘ future. Just facing tomorrow is all I can stand.”

She saw the broken instrument that Taryd Roh had left for him I on the ground beside her knee. “You can’t fix this?”

“Blindfolded,” with a broken smile. He lifted his hand. “If I had ‘ll two good hands. But I don’t.”

“You have three.” Moon clasped his hand like a pledge.

He brought his other hand up, laid it clumsily over hers. “I thank you.” He took a long breath, and sat up. “Taryd Roh…” he swallowed. “Taryd Roh caught me re circuiting Blodwed’s radio. After he’d finished working me over, I couldn’t walk for two days. And gods, he enjoyed it.” He ran his hand through his hair; Moon saw it tremble again. “I don’t know what he did while he was in the city — but he was good at it.”

Moon shuddered, wiped the memory of Taryd Roh’s touch from her face. “Is that — why?” She glanced at his hands, his scarred wrists.

“Everything! Everything was why.” He shook his head. “I’m a highborn, a Tech, a Kharemoughi! To be treated like a slave by these savages — worse than a slave! No one with any pride would go on living that way: without honor, without hope. So I tried to do the only honorable thing.” He said it with perfect evenness. “But Blodwed found me, before it was — finished.”

“She saved you?”

“Of course.” Moon heard hatred in it. “What’s the point in humiliating a corpse?” He looked down at his useless hand. “A cripple, though… I stopped eating; until she told me shed let Taryd Roh feed me. Fifteen minutes and he could have me eating shit.” He tried to get up, fell back onto the cot, coughing until his eyes ran. “And then there was the storm—” He spread his hands helplessly, as though he wanted her to know how hard he had tried to do the right thing.

Afraid that she did understand, she only said, “And now?”

“And now everything’s changed. I… have to think about someone besides myself again.” She didn’t know whether he was glad, or only resentful.

“I’m glad you failed.” She looked down. “We’ll get out of here, BZ. I know we will.” It isn’t finished. Suddenly certain of it again.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter to me any more. It’s too late, I’ve been here too long.” He lifted her chin with his fingers. “But for your sake, I’ll hope.”

“It isn’t too late.”

“You don’t understand.” He pulled at the seal of his uniform coat. “I’ve been here for months, it’s all over! The Festival, the Change, the final departure… everyone’s gone off world by now, they’ve left me behind. Forever.” His gaunt face twitched. ““In dreams I hear my homeland to me call; and I cannot answer…”“

“But they haven’t! It hasn’t happened yet.”

He gaped as though she had struck him. He pulled her up onto the cot beside him, almost shaking her. “Truly? How long? How long? Oh, gods, tell me it’s true!”

“It is,” breathlessly, stumbling. “But I don’t know h-how long I mean, I’m not sure… a week or two, I think, until the celebrations.”

“A week?” He let her go, slumping back against the wall. “Moon. Damn you, I don’t know whether you’re heaven or hell: a week.” He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “But I think you’re heaven.” He embraced her, briefly, chastely, his face averted.

She lifted her hands as he pulled away, clung to him with sudden gratitude. “No, don’t. A little longer. Please, BZ; I need a little longer… Hold me just for now.” Until everything isn’t drowning in ugliness. Until I believe in hope, and feel his arms holding me again…

Gundhalinu stiffened with surprise and a strange reluctance. But his arms circled her, almost mechanically, and pulled her to him again, sheltering her, answering her.

So long… remembering Sparks’s tender hands as though it had been only yesterday… it’s been so long. She rested her head on his shoulder, let herself dissolve, mindless, timeless, against the solidness of his flesh; let it give substance to the phantom of another flesh, and strike the chains of bitter knowledge from the future. After a time she felt Gundhalinu’s arms tighten, felt his breathing change; felt her own heartbeat quicken unexpectedly with answering emotion.

“Wilt thou… to me in Sandhi sometimes talk?” hesitantly.

“Yes.” She smiled against his sleeve. “Though I — do not it well speak…”

“I know. Thy accent is terrible.” He laughed softly.

“So is thine!” She felt his head rest on her own shoulder; she rubbed his back with slow, peaceful motions, heard him sigh. Gradually his arms loosened and fell away from her; she felt his breathing change again. She lifted her head, saw his face half smiling, asleep beside her own. She lowered him carefully onto the cot, lifted his legs up and covered him with blankets. She kissed him gently on the mouth, and went to her own pad on the floor.

“You fixed it, huh? Lucky for you, Blue-boy.” Blodwed stooped down as she entered the chamber, picked up the broken distance finder, which Gundhalinu and Moon had repaired working together through the new morning. Her voice barely disguised relief; but Gundhalinu heard only the threat, and frowned. “Hey, what did you do that for?”

White birds fluttered up from Moon’s shoulders; the pair of starls slunk under the cot at the sound of her voice. “To give them a little freedom,” Moon said, more confidently than she felt.

“They’ll get out! That’s what I keep them in cages for — they’d run away if I didn’t, the stupid things.”

“No, they won’t.” Moon held out her palm, filled with bits of bread. The birds circled down again onto her arm, jostling for position. She stroked their curling feathers. “Look. This is all they really want. Keeping them in a cage won’t make them yours; not if you know you can’t ever open the door.”

Blodwed came toward her across the room, the birds flew up again. Moon put the crumbs into Blodwed’s hand; but the hand made a fist and she dropped them onto the floor. “Screw that. I

don’t want that. I want a story, Blue.” She moved on across the room to Gundhalinu, sat down on the cot beside him. “About the Old Empire, some more.”

He moved away from her pointedly. “I don’t know any more stories. You know them all.”

“I don’t care. Just do it!” She shook his arm. “Read that book again. Read it to her, she’s a sibyl too.”

Moon glanced up from watching the birds peck at crumbs around her feet.

“Sit, sibyl.” Blodwed gestured imperiously. “You’ll like this. It’s all about the first sibyl that ever was and the end of the Old Empire. It’s got space pirates, and whole artificial planets, and aliens, and super weapons zap!” She disintegrated Moon with her finger, laughing.

“Really?” Moon said, looking at Gundhalinu. “Do they really know about the first sibyl?” He shrugged.

“He said it was all true.” Blodwed’s enthusiasm and her voice rose. “Come on, Blue. Read the part where she saves her True Lover from the pirates.”

“He saved her.” Gundhalinu coughed his indignation.

“Look, just read it.” She leaned over, the starls scuttled out with clicking claws as she groped under the cot. She found the battered book, tossed it at Gundhalinu. “And in the end, she thinks he’s dying, and he thinks she’s dead; it’s so sad.” She grinned ghoulishly.

“Blodwed, I’ll tell you a story,” Moon said suddenly, clutching inspiration’s key. She sat down cross-legged; the starls came to her, scattering the birds, and laid their pointy muzzles in her lap. “About me… and my True Lover, and tech runners and Carbuncle.” And you will listen, and understand. She felt the strength of the inspiration suddenly take hold of her, almost as though she were compelled.

She told the story again; letting down the barriers that kept her emotions back, letting herself see Sparks’s face laughing in sunlight, hear his music drifting over the sea, feel the fire-bright nearness of him… feel his going away as it wrenched a part of her soul out of her. And she left nothing out, of the things she had seen and done “You mean you didn’t even know it’d take five years to go to Kharemough? You really were stupid!”)

(“I’m learning.”)

— the people who had tried to help her; the price they had paid for it. “And then on the man in black, who was killing the mers, I saw the medal, his medal… It was Sparks, I f-finally found him.” She looked down, pressing a hand against her purple cheek; remembering only his caress.

“You mean… he’s Starbuck?” Blodwed whispered, awed. “Holy shit. Your own True Lover killed the mers… And — and you still love him?”

Moon ‘nodded silently; her mouth trembled. Damn everything, I do! She held a long breath, fighting for control; struggling back into the present to measure Blodwed’s reaction. Blodwed wiped her eyes surreptitiously, scratched her head, her cropped-ofF hair standing out like straw. “Oh… it’s not fair. Now he’s going to die, and he’ll never even know.”

“What?” Moon stiffened.

“The Change,” Gundhalinu said. “The last Festival, the end of Winter. The end of the Snow Queen — and Starbuck. They drown together.” He looked back at her with unspoken understanding. “It’s the end of everything.”

Moon rose up on her knees, pushed the starls away, breaking the spell that had held her holding Blodwed. “Mother of Us All-there’s hardly any time left! Blodwed, you have to let us go! I have to find him, I have to get to Carbuncle before the Change.”

Blodwed stood up, her face turning hard. “I don’t have to do anything! You just made all that up, so I’d let you go. Well, I won’t!”

“It’s not a lie! Starbuck is Sparks, and he’ll die… I can’t have come all this way just for that!” She struggled to keep panic from taking the rest of her voice. “If I can get to Carbuncle, BZ can help me find Sparks in time. And if he doesn’t get back there in time, his own people will go off world and leave him behind. There’s not even a fortnight left—”

“Then in a fortnight it’ll all be over, and you won’t even care about it any more, either of you. So you can stay here with me, forever.” Blodwed folded her arms, her eyes fierce with betrayal.

“In a fortnight my life will be meaningless…” Moon got up, feeling the walls of stone close in on her. “Please, please, Blodwed! Help us!”

“I don’t care if it’s all true! You don’t care about me; why should I care about you?” Blodwed caught the sleeve of Moon’s tunic and jerked at it, ripping the fragile cloth halfway up her arm. She went out, slamming the gate behind her.

“I don’t understand it,” BZ murmured, between irony and despair. “The stories I read always have happy endings.”

Lying sleepless far into the night, she felt the starls wake suddenly beside her, listening. Listening with them she heard the covert sound of footsteps coming back from the silent camp beyond. She sat up, blinking in the heater’s glow. BZ sat up on his cot; she realized that he must have lain awake with her in silent misery half the night. Oh, Lady, she’s changed her mind…

But the gate swung open, and the figure that took form in the light was not Blodwed. Moon heard Gundhalinu’s indrawn breath. She sat as still as death, paralyzed.

“Wake up, little sibyl. I’ve come for a few of your tricks… and to teach you a few of mine.” Taryd Roh came on across the chamber, shrugging off his parka.

Moon struggled to her feet, moving in slow motion. He doesn’t believe… Mother, please Mother, let me wake up! She stumbled back as the dream did not dissolve and her prayers flew up unheeded. She felt Gundhalinu’s hands grip her shoulders and pull her to him.

“Leave her alone, you son of a bitch, unless you want to lose what mind you have.”

Taryd Roh laughed. “You don’t believe that, any more than I do! Keep out of it, Blue, or this time I’ll show you what real pain is.”

BZ’s grip lost all strength on her shoulders. His arms dropped, he backed away. Moon clenched her teeth on a cry. But as Taryd Roh lunged across the gap between them, Gundhalinu moved forward, struck at Taryd Roh’s throat with a well-trained blow.

But there was no strength behind it, and Taryd Roh blocked his arm, twisted it, threw him aside into the cages. Gundhalinu pushed away from the wall, but before he could recover his balance Taryd Roh’s heavy fist clubbed him to his knees, and a boot knocked him sprawling. And then Taryd Roh had reached her again, his arms were around her. His mouth covered hers; Moon twisted her face frantically until she found his lip. She sank her teeth into it, tasted his blood mingling with her saliva.

He knocked her away with a shout of pain. She half fell, staggering up again as she tried to keep beyond Ms reach. “You’re cursed, Taryd Roh! You have the sibyl-madness now, Motherless, and there’s no hope for you!” Her voice shrilled like the screech of the white birds beating above her head. But he still came after her, blood shining on his face and another kind of madness in his eyes. Moon clung to the wire of the locked gate, screaming, “Blodwed! Blodwed!” His hand closed on her neck, she gasped and lost her voice as pain leaped out along her arms, paralyzing her. He jerked her away.

A starl attacked his leg, sinking its thick claws into the cloth of his legging, and on into his flesh. Tusks locked in his calf; he dragged her around, kicking viciously until he threw it off into its circling mate. But as his hands closed around her throat again he suddenly staggered back, losing all his strength. “You bitch!” thick with fear. He put his hands to his head, swaying; toppled and fell, sprawled motionless on the floor.

Moon stood over him, her voice raw. “I’ll teach you some tricks, unbeliever.” She stepped across his unconscious body, ran back to where Gundhalinu was getting to his feet uncertainly. She tried to steady him with tingling, heavy hands, saw the livid bruise swelling on his forehead. “BZ, are you all right?”

He looked at her incredulously. “Am I all right?” He cupped her face in his hands for a long moment, before his arms went around her, holding her close to his heart; she pressed her face against his neck. “Thank the gods… thank the gods, we both are.”

“All right, what do you think you’re — doing?” Blodwed burst in through the gate, stopped short at the sight of Taryd Roh’s body on the floor. The starls circled it like hunters over prey, growling threats. She looked up at Moon and Gundhalinu together across the room; Moon saw the question that came into her eyes, and the answer she got without asking. “Did — you do that to him?” Half-afraid.

“I did.” Moon nodded, surprised at the calmness of the words. “I infected him.”

Blodwed’s mouth fell open. “Is he dead?”

“No. But when he wakes up tomorrow he’ll — he’ll start to go mad. Madder.” Moon swallowed suddenly.

Blodwed looked down into Taryd Roh’s slack face. She glanced up again, her own face filling with a strange mixture of emotions, anger slowly separating and rising. She reached inside her parka, took out her stunner and adjusted the dial. She leaned down and put the muzzle close to his temple. “No he won’t.” She pressed the stud; his body jerked.

Moon flinched, felt Gundhalinu stiffen beside her. But she felt no pity, or remorse.

“Good riddance.” Blodwed stuck the gun away. “I told him he’d be sorry if he tried to hurt you.” She lifted her head, looked back at them with something deeper than possessiveness, and stronger than frustration. “Damn you, now you really did it! When Ma finds out what happened she’ll want you skinned alive; and she gets what she wants around here, I can’t stop it. Everybody thinks she’s holy, but really she’s just crazy.” She wiped her nose. “All right! All right, don’t look at me like that! I’m going to let you go.”

Moon swayed as reaction caught her, and slid down to her knees.

The carnivorous predawn cold gnawed Moon, even through the insulated clothing, the gray-brown woolen mask pulled down over her face. The stars crackled on the black dome of sky, the snow lay silvered under a gibbous moon beyond the gaping cavern mouth. “I never saw such a beautiful night.”

“Nor I. Not on any world.” Gundhalinu shifted beneath the thermal blankets, among the lashed-on supplies at the front of the loaded snow skimmer “And I never will again, if I live until the New Millennium.” He took a deep breath, coughed rac kingly as the frigid air assaulted his healing lungs.

“Shut up, will you?” Blodwed reappeared beside them for a last time. “You want to wake up the whole camp? Here.” She thrust something into Gundhalinu’s lap; Moon recognized three small carrying cages. “Take these back to the star port They’re sick. I can’t keep them here.” Her voice was as tight as a clenched fist. Gundhalinu worked the cages in under the blankets beside him.

Blodwed moved away to the other animal cages she had piled by the cave entrance. She picked up the first one, unfastening the lock. “And I’m dumping all these damn wild ones, they don’t even like you,” defiantly. Gray-winged birds fluttered out, tumbled astonished to the ground. They picked themselves up from the snow and flew away, crying their freedom. She jerked open a second cage; white furred conics leaped out in a mass, tumbling over their snowshoe feet, and bounded into the moonlight making no sound at all.

She opened the last cage, shook it; the elf fox cub rolled out, spitting its indignation. She pushed it with her foot out into the snow. “Go on, damn it!” The cub sat bleating in confusion, its silver-limned fur standing on end; picked itself up again, shuddering, and struggled back toward warmth and shelter. It found Blodwed’s foot in its way, crawled up onto the fur-and-leather of her boot, whimpering.

Blodwed swore, bent down to pick it up. “All right, then…” her voice cracked. “I’m keeping the rest!” She looked back at Moon. “But I know how to keep them better now. They’ll want to stay with me.”

Moon nodded, not trusting her own voice.

“I guess you got everything.” Blodwed stroked the cub’s head selfconsciously. “Even the distance-finder. You better hope you fixed it right, Blue.”

“What are you going to do now?” Gundhalinu said. “When you don’t have anybody to fix these things — or any way to get more? You’ve forgotten how to live like real herders and hunters any more-like anything besides parasites.”

“I haven’t.” Blodwed tossed her head. “I know the old ways too. Ma’s not going to live forever, no matter what she thinks. I can take care of myself — and everybody else, once I’m in charge. I don’t need you, foreigner!” She rubbed her eyes. “Or you.” She threw her arms around Moon suddenly. “So you better get out of here. You better go find him, before it’s too late!”

Moon hugged her, all wrongs forgotten, all forgiven; felt the elf fox squirm between them. “I will!”

Together they pushed the sledge out onto the open snow, and Moon settled behind the controls. She started the power unit, following Gundhalinu’s grudgingly surrendered instructions.

“Hey, Blodwed.” Gundhalinu twisted to look over his shoulder at her. “Here.” He tossed her the battered novel. “I don’t expect I’ll ever want to read that again.” He didn’t smile.

“I can’t read it either, it’s in your language!”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

“Get out of here, damn you.” She waved the book like a threat; but Moon saw her smile.

Moon switched on the headlamp, and they began the final journey northward.